Several of Black Kettle’s speeches have been preserved in fragmentary form through the records of treaty negotiations and of council meetings with American officials.

These fragments are among the most direct evidence of his thinking and his character.

At Medicine Lodge in 1867, he spoke about his desire for peace and about the difficulty of his position.

He acknowledged that he could not control all the Cheyenne — that the young men who chose to raid were acting outside his authority.

He was essentially doing something that peace chiefs rarely did in public: acknowledging the limits of his own power while still maintaining that the peace path was the right one.

The courage this required is easy to underestimate.