On June 5, Sarah Winnemucca met with Pony Blanket (Egan), Left Hand, Dancer, and Three Coyotes at the Malheur Indian Agency and learned that the Snake Indians were being starved out of the Malheur reservation, that they could not buy clothes, and that Paiute horses were being shot. Three Coyotes reported the rape of an Indian girl and the confiscation of weapons and horses at the Fort Hall Reservation. They gathered money to send Sarah to Washington to tell President Rutherford B. Hayes of these problems. She left on June 9, 1878. That day Captain Reuben F. Bernard caught up with Black Buffalo and Old Bull near the Oregon-Idaho border, after having his men pull down telegraph lines to shut off the war zone communications. He seriously wounded both men. Before the last of the lines were pulled down, General Irvin McDowell got a message through to Bad Face and his son Natchez, asking them to come and help keep the peace with the hostile Snake at the Malheur Reservation. They consented but planned to join the Snakes at war. On June 10, 1878, Congress declared war on the Western Shoshoni Nation.