It was that they stopped forty miles short of the border, at a place that offered immediate practical benefits — water, game, grazing — and that Miles reached them before they resumed moving north.

White Bird’s escape was the completion of the journey that the whole flight had been aimed at.

He covered the last forty miles and crossed the line that the American army could not cross.

The Children Of The Flight

Among the least-discussed aspects of the 1877 flight is what it meant for the children who were part of it.

The approximately 800 people who began the flight included a significant proportion of children.

The NPS accounts note that the non-treaty bands were entire communities: families, not just warriors.