Part historical narrative, part travelogue, and part environmental plea, this book recounts an astonishing journey. Joseph, chief of the peaceable Nez Perce band in Oregon's Wallowa Valley, had long sworn to uphold the dying words of his father: "This country holds your father's body. Never sell the bones of your mother and your father." Yet, in 1877, as the U.S. government confined the tribe to ever smaller reservations, the fateful decision of several...