The Nez Perce Chief Who Refused To Surrender 40 Miles From Canada — Then Slipped Past The Army And Escaped

He had watched most of the other leaders die.

And now he was forty miles from the border that meant the army had to stop following.

He chose the forty miles over the surrender.

He covered them.

He died in Canada, around 1882, approximately five years after Bear Paw.

He never came home.

The Salmon River canyon, where his band had fished and hunted for generations, is still there.

The nimíipuu who are descended from the people of that country still exist, still maintain relationships with that landscape, still insist on the treaty rights that were never legally extinguished.