During the summer of 1877, members of the Nez Perce non-treaty bands spent three months constantly on the move, evading the military as scouts ranged ahead of and behind a traveling village made up mostly of children, women, and old people seeking safety and the hope of peace in Canada with Sitting Bull's band of Sioux. Guided for a time by a white miner captured at Yellowstone Lake, they followed an obscure path over the Absaroka divide and bypassed the Cooke City area by traveling along a drainage south of here, while General Howard's command found miners there barricaded and ready to repulse an attack. The Army then went over Colter Pass and found the abandoned Nez Perce camp at Crandall Creek, after which events carried the Nez Perce and army troops across the Yellowstone River and north to the Bear Paws Mountains and the final battle of the war. The Army had great difficulty tracking the Nez Perce through this country amid uncertainty over whether they might be moving through the Wind River, Stinking Water River, or the Clark's Fork out of Yellowstone Park, while Colonel Sturgis' 7th Cavalry maneuvered to cut them off before they emerged from the mountains and General Howard's command pressed from behind. Army scouts had been killed, breaking communication between the two commands and adding to the confusion. The Absaroka divide was among the toughest country the Army had yet crossed, and many soldiers, climbing relentlessly by day and losing blankets to the freezing wind at night, thought they would not make it. The Nez Perce made an even more remarkable journey over this rugged terrain, facing the same cold and punishing trail while successfully hiding the passage of 800 people and 3,000 horses for almost 85 miles.