***this echoes the Sand Creek Massacre ***
I used to believe this till I found other info on it. The tribe had been raiding and killing all along the Front Range of Colorado, had two or three members who had joined and fought in the Confederate Army in Missouri, Arkansas, and Mississippi who then returned to the tribe and continued the fight against the Union from there by leading the tribe in raids on farms and towns.
When the weather got too cold for raiding they then wanted to make peace, get fed on government rations so they could go raiding again the next year when the grass got tall enough to support a war pony.
Chivington said that after the raid they found fresh scalps of men women and children in the camp.
This info is ignored by the press even today.
A few years later, this same tribe, supposedly peaceable, was raiding through out central Kansas. Custer followed their trail in the snow from Kansas back to the Washita, which was NOT their reservation at that time.
For the last two centuries, the Pawnee had successfully served as a buffer between the agressive Siouxian tribes to the north and the even more agressive Comanche tribes to the south. But the government rations and winter assistance to their once weaker enemies to the west tipped the balance against the Pawnee. There is a reason that the Pawnee often served as cavalry scouts and that reason was twofold: (a)depravations from neighboring tribes; (b)decent, if not warm, relations from the local white settlers who regularly trade with them.
FWIW, some of the Siouxian tribest to the north were equally friendly with the white man and one of them even adopted my 2X great grandfather and enticed him to leave a wagon train. A white boy in the tribe served the purpose of convincing a passing army patrol (or wagon train) that the tribe was friendly.