The result — the Little Bighorn, the subsequent military defeat, the final reduction of Lakota autonomy — was the outcome of a different set of choices and a different set of circumstances.

The contrast between Red Cloud’s outcome in 1868 and the outcome of 1876-77 is instructive.

Red Cloud’s War succeeded, in the specific sense of producing the treaty, because the specific circumstances of the Bozeman Trail conflict — the limited economic value of the trail to American interests relative to the cost of holding it, the political conditions in Washington, the specific military situation on the ground — aligned in a way that made a treaty concession politically possible.

The Black Hills crisis of 1876 produced different circumstances, and the outcome was different.