The fact that Black Kettle is dead because of Custer’s attack is not in question.

Philip Sheridan and the Winter Campaign

Philip Sheridan, who authorized the winter campaign that produced the Washita attack, deserves specific examination as the architect of the strategy that killed Black Kettle.

Sheridan was a major figure of the Civil War, associated with the Shenandoah Valley campaign of 1864 in which Union forces systematically destroyed the economic infrastructure of the Valley — barns, crops, livestock — to deny Confederate forces the resources they needed to continue fighting.

This “hard war” approach was controversial but effective in the specific context of the Civil War.