He had famously confronted General Howard in council in May 1877, and Howard had placed him briefly under arrest to make a point about who had authority in the situation.

Yellow Wolf, a warrior of the Wallowa band whose memoirs, recorded decades later, provide one of the most detailed first-person accounts of the 1877 flight from an nimíipuu perspective.

These were not interchangeable figures.

They had different band affiliations, different territories, different temperaments, and different ideas about what the nimíipuu should do at each stage of the crisis.

The 1877 flight was not led by a single commander; it was guided by a council that debated options and sometimes disagreed sharply about the right course of action.

Understanding this is essential to understanding what happened at Bear Paw, where Joseph and White Bird reached different conclusions.