The vision failed not because it was inherently impossible but because the American commitment to even the minimal terms of the vision was insufficient.

The American political system, in the 1860s, was not capable of producing the sustained, consistent implementation of treaty commitments that the vision required.

This is the specific nature of the tragedy: not that peace was impossible in principle, but that the specific American political system of the mid-nineteenth century was not capable of delivering it in practice.

A Story for Today

The story of Black Kettle is not only a story about the past.