This is its own kind of statement.

It is less visible than Joseph’s, because it was made in absence rather than in presence, in silence rather than in speech.

But it was made.

The Forty Miles: A Final Reckoning

Forty miles.

In June 1877, the non-treaty bands were in the camas country of Idaho, going through the last preparations for a move they had agreed to make under protest.

The Canadian border was more than a thousand miles away, and the idea that they would be fleeing toward it in four months would have seemed inconceivable.