Opinions differ on whether Black Kettle was peaceable or not. Most say he was. The tracks of the war party (Custer called it that in his report) the 7th discovered indeed led to his village. Black Kettle may have meant to move his camp closer to the other camps down river, but never got the chance. The site of the battle is near Cheyenne, OK, about 45 miles north of I-40 from the Sayre exit. BTW, the site of the Sand Creek massacre in eastern Colorado, for the most part unconfirmed to history for a century, has been located and
confirmed. There was a recent archaeological dig there by Doug Scott (the archaelogist who first worked the Custer Battlefield). I have Scott's book on the dig. Interesting read...
"The tracks of the war party (Custer called it that in his report) the 7th discovered indeed led to his village..." I had always wondered "how did they distinguish a 'war party' from a non-war party based on tracks in the snow?" until I read a book by a trooped named Barnitz who was severely wounded at the Washita (actually he eventually died from complications of that wound - it just took 30 years to kill him). Barnitz claimed the distinction was made because there were no dog tracks. Did indians have dogs with them on hunting parties? Beats me, you'll have to ask a Crow scout, but that was apparently the key determining factor.