Recovery was not impossible, but it required exactly what the five-column campaign was designed to deny: periods of safety and stability in which horses could be bred, traded for, and built up again.

The horse destruction at Palo Duro was not a single act but a strategic investment in future impotence.

The families who escaped the canyon were not permanently incapable of resistance because of September 28, 1874.

But the cumulative effect of Palo Duro, combined with the continuing operations of the other columns, made sustained resistance increasingly untenable.

How The Strategy Worked

The strategy of the Red River War — sometimes called “total war” by historians analyzing the period — was not original to the 1874 campaign.