White Bird did not.

This is not a criticism of Joseph or a dismissal of his genuine courage and eloquence.

It is an observation about which kinds of resistance American popular memory finds memorable and which kinds it tends to forget.

The man who refuses the terms and escapes across the border to die in exile is not easily incorporated into a narrative about the tragedy of the American West, because his story doesn’t end with surrender or with advocacy or with any kind of visible accommodation with the system that pursued him.

White Bird’s story ends with death in Canada, away from his homeland, having refused to the end to place himself under the authority of the people who had driven him from the Salmon River country.