When he refused to surrender at Bear Paw, he was refusing the same thing at the end of a different kind of calculation.

The Summer That Was Not Supposed To Be War

There is a counterfactual embedded in the 1877 story that is worth examining: the events of June 1877 did not have to produce the war they produced.

As late as early June 1877, the non-treaty bands had made the decision — agonizing and contested and resented, but made — to comply with Howard’s relocation order.

They were in the process of moving.