The story of Red Cloud’s War forces a question that American history rarely asks directly: what would have happened if the United States had honored the 1868 treaty?

The question is counterfactual — it asks about a history that didn’t happen.

But it is a useful question because it reveals the specific choices that were made and the specific alternatives that existed.

If the treaty had been honored — if the Black Hills had remained protected, if the unceded territory of the Powder River Country had been respected, if the rations promised in the treaty had been delivered adequately — the subsequent history of the Sioux Nation would have been profoundly different.

Not necessarily peaceful: there were always tensions and conflicts within and around reservation life.