They were communities of people for whom warfare was one activity among many, integrated with hunting, gathering, social ceremony, and the full range of life on the plains.

This had implications for the type of warfare they could sustain.

A prolonged siege — surrounding a position and starving it out over months or years — was not well-suited to communities that needed to follow the bison, that had to manage their horses’ feed and condition, that had children to care for and communities to maintain.

The concentrated military force that the U.S.

Army could briefly direct toward a specific objective was not the kind of threat that Red Cloud’s coalition needed to match directly.