Oglala Lakota Chief Red Cloud by William R. Sanford

Author:William R. Sanford [Sanford, William R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4645-1166-0
Publisher: Enslow Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2013-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

chapter 7

A Sioux Victory

Image Credit: Library of Congress

This photograph shows General Sherman and members of the Peace Commission meeting with Cheyenne and Arapaho Indian leaders at Fort Laramie in Wyoming in May 1868.

President Andrew Johnson did not want further fighting. As a result, General William T. Sherman prepared to abandon the forts. He made sure Red Cloud knew of his choice. In August 1868, freighters loaded a wagon train of goods from the forts. Nearby, Red Cloud watched peacefully. When the freight train left Fort C. F. Smith, Red Cloud’s warriors entered the fort. Carrying firebrands, they moved from building to building, setting them ablaze. Again at Fort Phil Kearny, they applied torches to everything burnable. Soon the forts that cost the soldiers so many lives were smoking ashes.

The army had abandoned the forts. Still, Red Cloud was in no hurry to sign a peace treaty. He and his warriors spent the next two months hunting. The Sioux needed a large meat supply for the coming winter. On November 4, Red Cloud appeared at Fort Laramie. He brought with him 125 warriors. At the meeting, Red Cloud asked the army for new guns. His old enemies, the Crows, had the new rifles. But the army would only give them to tribes that had signed the peace treaty. Red Cloud said that the cause of his war was now removed. He washed his hands with the dust of the floor. Then he made an “X” beside his name.

The other chiefs rose and shook hands with the fort’s officers. Red Cloud remained seated. He gave them only the ends of his fingers to shake. It was clear that Red Cloud did not understand the government’s Indian policy. He did not know that the treaty called for his people to move onto a reservation. Red Cloud did not allow anyone to explain the peace treaty to him. He said that he “had learned from others all he cared to know about that.”1

The treaty promised to allow the Sioux to keep most of the Dakota Territory. The area covered all present-day South Dakota west of the Missouri River. The Black Hills were to be kept by the Sioux for as long “as the grass shall grow and the waters shall flow.”2 Within this territory, agencies would serve all the Sioux bands. Whites were banned from this land forever.

In the spring of 1869, Red Cloud arrived at Fort Laramie to trade. With him came a thousand warriors. The agent told him the Sioux must go to Fort Randall to trade. That fort was three hundred miles away. Red Cloud refused. He said the bluecoats had agreed to his trading at Fort Laramie when he signed the treaty.

The next year the commissioner of Indian Affairs asked Red Cloud to come to Washington, D.C. In May Red Cloud and fifteen Oglala began their trip. It took five days riding on their old enemy, the railroad train. Red Cloud found the noise in the cities terrifying. The whites were as numerous as grasshoppers.

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