He was reported to have told the commissioner of Indian affairs that the agent on his reservation was not providing what had been promised, that the rations were inadequate, that the promised farming implements had not arrived, and that the overall administration of the agency was failing to deliver what the treaty had committed.

These were not the statements of a man who didn’t understand the treaty’s provisions.

They were the statements of a man who understood them precisely and was holding the American government to them.

Over the years that followed, as the treaty’s provisions were progressively eroded — by the Black Hills gold rush, by the reduction of the unceded territory, by the seizure of the Black Hills following the Great Sioux War — Red Cloud’s public statements remained consistent.

He argued that the treaty had promised specific things, that those promises had not been honored, and that the United States had an obligation to fulfill its commitments.