The treaty, however, reserved the right of the Nimiipuu to hunt, gather, fish and pasture livestock in all of the usual and accustomed places. It also provided the tribe with schools, mills, a carpenter shop and a blacksmith.

Shortly after these treaties were implemented, in 1860, gold was discovered near present-day Pierce, Idaho. Thousands of miners descended on lands reserved by the 1855 treaty. Rather than abide by the terms of the 1855 treaty, another treaty council was mandated. This resulted in a reservation that shrank from approximately 8 million acres to 750,000 acres. Bands living outside of these boundaries, in particular, in the Wallowa region, were not consulted. They did not sign the treaty. The division between treaty and non-treaty Nimiipuu was a flash point that proved difficult to resolve. The reduction in size of the reservation did not affect the rights reserved by the Nimiipuu in the 1855 treaty.