He had escaped the army but could not escape the displacement.

The man who had gone to the Bear Paw with perhaps sixty to seventy years of life behind him, who had refused to sign the 1863 treaty, who had participated in council debates that sought peaceful resolution all the way up to the moment when the army made peace impossible, who had led warriors at White Bird Canyon and Big Hole, who had made the final calculation at Bear Paw — died in Canada, in exile, as the nimíipuu who had surrendered with Joseph were beginning the long process of arguing and petitioning and waiting for permission to return to the Northwest.

There is no record of whether White Bird regarded his choice as the right one.

The sources do not give us his reflections in exile.