This tradition reflects deep misunderstandings of both Black Kettle’s political sophistication and the genuine complexity of the choices he faced.

He was not naive.

He was making strategic calculations under conditions of extreme information asymmetry and limited options.

A second tradition, influenced by the post-civil-rights reconsideration of the Indian Wars, has been more sympathetic but sometimes equally distorting in a different direction.

In this tradition, Black Kettle becomes a pure victim — a peaceful man destroyed by American violence, without political agency of his own.

This tradition acknowledges the American failures better than the older tradition does, but it still doesn’t quite see Black Kettle as a political actor with his own strategy and his own reasons.