Small but powerful

I was surprised this week at the amount of largescale conflict between the plains indians and the government. Obviously I knew that there had been conflicts but the amount of different conflicts and the degree to which they rose surprised me. I supposed I assumed that the smaller bands or groups would submit themselves to the will of the government more easily than the larger groups of the East. Of course both of them fought for the most part but when Tai showed the map with all the "wars" and "massacres" in the Midwest there were a lot more than I expected. This actually brings me to my question for the week which is a bit unrelated to the actual topics of the class and more on the topic of the meanings of words. The words used to describe the different conflicts such as massacre and war, I'm wondering how you define one from the other. Is it loss of life on one side or the other? I'm also questioning how the words came to be used. Were they simply propanganda for one side or the other to express their beliefs and passions? Who gets to decide whether something is a massacre, war or some other type of conflict and are these words biased in themselves one way or the other?