The treaty-band nimíipuu who had stayed at Lapwai throughout received their relatives back with complex feelings — the years of separation, the mutual grief at what had happened, and the ongoing pressure of reservation life created its own set of challenges.

The Dawes Act of 1887 — a federal law that broke reservations into individual allotments and sold the “surplus” land to settlers — further reduced the land base available to Indigenous peoples throughout the West, including the nimíipuu.

The reservation system that the treaty-band leaders had accepted as protection turned out to offer a different kind of vulnerability than the non-treaty situation had.

The specific provisions of the original 1855 treaty — including the fishing rights that were central to nimíipuu subsistence — became the subject of ongoing legal battles throughout the twentieth century.