Made up of George F. and Emma Cowan, Emma's brother and sister, Frank and Ida Carpenter, Charles Mann and Henry Meyers, this group also included A.J. Arnold, William Dingee and Albert Oldham from Helena, Montana. They were camped just west of the Lower Geyser Basin. General Sherman himself had been in the park as a tourist only a few days before. His scout reportedly assured members of the Radersburg party that they would be perfectly safe from the Nez Perce. However, one of the tourists, Emma Cowan, noted that the Sherman party "preferred being elsewhere, as they left...that same night." A second group of tourists, made up of entirely young men became known as the Helena party. On the evening the August 23, Andrew Weikert, Richard Dietrich, Charles Kenck, Frederick Pfister, Jack Stewart, Leonard Duncan, Joseph Roberts, August Foller, Leslie Wilke and an African American cook named Benjamin Stone were in camp at Yellowstone Falls. Not far from the Radersburg party were John Shively, a lone prospector, James Irwin, a recently discharged soldier, and a dishevelled lone tourist encountered on the Yellowstone river near Mount Washburn was "Texas Jack" (John Omohondro), a scout with a small party of English tourists. After entering the park, the band of Nez Perce moved up the Madison and Firehole Rivers to the Lower Geyser Basin near Fountain Flats. A small scouting party of Nez Perce led by Yellow Wolf led the way. In the late afternoon of August 23, Yellow Wolf's scouts captured John Shively at the confluence of the East Fork of the Firehole River (Nez Perce Creek)  and the Firehole River. They forced him to act as a guide for the Nez Perce through Yellowstone. On the morning of August 24, Yellow Wolf's scouting party rode into the Radersburg party camp and forced the group to accompany them up the Mary Mountain trail east toward the Yellowstone River to the main Nez Perce camp. By noon, upon the advice of Poker Joe, the Nez Perce chiefs decided to allow the party to leave and head west out of the park, but only on the condition that they abandon all their supplies and horses to the Nez Perce, which they did. About 30 minutes after they were released and on their way west down the edges of the Mary Mountain trail, the party encountered a group of 20-30 Nez Perce stragglers who wanted to return the tourists into the hands of the chiefs.