The fact that his strategy ultimately failed tells us more about the American political system’s inability to honor its commitments than about any failure of Black Kettle’s judgment or character.

He survived one massacre.

He tried harder to make peace after it.

He was killed in a second.

The arc of his life is one of the most powerful indictments of American Indian policy in the nineteenth century — not because he failed, but because he did everything right and was still killed.

The flags he raised — the American flag over his lodge at Sand Creek, the white flag of surrender that was also ignored — were not symbols of naivety.

They were rational signals within a diplomatic framework that he was trying to make work.