Some leaders signed it.

Specifically, leaders from the bands whose traditional territories fell within the reduced reservation’s new boundaries signed it, because they were not being asked to give up anything they actually occupied.

The leaders from the bands whose territories fell outside the new boundaries — Old Joseph for the Wallowa band, White Bird for the Lamtama, Toohoolhoolzote for the Pikunan — refused.

The American legal and political position was that the 1863 treaty was binding on all the nimíipuu because the chiefs who signed it had legal authority to act for all of them.

The non-treaty leaders disputed this: the chiefs who signed had authority over their own bands, not over bands that had explicitly refused.