The mathematics of survival in October and November 1874, on the Staked Plains without adequate shelter or food, with a much-reduced horse herd, with the army still operating in the area, were not favorable.

The agencies offered rations.

The rations were often inadequate and sometimes corrupt, but they were something.

The agencies offered lodging — not the life that had existed before, not the freedom of the open Plains, but shelter and some protection from starvation and cold.

People came in.

Not all at once.

Not with enthusiasm.

But the conditions that had made the off-reservation life viable had been destroyed, and the conditions of reservation life — however grim — were survivable in a way that the winter of 1874-1875 on the Panhandle without horses, food, or lodges was not.