In 1858, Nicola used his power and influence to protect those miners coming to the Thompson and Fraser goldfields via the Okanagan Trail, despite their own bad conduct. This essentially prevented a spreading of the Yakima War across the international frontier and, though exhorted to quash the miners' parties, who had attacked natives and raided and spoiled food caches on their way through Okanagan and Yakima country, he refused to engage them at war and instead, in the case of one party, escorted them from Kamloops to the Fraser at Fountain. Also exhorted to join in the Spokane War as well as the Fraser Canyon War, he demurred on both occasions but apparently was ready in 1858 to join forces with the Thompson against the whites if events in the Canyon War had not turned out relatively peaceably. He felt sorry for the Spokanes that their country had fallen to the Americans but he held fast to his alliance with the Queen and, originally, with King George, which he had struck before the boundary was created. It is believed he remained staunchly neutral during the Chilcotin War of 1864 and may have used his influence to keep some of the Chilcotin chiefs neutral; this was in the year before his death.