The Lakota’s refusal to accept monetary compensation for the Black Hills, maintained for more than four decades, is a statement that the rights the treaty recognized are not commodities that can be purchased.

The Powder River Country, the territory that Red Cloud fought to protect, is now occupied by ranches, oil and gas fields, and the infrastructure of the modern American West.

The bison are gone from the wild landscape, replaced by cattle.

The trail itself is a matter of historical markers and academic study.

The military forts that the Lakota burned in 1868 exist only in archaeological traces and historical reconstruction.

But Red Cloud’s War remains in the historical record as one of the most remarkable episodes in the history of American Indian resistance.