It was about destroying the conditions under which people could live as themselves.

The distinction matters because it affects how we understand what was lost.

The lives that were preserved when the families escaped the canyon were not preserved in their previous form.

The life that had existed before Palo Duro — the free-ranging, horse-mounted, buffalo-hunting life of the Southern Plains — was not restored when the families survived.

It was gone, because the horses were shot and the food was burned and the lodges were ash.

The low death toll at Palo Duro Canyon is, in one sense, evidence of limited lethal violence.