Iron Shirt’s presence also represents the allied character of the off-reservation population in 1874.

The Palo Duro camps were not a single band but a collection of Comanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne, and Arapaho families who had found themselves in the same general situation — off-reservation, under Army pressure, seeking winter refuge — and had concentrated in the same canyon.

The multi-national character of the Palo Duro encampment was part of what made it strategically valuable as a target and part of what made the destruction there so broadly consequential.

A single successful operation destroyed the winter camps of multiple nations simultaneously.