He signed treaties — the Fort Wise Treaty of 1861, the Little Arkansas Treaty of 1865, the Medicine Lodge Treaty of 1867 — in each case accepting terms that reduced Cheyenne territory and autonomy because he calculated that the alternative was worse.

He brought his followers to the assigned reservation areas and tried to comply with what the treaties required.

He survived Sand Creek.

He continued.

He died at the Washita.

His life from the first treaty to the second massacre was a sustained, principled effort to make the American commitment to peace real — to hold the American government to the specific commitments it had made in its own name.

That effort failed, not because his strategy was wrong, but because the American political system was not capable of honoring its own commitments in the sustained, consistent way that genuine peace required.