The story of Chief Joseph and a band of Nez Percé being driven into exile by the U.S. Army has been told and retold. Because the tale is compelling, because it was well-documented by personal accounts of the time and because of its crushing moral weight, the tale will be continue to be told and retold. Joining this ever-growing canon of historical literature is "Selling Your Father's Bones: America's 140-Year War Against the Nez Percé Tribe" by British magazine writer Brian Schofield (Simon & Schuster, 356 pages, $26).

It is an unfortunate truth that the victors write the history, and a scan of the books on the Nez Percé saga confirms this -- most were written by whites (as was this book review). But even the most settler-biased historian would have a hard time putting a positive spin on the ethnic cleansing that took place in the American West in the 1860s and '70s. Schofield treads familiar ground in a careful recounting of how settlers and miners violated law and civility in illegally claiming Nez Percé land, and then how the U.S. Army came to the "rescue" when the Nez Percé objected or fought back. Where Schofield provides fresh material is in his incorporating the present into his recounting of the past.

The story of the flight is the familiar one: 700 people, including women and children, traveled more than 1,700 miles in bitter weather while holding off better-armed soldiers in multiple engagements. But Schofield also tells us about his modern journey and the people he meets along the way, from white descendants of pioneers to the descendents of the Nez Percé on the Lapwai Reservation in Idaho. As the title of the book indicates, the struggles of the Nez Percé didn't end when the band that included Chief Joseph (who was not, as is commonly thought, the military leader of the group) surrendered in Montana. The Nez Percé who survived the army assaults also had to survive the damming of their rivers, the subsequent destruction of the great salmon runs that had fed them and the attempted annihilation of their language and religion through government agencies and boarding schools.

So it's refreshing to hear the voices of the Nez Percé who are alive and well in the Northwest. The ruminations of Rebecca Miles, the 33-year-old chairperson of the Nez Percé Tribal Executive Committee, show that the scars remain fresh. "My grandparents gave me a good grounding, helping me understand the war and what it did to our people. ... I descend from people who were in that war, that were killed." In present times, Miles and her kin have fought to protect and restore salmon runs and to keep alive their culture and religion. "It's easy to love us for our past," she says. "It's easy to love our history, our dances, our costumes, our songs. But it takes a special person to love us for who we are now, the people that we are today."

Schofield's small accomplishment with this book lies in that statement. The Nez Percé may have lost the battle with the army in 1877, but they're still here. That, in itself, is a victory.

Chris Welsch, a former travel writer for the Star Tribune, is a Ted Scripps fellow at the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado at Boulder.