But the system that should have said so said nothing, because the authorization insulated the responsible parties from the accountability mechanisms that authorization was supposed to ensure would not be needed.

Black Kettle and the Problem of Trust

The deepest question raised by Black Kettle’s story is the question of trust — of what it means to trust a government that has repeatedly violated its commitments, and of why anyone would continue to trust after the violations became obvious.

Black Kettle continued to extend provisional trust to the American government for years after Sand Creek.

Not naive trust — he understood perfectly well what had happened at Sand Creek and what it represented.