They were nimíipuu.

They had kinship ties to the people in the non-treaty bands.

They watched the 1877 events with complicated feelings: they had their own resentments about the way the reservation system worked, their own grief at the situation of their relatives, and their own fear that the conflict would harm them even though they had done nothing to cause it.

Some treaty-band nimíipuu did actively assist the army during the 1877 campaign — scouting, interpreting, and eventually serving as the intermediaries who brought the surrender terms to White Bird and Joseph at Bear Paw.

This assistance was not uniformly motivated by enthusiasm for army goals; some participated because they calculated that demonstrating loyalty to American authority was the best way to protect what the treaty bands had.