The tribal homelands of the Nez Perce are set in stunning, rugged Western-alpine scenery, where the foaming Snake and Salmon Rivers collide. The tribe had held these lands for up to 13,000 years when the first European settlers arrived, promising the Nez Perce Christian salvation and profitable trade. Instead, when gold was discovered in the local hills, a swarm of squatters poured onto the land, fencing off stolen territory and clashing violently with the Nez Perce. The settlers, convinced that their conquest of the West was divinely-ordained destiny, pressured the tribe to sell their most treasured jewel, the pristine Wallowa valley, but the young Chief Joseph had made a death-bed promise to his father never to relinquish the land in which his ancestors lay buried — “My son, never forget my dying words. This country holds your father’s body. Never sell the bones of your father and mother.”

Finally, in the summer of 1877, after one humiliation too many, a band of young Nez Perce warriors snapped and went on the rampage, killing fifteen settlers. The United States Army rushed to fatally punish the tribe, who fled into the mountains — the great Nez Perce exodus had begun.

What happened next defies belief. Over the next four months over 700 men, women and children travelled around 1,700 miles over the most inhospitable terrain in the West, pursued by four armies. It’s an astonishing tale of human resilience and hope, and it was a tremendous privilege to be able to travel in the footsteps of the tribe.

But as I made the journey, the evidence mounted of a remarkable historical turnaround. For the descendants of those first settlers, the white ranchers and farmer and loggers living in the north-West today, have learned the lesson that young Joseph’s father was so desperate to impart, of loving and protecting your homeland — but they have learnt too late. The ravaged forests, dammed rivers, open coal mines and polluted waters that now define the old Nez Perce homelands made it all too clear — that the settlers sold their fathers’ bones, and now they are paying the price. And that’s what makes the tale of the Nez Perce so compelling to me, that not only does it teach us a lesson about the strength of the human spirit, but also about how man should occupy the earth.

Brian Schofield is currently the assistant travel editor, culture and news review writer at the Sunday Times. His first book, Selling Your Father’s Bones, is part history and part travelogue through the wilderness of the stunning landscape of the continental United States. It was published in paperback by HarperPress this July.