It became apparent that—true to Nee-Me-Poo cultural dynamics—White Bird's hold on his own followers did not necessarily extend to those who belonged to other bands. Soon after the Baird mission, mounted police officials learned that some Nez Perces intended to move west into the country occupied by tribes of the Blackfeet Indians. There the Nez Perces would try to break away to their former homes in Idaho and Oregon. The news caused concern at Forts Walsh and Macleod, where the police hoped to prevent clashes between the two tribes. But such trouble never happened; instead, the North-West Mounted Police became concerned when Sitting Bull succeeded in making peace with his Blackfeet and Cree neighbors. [98] And of even more direct import regarding the Nez Perces and the Sioux came reports that White Bird's people had attempted to make peace with the Crows—that a party had ventured south of the line in September and had received assurances that, if the Americans attempted to take their arms and horses, the Crows would fight and then cross into Canada and join the Lakotas and Nez Perces, and that such a combined force would be sufficient to combat American troops sent over the line to punish them. With Sioux concurrence, Nez Perce representatives were sent to the Crows in December bearing peace tobacco to assert that the Nez Perces and Lakotas desired friendship with them. The plan did not find favor among the British officials, who concluded that "the Sioux and Nez Perces (by the Canadian authorities) and the Crows (by the American authorities) should be made to understand at once, that under no circumstances will the Crows be permitted to find an asylum in Canada." [99]

Nor did the Crows seem to favor a coalition with their traditional Sioux enemies, despite the diplomacy of the Nez Perces to forge such a union. They responded to the proposal by promptly raiding the Sioux pony herd and instigating an indignant war frenzy by the Lakotas. Inspector Walsh visited the Sioux camp on January 23, 1879, and found the camps of Sitting Bull and White Bird more than two miles below the forty-ninth parallel. Confronting Sitting Bull, Walsh told the Hunkpapa that the American authorities "would be called upon to put a stop to such raids into Canadian territory." He further told Sitting Bull:

I believe that you and the Nez Perces are to blame for this raid by the Crows. If you had not tried to plant sedition in the Crow tribe, by sending messengers to induce them to leave their Reservation which the good men of the tribe would not listen to, the Crows would never have sent their young men into the White Mother's country to steal horses from the Sioux. There are perhaps a few dissatisfied men in the Crow tribe that listened to your messengers,men that would not care if they brought destruction on their people; but the wise and good men sent your messengers off from their camp, telling them never to return. You still persisted, and sent messages, and I suppose the Crows found the only way to stop you was to commence stealing your horses. I have been informed that one of the messages you sent the Crows was for them to leave their Reservation and join you in the White Mother's country, where the buffalo were numerous, and that guns and ammunition were sold to the Indians by all the traders. [100]

Sitting Bull confessed his role in the affair and heeded Walsh's advice. His war ardor waned, and his and White Bird's people instead undertook a buffalo hunt below the line. Sitting Bull's and White Bird's efforts at intertribal confederation ended after that. [101]

Despite White Bird's efforts to work with Sitting Bull, it is clear that the Nez Perces in Canada were tired of that existence and longed for home. Others continued to trickle across the border in 1878 and 1879, although many of these were destined to go the Indian Territory to join Joseph. In December 1878, such a party of seventeen Nez Perces who had returned from Canada was taken under escort via Portland, San Francisco, and Omaha to join the incarcerated people. [102] But over the next few years, the homeward imperative was strong. Some wandered about for years, staying on reservations of friendly tribes. The parents of Suhmkeen (Samuel Tilden) came back into Montana, located on a ranch near the Alberta border, and did chores for white settlers until 1880, when they settled on the Flathead Reservation. They remained there until 1910, when they went home to Lapwai. [103] Some returnees found their way back to Lapwai and took residence with those Nee-Me-Poo who had not taken part in the war of 1877. Ollokot's widow stayed with the Spokans after she departed Canada in 1879, but eventually returned to Lapwai. The warrior Two Moon said that, after passing a year with the Sioux, he joined the Flatheads for two winters before joining the Lemhi Shoshones in southern Idaho Territory. He then visited the Spokans and finally joined Joseph's band at Nespelum, Washington, after their return from the Indian Territory. Likewise, Red Wolf III left Canada after two years, joining—of all people—the Blackfeet for one year. He next spent time with the Flatheads and Umatillas before coming back to Lapwai. [104]

Meantime, the dwindling herds of buffalo that failed to sustain them caused Sitting Bull's people to begin crossing the line and surrendering in 1880, and the Hunkpapa leader himself eventually yielded to U.S. military authorities at Fort Buford. When the chief came into the garrison on July 19, 1881, among his followers was a Shoshone-Bannock man named Seeskoomkee (Steps, also called No Feet), who had gone through the war of 1877 with the Nez Perces. [105] Instead of returning himself, White Bird moved his few remaining lodges west to Pincher Creek and near the Piegan reserve. These people built stout cabins of poplar and pine. Some of them went to work for freighters around Fort Macleod, while others sold berries to survive. A settler remarked that they "had to rustle their own living and came to us with blueberries, gooseberries, fish, and sometimes venison or mountain sheep meat, which they were glad to 'swap' for tea, sugar and flour, etc." [106]

Seemingly by the 1890s, only a few families of Nez Perces remained in Canada with White Bird. Few, if any, made any effort to join Joseph's people in Nespelum after 1885, and White Bird was apparently content to stay north of the line for good. In 1892, almost eleven years after Sitting Bull had gone over to the Americans, White Bird became involved in a quarrel with another Nez Perce, a man named Lamnisnim Husis (Shriveled Head), also known as Hasenahmahkikt, but locally called Nez Perce Sam. Sam accused White Bird of threatening supernatural powers against his son and other family members. On the evening of March 6, Sam confronted the aged chief with an axe and killed him not far from his house. North-West Mounted Police officers arrested Sam. He was tried and sentenced to be executed in the Manitoba Penitentiary in July, but through the exertions of local religious leaders, Sam's death sentence was commuted to a life term. He died in prison in October 1893. The remaining Nez Perces dispersed following White Bird's murder, some going to live on the Piegan reserve while the others eventually moved back to Lapwai or gradually died off in Canada. In 1898, Nez Perce Sam's wife, Sara, was pronounced "the only remaining Nez Perce woman" in the Canadian settlement. She died of tuberculosis in 1899, and her daughters subsequently moved down to Lapwai. After his murder, White Bird was buried near the Pincher Creek settlement. The site of his unmarked grave was obliterated after the remaining Nez Perces had either died or departed the area. [107]

In the aftermath of the Nez Perce War, the public sentiment that had long favored the Nez Perces continued. Even the military foes of the tribesmen complimented them for their sagacity, enterprise, and resourcefulness in eluding the army's frustrating pursuit for so long. Based on his only confrontation with them, Nelson A. Miles, in the tenor of the time, offered solid praise for their military prowess and accomplishments and extended hope for their future:

I consider these Nez Perces decidedly [the] most dangerous Indian enemies that the Government has had to contend with. Nearly all understand English and many speak it; they have all the cunning of wild Indians, and many of the arts of civilized warfare. . . . From what I have seen of both, I should say that Joseph is decidedly the superior of Sitting Bull, less a savage and superior in intelligence and personal courage, and as this trouble was commenced with fraud and injustice I am satisfied these Indians can be made loyal friends of the government in six months with anything like honesty and justice on the part of the representatives of the government. [108]

In fact, the general military success of the Nez Perces over the long road from Camas Prairie to Bear's Paw was not so much the result of one individual but of the interband community of the people, coupled with the leadership of the different bands, including well-qualified military persons, operating together for the common good. While the movement of the assorted families and dunnage, along with the immense herd of stock, under the constant threat of attack was not always efficient and seems to have often lacked security-consciousness, it succeeded enough to overcome the mediocrity of the army's own performance until Bear's Paw.

The Nez Perces lost at least 96 people and perhaps as many as 145—with at least 36 of them women and children—within the three and one-half months between White Bird Canyon and Bear's Paw. Many more suffered from injuries received in the fighting or from the cumulative effects of the long march and the bad weather near the end. [109] The heartrending agonies of noncombatant women and children and the elderly, coupled with the plucky performance of the Indians in eluding Howard's pursuit and besting the troops in several encounters after White Bird Canyon, contributed to their successful enlistment of public opinion over much of the course of their struggle. Most Americans knew from reading of the Wallowa controversy that the Nez Perces had been defrauded in their own country by the government. Thus, their effort to remove themselves from the seat of the corruption and to leave their homeland became a noble ambition to many white Americans. Whereas editorial opinion in Idaho often enlarged on the problems emerging from the Fort Lapwai councils, much of the territorial press in Montana came to root for the tribesmen, especially in the wake of the Fort Fizzle embarrassment. As they passed through the Bitterroot Valley, their stock continued to soar, and journalists urged "that it is best to let them go in peace." Despite the fighting at Big Hole, where army casualties were high, and amid rising criticism of Howard's performance, the papers generally viewed the Nez Perces in a favorable light. [110] Initial reports of the tribesmen's capture of the tourist parties in the national park created horrific consternation, but later accounts by the captives themselves tended to show that they had been largely well treated.

Following Bear's Paw, the press elevated Joseph—the only surviving chief present—as something of a hero, fostering the myth of his martial leadership that dominated accounts of the warfare for decades. The nontreaty Nez Perces became a people that white Americans could relate to. Despite the horrors of the initial outbreak, the public took comfort in the knowledge that the wronged tribesmen had, presumably because of their Christian-inspired traits, showed humanity on the battleground in not killing the wounded or scalping the dead. Moreover, they represented a portion of a tribe that had a solid history of friendship toward the government and that had supposedly benefited from an awareness of Christianity and a knowledge of the English language-both of which factors doubtless made the nontreaty people more acceptable as foes than other tribes that had battled the whites. Their estrangement from a large segment of their own people made their actions difficult to comprehend and exacerbated an intratribal schism that still challenges reconciliation. But the definitive truth was that—no matter the perception within or without the tribe—in their hearts they transcended all to grasp what they believed the only course left to them. Irrefutably, they had just cause, and in the end the Nez Perces carried through with dignity and forbearance, an apotheosis of being and of the human spirit.