hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are -- perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever. Joseph's speech was translated by the interpreter Arthur Chapman and was transcribed by Howard's aide-de-camp Lieutenant C. E. S. Wood. Among other vocations, Wood was a writer and a poet. His poem, "The Poet in the Desert" (1915), was a literary success, and some critics have suggested that he may have taken poetic license and embellished Joseph's speech. Aftermath During the surrender negotiations, Howard and Miles had promised Joseph that the Nez Perce would be allowed to return to their reservation in Idaho. But, the commanding general of the Army, William Tecumseh Sherman, overruled them and directed that the Nez Perce were sent to Kansas. "I believed General Miles, or I never would have surrendered," Chief Joseph said afterward. Miles marched his captives to the Tongue River Cantonment in southeast Montana Territory, where they arrived on October 23, 1877, and were held until Oct. 31. The able-bodied warriors were marched out to Fort Buford, at the confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers. On November 1, women, children, the ill and the wounded set out for Fort Buford in fourteen Mackinaw boats. Between November 8 and 10, the Nez Perce left Fort Buford for Custer's post command at the time of his death; Fort Abraham Lincoln across the Missouri River from Bismarck in the Dakota Territory. About two hundred left in the mackinaws on November 9 guarded by two companies of the First Infantry; the rest traveled on horseback escorted by troops of the Seventh Cavalry en route to their winter quarters. A majority of Bismarck's citizens turned out to welcome the Nez Perce prisoners, providing a lavish buffet for them and their troop escort. On November 23, the Nez Perce prisoners had their lodges and equipment loaded into freight cars and themselves into eleven rail coaches for the trip via train to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. Over the protests to Sherman by the commander of the Fort, the Nez Perce were forced to live in a swampy bottomland. One