He brought his band to the reservation area assigned by the Medicine Lodge Treaty and tried to comply with the terms he had agreed to.

He sought protection from military officials in the weeks before his death.

He was killed while trying to escape, not while fighting.

None of this protected his people from the violence that came.

The failure of his strategy — measured in the deaths at Sand Creek and the Washita — does not diminish the moral and strategic coherence of what he attempted.

He was, in the language of military history, fighting on the losing side.