The collective pressure of five forces converging on the Texas Panhandle — each capable of attacking any camp they found, each capable of burning supplies and destroying resources — would make the Panhandle untenable as a refuge regardless of what any individual column did or failed to do.

The off-reservation peoples were not ignorant of what was coming.

They could see the pattern of Army movement.

They could read the increasing pressure from multiple directions.

The decision to concentrate in Palo Duro Canyon in the late summer of 1874 was, in part, a response to this pressure: the canyon offered the concealment and natural defense that the open Plains did not.

Ranald Mackenzie And The 4th Cavalry