The military framework, applied retrospectively, tends to emphasize the decisions that produced battlefield outcomes and de-emphasize the decisions that were about keeping children and elderly people and horses alive through difficult terrain.

The latter decisions — which were the majority of what the nimíipuu leadership was doing most of the time — are less visible in accounts organized around battles and engagements.

Understanding the 1877 flight as a military retreat misses what made it extraordinary, which was not its tactical dimension but its human dimension: that an entire community, including all its most vulnerable members, covered 1,170 miles under pursuit and produced the degree of military effectiveness it did.

Why White Bird Is Not Better Known