by Drury, Bob
Prior to the purchase of Fort Laramie what little policing was called for across the uncharted western territories was carried out by a small battalion of Missouri mounted volunteers who were stationed at Fort Kearney in the Nebraska Territory, 400 miles east of the Wyoming border. With the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in California in 1848, however, what had begun as a trickle swelled to a torrent. In 1850 alone an estimated 55,000 California-bound forty-niners and Mormons seeking refuge in Utah formed a nearly endless chain of wagons trespassing across Indian lands. They killed buffalo, fouled scarce water holes, denuded pasturage, and, most distressingly, spread diseases such as cholera, “the killing bile scourge,” from which the Indians had no immunity.
This increased traffic resulted in so many Indian attacks that by 1851 westward travelers were literally passing the skulls and bones of their predecessors. In a diary entry, one teenage girl describes burying her murdered father on the banks of the Green River in a coffin dug out of the trunk of a western river birch. “But next year emigrants found his bleaching bones, as the Indians had disinterred the remains.” A conservative estimate of trailside deaths for 1850 alone is 5,000, meaning that among the optimistic souls departing St. Louis to start a new and better life, one in eleven never made it past the Rockies. Such numbers drew Washington’s attention, and the government found it necessary to reach out to the tribes, dominated by the Sioux, to come to some agreement regarding right of passage, for by the mid-nineteenth century the Sioux’s jurisdiction and power were spreading like an oil slick across the Northern Plains.
In hindsight it seems inevitable that the most feared tribe in the territory would soon enough bump up against the continent’s other burgeoning empire, the United States. The Western Sioux, however, had little comprehension of the enormous number of whites living east of the Mississippi, and considered themselves on an equal footing. This would soon enough change, but for now the Indian agent Thomas Fitzpatrick spent the summer crisscrossing the Plains from the Arkansas to the Yellowstone, spreading word of a grand treaty council, to be held near Fort Laramie in September, that would bring peace to the country once and for all.
It was not an easy sell. The western tribes had spent the better part of five decades raiding and fighting one another, and their running battles and blood feuds had altered the mosaic of the land. Rees hated Sioux, Sioux hated Shoshones, Shoshones hated Cheyenne, Cheyenne hated Pawnee. Almost everyone hated the Crows. Now they were being asked to suspend that history, to sit together and pass the pipe, to work out boundary agreements set by strange intruders from the East who spoke to them as if they were children. But Fitzpatrick, a former trapper and mountain man familiar with Native customs and mores, was respected among the clans. A tall, lank Irishman with a halo of thick, prematurely white hair, Fitzpatrick was an anomaly on the prairie: the intense Roman Catholic education he had received in County Cavan had made him something of a man of letters. But if the whites were impressed with his prose, it was his fighting ability that caught the Indians’ attention. Called “Broken Hand” by nearly all the tribes, he had earned the sobriquet in a running battle with the Blackfeet during which he’d plunged his horse off a forty-foot cliff into the Yellowstone, shattered his left wrist when his rifle misfired, and still managed to kill several of his pursuers.
The Indians would listen to such a fighter—it was reported that shaking Fitzpatrick’s good right hand was like grabbing a hickory stick wrapped in sandpaper—and in time he persuaded nearly every Head Man to at least hear out the government’s plan. The Pawnee, by now living in mortal fear of the Sioux, were the only major tribe that refused to participate. The fact that Fitzpatrick also let it be known that he was in possession of $100,000 allotted by the U.S. Congress to procure gifts for any band willing to attend the council surely complemented his powers of persuasion. An additional enticement was the promised presence of the superintendent of Indian Affairs, Colonel David D. Mitchell, who, like Fitzpatrick, shared a long history with the Indians west of the Mississippi as a fur trapper and trader. Mitchell had served in his present position for a decade, and the Indians knew him and, somewhat, trusted him.
The Sioux were the first to arrive, their Head Men and warriors in full feathered headdresses according to their station and wealth, their vermilion-streaked cheeks a gaudy splash of color in the dusty flats. They were followed by younger braves arrayed in columns, and behind them the women and girls, bedecked in their best beads and shell-pendant earrings, with intricate porcupine quill work adorning their buckskin dresses. The women led the packhorses, which were dragging travois piled high with lodge skins, tepee poles, and small children. Among the Lakota bands was a twenty-year-old Hunkpapa from the Missouri River tribes named Sitting Bull, a fierce and outspoken leader of an elite warrior society, who, though still an obscure figure beyond his own tribe, was already warning against his people’s growing dependence on the white man’s trinkets and beads. Accounts differ, but some say that also present was the eleven-year-old son of an Oglala medicine man, later described by one biographer as “a bashful, girlish looking boy” so pale he was often mistaken for a white captive. His formal name was His Horse Stands In Sight, but he was usually called Pehin Yuhana, “Curly Hair,” for the wavy locks he had inherited from his beautiful Miniconjou mother. He was still five years away from taking his nom de guerre, Crazy Horse. And astride a painted mustang was the most renowned warrior on the High Plains, the thirty-year-old Red Cloud.
At six feet, Red Cloud was tall for a Sioux, if not for most men of his era. His slender face was dominated by a beaked nose and a broad forehead, and the leathery skin around his ravaged brown eyes was prematurely creased, as if by parentheses, with age lines. Fond of accessories such as eagle feathers and ribbons, he carried himself with an erect, regal mien; and at such formal ceremonies his long, coarse black hair was almost always bear-greased and plaited around the wing bone of an eagle to signify elegance and propriety. A good, new rifle usually rested across his saddle pommel. On the whole he projected an aura of quiet dignity with an undercurrent of physical menace.
Red Cloud had been born nearby, just across present-day Wyoming’s border with Nebraska, and he was familiar with the mesas, coulees, and streams surrounding Fort Laramie. His childhood had coincided with the beginnings of the seasonal Oglala migration south from the Black Hills after his people discovered the plentiful buffalo herds roaming the Republican River corridor, and he had helped drive out rival tribes who’d called the land home for generations, particularly the hated Kiowa. His Oglala band, the notorious and feared Bad Faces, was led by a venerable Head Man named Old Smoke, who had over the years become partial to the dry goods on offer at the white man’s trading post—luxuries such as ribbons, combs, and mirrors that insinuated themselves into the Indian lifestyle. What cultural understanding the teenage Red Cloud gleaned from these light-skinned newcomers in their strange garments certainly came from these annual pilgrimages to what was then called Fort John. Now he had returned in quite a different capacity.
By this point in his life Red Cloud had served for almost a decade as the Bad Face blotahunka, a title bestowed on each band’s head warrior. He was a combination of battle leader and police commissioner, and he commanded a select male society of soldiers and marshals known as akicita. Although the whites from the East probably had no idea that such a revered fighter was in their midst, most if not all of the Indians attending the council knew, respected, and feared him. It may be a stretch to say that Red Cloud was personally responsible for the rejection by the Pawnee of the Indian agent Fitzpatrick’s invitation, but perhaps not too great a stretch, as Red Cloud had sent so many Pawnee to the Happy Hunting Ground. He had also slaughtered Crows, disemboweled Shoshones, and scalped Arikara, to the point where he and his Bad Faces were a sort of beacon for Lakota from other bands, who sought him out for the honor of riding and raiding with him. This was fairly unprecedented in Sioux culture. And though he had yet to do battle with wh
ites, it is safe to assume that, given his innate intelligence, leadership, and farsightedness, rather than be intimidated by the 200 Bluecoats parading in their strange squares with modern Hawken rifles and mountain howitzers, Red Cloud was more likely studying this “great medicine.” Again.
Six years earlier Red Cloud had attended another, smaller council on the Laramie Fork convened by the U.S. Army after a war had broken out between rival fur-trapping outfits vying to sell liquor to the Indians. The white man’s “spirituous water,” as the Indians called it, had then flooded the Powder River basin, and resulted in not only a flurry of attacks on emigrant wagon trains but an alarming series of deadly brawls among the Lakota themselves. The Army did not care much if Indians killed each other. But the raids on white trains could not be allowed. Colonel Stephen W. Kearny had cleaned out the whiskey sellers and parleyed for peace with the Sioux, although Kearny negotiated predominantly with a separate band called the Brules. This had left the young Red Cloud and his Oglala akicita free to study the martial drills that Kearny’s commanders put their soldiers through every morning in an attempt to intimidate the Indians. And, now, here they were again, this time with a cannon. Red Cloud was glad to have the opportunity. He undoubtedly observed that though one shot from the big gun could tear up the earth and shatter trees, in the time it took the artillerymen to clean the barrel and reload, a small group of warriors on fast horses could wipe them all out.
The Sioux had been followed into Fort Laramie by the Cheyenne and Arapaho, and as the three tribes were allies they staked their lodges together and mingled freely. The whites grew tense on the second day of the council, however, when word reached the fort that the Sioux’s ancient enemies the Shoshones were nearing the post. With each dust cloud that billowed over the horizon an Army bugler was ordered to sound “Boots and Saddles,” and dragoons were put on alert to watch for any insult or affront that might spark a fight. Amazingly, there were no major incidents, although emotions ran high because of an incident that had occurred only days earlier.
It had happened before the trapper Bridger had met the main body of Shoshones to escort them into the camp. A small band of Shoshones, who were also known as the Snakes, had been attacked by the Cheyenne, who took two of their scalps. Though Sioux and Cheyenne leaders at Fort Laramie had given their word to refrain from violence during the treaty negotiations, Bridger remained leery. He was partial to the Snakes, having married into the tribe and lived with them on and off for some twenty years, and after the scalpings he had personally equipped their Head Man and some of his warriors with new rifles and ammunition. Despite the guns, the Shoshones approached the fort cautiously, Bridger and their chief riding a bit out in front of the slow-moving party. A ripple of excitement spread through the other Indian camps as they neared, and Sioux and Cheyenne women who had lost fathers, husbands, or sons in battles with the mountain Indians began to keen the shrill, broken tremolos of their death songs.
The Shoshones were right to be cautious. As the keening reached an eerie peak a young Sioux brave armed with a bow and a quiver of arrows leaped onto his pony and laid on the lash, spurring it to a gallop. He made for the Shoshone Head Man, who had apparently killed his father sometime before. Bridger had warned his corps of interpreters to be on the lookout for just such an act, and before the lone Sioux could get far he was intercepted, yanked from his saddle, and disarmed by a French-Canadian scout. Later that night Bridger held court at the fort’s sutler’s store (as was his wont), suggesting to off-duty soldiers in a language “very graphic and descriptive” that the Sioux were in fact lucky to escape a tussle.
“My chief would’er killed him quick,” the mountain man said of the Sioux brave. “And then the fool Sioux would’er got their backs up, and there wouldn’t have been room to camp ’round here for dead Sioux. You Dragoons acted nice, but you wouldn’t have had no show if the fight had commenced. And I’ll tell you another thing. The Sioux ain’t gonna try it again. They see how the Snakes are armed. I got them guns for them, and they are good ones. Uncle Sam told ’um to come down here and they’d be safe. But they ain’t takin’ his word for it altogether.”
Bridger was right; there would be no more incidents. The next day the entire Indian assembly and the various white commissioners and agents moved about thirty-five miles southeast of the fort to better pasturage near the confluence of the shallow Horse Creek and the North Platte. The Head Men rode with decorum, “while braves and boys dashed about, displaying their horsemanship and working off their surplus energy,” according to one observer. All the while the companies of troopers positioned themselves between the traveling Sioux and Shoshones. The treaty council was scheduled to commence officially the next morning. It must have been a sight. Army engineers had erected a canvas-covered wooden amphitheater in rich bottomland twinkling with fireweed and silver sagebrush, and toward dusk a column of 1,000 Sioux warriors, four abreast on their war ponies, rode in shouting and singing. The confident Sioux then shocked the assemblage by inviting the Shoshones to a great feast of boiled dog. After the meal the two tribes were joined by the Cheyenne and Arapaho, and all danced and sang until dawn. There was no alcohol available; no one was killed.
The next morning tribal elders, conspicuously unarmed and clad in their finest ceremonial bighorn sheepskins and elk hides, approached a giant flagpole that the soldiers had improvised by lashing together the trunks of three lodgepole pines. The whites looked on as each elder in turn performed a sacred song and dance beneath the fluttering Stars and Stripes. The amphitheater had been left open facing east, and after the Head Men took their assigned seats the Indian agent Fitzpatrick had the awkward duty of informing the guests that the supply train hauling presents of tobacco, sugar, coffee, blankets, butcher knives, and bolts of cloth had been delayed leaving St. Louis. (He did not mention that the Army had misplaced the goods on a Missouri River steamboat landing.) There was some grumbling, but all in all the Indians took it well. No bands departed, and a large calumet of red pipestone with a three-foot stem was lighted and passed. As each Indian inhaled the mixture of Plains tobacco and bearberry kinnikinnick, he offered elaborate hand signals designed to pay homage to the Great Spirit and to attest that his heart was free from deceit.
Meanwhile, the vast prairie beyond this semicircle was a riot of activity. Indian women, naturally curious, made ceremonious trading visits to their tribal enemies’ camps, while young braves staged manic horse races, gambled on archery and knife-throwing contests, and flirted with maidens wearing their most colorful toggery. Reported a correspondent for the Missouri Republican in the stilted journalese of the era, “The belles (and there are Indian as well as civilized belles) were out in all they could raise in finery and costume. And the way they flaunted, tittered, talked and made efforts to show off to the best advantage before the bucks justly entitled them to the civilized appellation we have given them.”
Farther off, on the lush grasslands past the hundreds of lodges that had blossomed like prairie chickweed, preteen boys from each tribe stood sentry over herds of mustangs stretching to the horizon. They eyed one another warily, no doubt recognizing ponies stolen over the years. There were perhaps 2 million wild mustangs loose on the Great Plains at the time, and most tribes were adept at rounding them up and breaking them. Yet the Indians had an extraordinary facility for horse theft, so they preferred to increase their herds by means of raids, and this set off a roundelay of horseflesh in which it was not unusual for a remuda to pass from Sioux to Crows to Blackfeet to Nez Percé and back to the Sioux. Often an Indian would end up stealing a horse that had been stolen from him months or even years earlier.
On the morning of September 8, a Monday, the tribal leaders were invited to the center of the circle, where the formal treaty ceremonies were to take place. What followed was “a sight presented of most thrilling interest,” according to B. G. Brown, one of the secretaries at the conference. “Each nation approached with its own peculiar song or demonstration, and
such a combination of rude, wild, and fantastic manners and dresses, never was witnessed. It is not probable that an opportunity will again be presented of seeing so many tribes assembled together displaying all the peculiarities of features, dress, equipment, and horses, and everything else, exhibiting their wild notions of elegance and propriety.”
After this welcoming ceremony, Fitzpatrick strode to the center of the semicircle. He introduced a host of government commissioners, including Colonel Mitchell, who now lived in St. Louis and had traveled partway by steamboat up the Missouri. Framed by the Laramie Mountains scraping the western sky, Mitchell stated his purpose in clipped and concise sentences. Yes, he acknowledged, it was true that the white emigrants passing over Indian lands were thinning the buffalo droves. And, yes, their oxen and cattle were indeed consuming the grasses. For this, he said, the Great Father in Washington was prepared to make annual restitution in the form of hardware, foodstuffs, domestic animals, and agricultural equipment to the Indians, $50,000 worth for each of the next fifty years. But both sides would have to bend, he emphasized, and in exchange for this the tribes must grant future travelers right of passage across the territory as well as allow the U.S. Army to erect way stations along the trails west. Finally, he said, the white man was here to help the Indians delineate, and learn to respect, sovereign territorial boundaries. Civilization was upon them whether they liked it or not, and the constant intertribal slaughter must cease. To that end Mitchell urged each nation to select one great chief with whom the United States could negotiate these terms.
As the interpreters relayed these proposals, it is not difficult to imagine the bemusement with which they were greeted by warriors like Red Cloud, who possessed a judicious sense of what not to believe. Why did these confused whites not just tell the wind to stop blowing, the rivers to cease flowing? Red Cloud, the Sioux, and all the western tribes were accustomed to going where they wanted when they wanted, and taking what they wanted on the strength of their courage and cunning. And though perhaps unaware of the vast number of Americans living far to the east, Red Cloud and the rest were more than familiar with the promises broken over and over by the white leaders in Washington. They had only to look south, where the dispossessed peoples from beyond the Mississippi had been forcibly transported to an official Indian Territory in what was now Oklahoma. These forlorn tribes lived in a squalid homeland of the uprooted, scratching out a living on hard dirt, awaiting government handouts like beggars. Worse, the handouts rarely came. This was the future that the Great Father envisioned for the proud Sioux? These naive whites were funny, if nothing else.