The council itself was an extraordinary event — the largest gathering of treaty commissioners and plains chiefs in the history of the southern plains, attended by journalists whose accounts reached national audiences.

Black Kettle’s speech at Medicine Lodge was reported in the newspapers of the time, and fragments of it survive.

He spoke about the desire for peace, about the suffering his people had endured, and about his hope that the treaty being made would provide genuine security.

He was clear-eyed about the difficulty of his position within the Cheyenne nation — he knew that not all Cheyenne were willing to accept the terms being offered, and he said so.

The Medicine Lodge Treaty assigned the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho a reservation between the Cimarron and Arkansas rivers in Indian Territory, in what is now Oklahoma.