The western press, whose readers were more directly interested in the economic access that the trail was supposed to provide, tended to cover the peace negotiations as dangerous capitulation.

When the forts were abandoned and Red Cloud signed the treaty, the coverage was generally negative in the western press and more nuanced in the eastern press.

The specific framing of the outcome — the United States abandoning military posts it had built — was uncomfortable for American national pride and was not typically presented as an Indigenous victory.

It was presented as the outcome of pragmatic negotiations, with the political analysis focused on the question of whether the peace would hold rather than on what the peace represented.

This framing — pragmatic negotiation rather than military defeat — is part of why Red Cloud’s War did not enter the popular historical consciousness as the significant American defeat that it was.