He traveled to Washington multiple times.

He met with presidents — Ulysses Grant in 1870, among others.

His speeches at these meetings were noted by journalists and diplomats who were struck by his articulateness and his political acuity.

He was not performing submission; he was arguing, with skill and precision, for the rights that had been promised.

Some of his advocacy produced results.

Some did not.

The structural forces arrayed against Lakota sovereignty — the political weight of American expansionism, the economic interests of settlers and miners, the ideological framework of manifest destiny that told most Americans that Indigenous territorial claims were temporary obstacles to the inevitable progress of civilization — were too powerful for any individual leader to overcome through advocacy alone.

He was also not without critics within the Lakota community.