The Peace Commission’s argument was essentially pragmatic: it was cheaper to provide annuities to the Lakota people than to fight them indefinitely.

The land they were defending would eventually be opened for American development, but the timing and the method mattered, and the current approach was producing neither security nor access.

General William Tecumseh Sherman, commanding the Military Division of the Missouri, was among the most aggressive advocates for suppressing Indigenous resistance by force, and he remained hostile to what he saw as a policy of capitulation.

But even Sherman eventually had to acknowledge that the specific situation on the Bozeman Trail was untenable with the forces available.