Transcript of Elden Lawrence interview.

"To me war came as a result of people being reduced to their most basic instincts and deciding that the only way to go about this was to kill each other off. We are done negotiating, we are done talking; they won’t listen, we won’t listen; they don’t see our way, we don’t see their way. And I think that the conclusion is that we don’t have any other choice and we have to do this. And so I think it’s an act of futility, that even though you can see the outcomes, you’re going to do it anyway, because they think they don’t have any choice. That was Little Crow’s final decision, when he came to his final decision he talked about how it was going to end up. He told them they were going to be killed off. And he said, 'You people are just like young kids, you’re like dogs barking at the moon, at the hot moon.' And he said, 'They’re going to come and you’re going to all die.' And then when they had called him a coward, of course that’s that traditional value; you violate that traditional value and something is going to happen. And with him, he said, 'I’ll die with you. Because I’m not a coward.' And so he went against all of his logical conclusions and decided that he would go to war and that he would probably die. And so I think that’s part of [the war]. I think that’s the major part of it."