The 418 people who surrendered with Joseph at Bear Paw were not sent to Idaho.

They were transported to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, a military post where they spent the winter of 1877-1878 in conditions that contributed to significant illness and death.

Malaria, to which people from the plateau country had little immunity, struck the population held in the low-lying bottomlands near Fort Leavenworth.

From Fort Leavenworth, the survivors were sent to Indian Territory — what is now Oklahoma — an environment even less suited to plateau people than Kansas.

The Eekish Pah, which the nimíipuu called the “hot place,” was far from the salmon rivers and mountain country of their homeland.