Howard and Miles had promised Joseph during the surrender negotiations that the Nez Perce would be allowed to return to their reservation in Idaho.

However, the commanding general of the Army, William Tecumseh Sherman, overrules them and directs that they not be allowed to return to the reservation.

"I believed General Miles, or I never would have surrendered," Chief Joseph will say afterward.

Miles marches his captives two hundred and sixty-five miles to the Tongue River Cantonment in southeast Montana Territory, where they arrive on October 23, 1877, and are held until October 31, when the able-bodied warriors are marched out to Fort Buford, at the confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers.

On November 1, the ill, wounded, and women and children set out for Fort Buford in fourteen Mackinaw boats.