White Bird’s death in Canada, also far from the Salmon River country he had led for decades, is another.

What Forty Miles Actually Meant

The headline of this article promises a chief who refused to surrender forty miles from Canada.

The number is worth dwelling on.

Forty miles, in October 1877, was not forty miles in the way that forty miles feels today.

There were no roads across the northern Montana plains that the nimíipuu could use safely.

There were no supplies waiting at the border.

There was no certainty that reaching the border would mean anything — the camp of the Lakota that offered the best possibility of immediate refuge was itself in motion and uncertain.