His engagement with the American political system — traveling to Washington, D.C., meeting with presidents, negotiating terms — represented a different kind of leadership from Crazy Horse’s military leadership.

The two men were not simply allies.

They sometimes disagreed, and the political dynamics at the Red Cloud Agency in the months before Crazy Horse’s death included tensions between Red Cloud’s supporters and Crazy Horse’s followers.

Some of the rumors that contributed to the Army’s anxiety about Crazy Horse in the summer of 1877 were fed by political rivals within the Lakota community.

This complexity — the internal political dynamics, the different strategies different leaders pursued, the genuine disagreements about how to navigate an impossible situation — is part of the historical context that is sometimes lost when Crazy Horse is presented as a single figure of pure resistance.