The Heart of Everything That Is: The Untold Story of Red Cloud, An American Legend

by Drury, Bob

  Over the decades Red Cloud made several more trips east to plead for better conditions for his people, especially the next generation of Lakota. Unlike his military forays, his political aims were destined to fail, though not for lack of effort. In a remarkable address to President Rutherford B. Hayes on September 26, 1877, he complained about the dry, dusty, infertile soil of the Pine Ridge Reservation and declared, “God made this earth for us and everybody; there is good streams, good lands; and I wish you to take me to a good place to raise my children. The place where I am now was selected with the advice of the Great Father. I also want schools to enable my children to read and write so they will be as wise as the white man’s children. I have the same feelings as all the white men have for their families; they love their children, as I do mine, and I would like to raise my children well.”

  He was also quick to point out that he had not supported Sitting Bull’s uprising, shrewdly distancing himself from the Custer massacre. But this sop to the Americans did not sit well with the more militant members of his tribe, and accusations persist to this day that he had a hidden hand in the death of his onetime protégé Crazy Horse. Nonetheless as the years passed Red Cloud remained a respected if increasingly distant figure on the Pine Ridge Reservation. His children had children, and his oldest son, Jack, would succeed him as the tribe’s Head Man. (Jack Red Cloud would in turn be succeeded by his son James; his son, Chief Oliver Red Cloud, died at ninety-three on July 4, 2013, 110 years to the day after his great-grandfather stepped down as chief.) Red Cloud and Pretty Owl lived quietly, though from time to time he would still advocate on behalf of the Lakota and protest against intrusions in the Black Hills and conditions on the reservation. His last journey to Washington, D.C., was in 1897.

  On July 4, 1903, the eighty-two-year-old Red Cloud, nearly blind, made his final public address to a gathering of Lakota. “My sun is set,” he said. “My day is done. Darkness is stealing over me. Before I lie down to rise no more, I will speak to my people. Hear me, my friends, for it is not the time for me to tell you a lie. The Great Spirit made us, the Indians, and gave us this land we live in. He gave us the buffalo, the antelope, and the deer for food and clothing. We moved our hunting grounds from the Minnesota to the Platte and from the Mississippi to the great mountains. No one put bounds on us. We were free as the winds, and like the eagle, heard no man’s commands.”

  The white men had changed all that. They were too numerous and too powerful, and their arrival marked the passing of an era as surely as the disappearance of the buffalo. “Shadows are long and dark before me,” Red Cloud concluded. “I shall soon lie down to rise no more. While my spirit is with my body the smoke of my breath shall be towards the Sun, for he knows all things and knows that I am still true to him.”

  On December 10, 1909, Red Cloud died peacefully in his sleep at the age of eighty-eight. His death prompted headlines around the country. In a lengthy appreciation, the New York Times noted, “When Red Cloud fought the whites he did so to the best of his ability. But when he signed the first peace paper he buried his tomahawk and this peace pact was never broken.” It was, of course, broken many times—by the U.S. government.

  Red Cloud’s grave is in a cemetery atop a hill on the Pine Ridge Reservation, a short walk from the Red Cloud Heritage Center. From there, on a clear day, you can almost see the sacred Paha Sapa.

  • • •

  A frontier fort was named after William Judd Fetterman. There was no such honor for Henry Beebee Carrington, yet he persevered. In July 1908, for the first time since the Battle of the Hundred-in-the-Hands forty-two years earlier, Carrington returned to the site of the outpost he had painstakingly constructed on the desolate plateau in northwest Wyoming. Only the outline of its foundation remained. The few men and women still living who had occupied Fort Phil Kearny had been invited to mark the Independence Day weekend by visiting the rocky knoll in the Peno Creek Valley where Fetterman had fallen and where a monument was to be erected consecrating the battle. Today the stone marker rises from the yellow sweet clover and the purple Canada thistle only a few yards from a short section of the Bozeman Trail still rutted from wagon wheels; most of the rest of the old trail has been paved over for highways and county roads, plowed under by dryland farmers, or set aside as open grazing land.

  On that day in 1908, Carrington, who was eighty-four, wore his blue colonel’s uniform and was accompanied by his wife, the former Frances Grummond. Margaret Carrington had died, probably from tuberculosis, in 1870. Her husband was out of uniform by then, having accepted a position as a professor of military science at Wabash College in Indiana. Meanwhile Frances Grummond had returned to her hometown, Franklin, Tennessee, where she buried her husband, George. When she tried to collect her husband’s military death benefits she discovered for the first time that George Grummond had another wife. When Frances learned of Margaret’s death, she wrote a note of condolence to Henry. The two continued to exchange letters, a romance bloomed, and they were married in 1871.

  With Frances at his side Carrington continued to vigorously reject contentions that he bore responsibility for the Fetterman Massacre. His efforts included revisions of the ensuing six editions of Margaret’s memoir, Absaraka: Home of the Crows, which was published in 1868. When Frances’s own book was published in 1910, Fetterman’s reputation was further sullied. (Fetterman’s good friend William Bisbee, who retired in 1903 as a brigadier general, was one of the few who defended him, in his own book.) Those attending the 1908 reunion were surprised by the vigor of the old soldier as he delivered an extemporaneous, hour-long speech that once more defended his actions of half a lifetime ago. Like Red Cloud’s final public utterance, this would be Carrington’s last hurrah. The Carringtons returned east, where Frances died in October 1911 at sixty-four. Henry, defiant to the end, died almost a year to the day later in Boston, like Red Cloud at age eighty-eight.

  • • •

  The military historian Peter Maslowski, attending a guest-lecture series at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, was puzzled when a general from the Chinese People’s Army casually mentioned that the United States had fought the longest war in history. America had never fought a Thirty Years’ War, let alone a Hundred Years’ War. What was the visiting general talking about? The answer came with the foreigner’s next breath. He explained that he was referring to America’s nearly 300-year war against its Indians. Much of the world beyond North America considered it to have begun in the early seventeenth century and to have lasted until the late nineteenth.

  “From the perspective of military historians this was a dubious assertion,” Maslowski writes in an essay he contributed to the book Between War and Peace: How America Ends Its Wars. “Few of them viewed the Euro-Americans’ struggle against the indigenous peoples as a single, continuous war of subjugation.”

  After Maslowski digested the idea, however, what he had at first found “implausible” struck him as more and more valid. “And yet the general had a point: Euro-Americans did wage a protracted war to conquer Indian nations in order to acquire their land and its resources.” The proof lies in the figures. In 1866, at the height of Red Cloud’s War, fewer than 2 million whites populated the West; twenty-five years later, with a grid of iron rails crisscrossing the prairie, the number had risen to 8.5 million. Today it is 86 million. Yet whether this was one war or many, the fact remains: the great warrior chief Red Cloud was the only Indian ever able to claim victory over the United States.

  • • •

  In the end, despite his proximity to the new settlers and his many journeys across America, Red Cloud may never really have come to comprehend these whites—their motives, their greed, their insatiable desires. If he could read he might have had his answer, although it is still doubtful that he would have understood. Years later, William H. Bisbee attempted to come to grips with an overriding rhetorical question of that bygone era—for what purpose did the United States fight Red Cloud?

  �
�My only answer could be,” General Bisbee wrote, “we did it for Civilization.”

  This 1821 edition of the annual Sioux Winter Count depicts “a star passed over making a noise,” which probably explains how Red Cloud, born that year, received his name. Courtesy American Museum of Natural History.

  Wyoming’s Fort Laramie, a necessary stopover for wagon trains and other travelers along the Oregon Trail, as illustrated in 1853. Courtesy American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  Jim “Old Gabe” Bridger was the ultimate example of the early 1800s mountain man who blazed many a trail in his lifelong travels. Courtesy American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  The slaughter of buffalo along the Kansas Pacific Railroad line was one just of many examples of the eradication of the animal that Indian tribes depended on for food and clothing across the Great Plains. Courtesy Library of Congress.

  This drawing from the January 24, 1863, edition of Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper depicts the mass hanging of thirty-eight Dakota Sioux a month earlier in Mankato, Minnesota. Courtesy American Antiquarian Society.

  While building his Indian coalition to fight the U.S. Army, Red Cloud was the first Sioux to reach out to leaders of other tribes such as the Northern Cheyenne chiefs Little Wolf and Dull Knife. Courtesy American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  Old-Man-Afraid-Of-His Horses, a senior Oglala Head Man, hoped his son would succeed him but instead saw the warrior chief Red Cloud rise to the leadership role. Courtesy American Hertiage Center, University of Wyoming.

  Spotted Tail, two years younger than Red Cloud, was a Brule Sioux whose fierce and spirited opposition to white expansion across the Plains was broken by a two-year stint in a U.S. federal prison. Courtesy National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

  One of the very first photographs taken of the great Oglala Sioux warrior chief Red Cloud. Courtesy National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

  Young-Man-Afraid-Of-His-Horses, son of Old-Man-Afraid-Of-His-Horses and a grandson of Old Smoke, fought alongside Red Cloud in the 1866–68 war. Courtesy National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

  John Bozeman (pictured here) and John Jacobs blazed the Bozeman Trail, which in its short life provided a passage to Montana for thousands of gold seekers and settlers. Courtesy American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  Civil War hero Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman advocated a war of extermination against the Indians of the Plains during his tenure as commander of the Missouri District, which stretched from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains. Courtesy of the American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  Col. Henry Carrington, a desk-bound recruiter during the Civil War, thought establishing and maintaining forts in Wyoming represented an opportunity for action and distinction. Courtesy Library of Congress.

  The genteel Margaret Carrington stood by her husband’s side step for step across the Plains and became a comforting presence to the few other women living at Fort Phil Kearny. Courtesy American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  An 1867 sketch of Fort Phil Kearny by Lt. Jacob Paulus, as viewed from the south. Courtesy American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  This photograph of a Sioux woman was taken by the ill-fated Ridgway Glover at Fort Laramie in 1866, a few weeks before he rode north to join Col. Carrington’s outpost at Fort Phil Kearny. Courtesy National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

  The bigamist Lt. George Grummond was looking for a fresh and heroic start by joining Col. Carrington’s command in Wyoming. Courtesy Library of Congress.

  Though pregnant, the young Frances Grummond accompanied her husband to his new posting at Fort Phil Kearny. Courtesy American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  Capt. William Judd Fetterman had a distinguished record as a Union officer during the Civil War but found Indian warfare on the Plains—and his commanding officer’s tactics—very confusing and frustrating. Courtesy American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  Capt. Tenedor Ten Eyck was criticized for arriving to the massacre site too late to save Fetterman and his command. Courtesy American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  The boisterous Capt. Fred Brown, who had served with Fetterman in the Civil War, made clear his intent to personally capture or kill Red Cloud. Courtesy American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  John “Portugee” Phillips (left) and Capt. James Powell survived the fighting at Fort Phil Kearny in 1866. Phillips endured an exhausting journey through blizzards and bitter cold to bring word to the world of the Fetterman Massacre. Powell would later become the hero of the Wagon Box Fight. Courtesy American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  Nelson Story’s historic cattle drive from Texas to Montana in 1866, in part the inspiration for Larry McMurtry’s novel Lonesome Dove, included an “escape” from Fort Phil Kearny. Courtesy Montana Historical Society Research Center Photography Archives.

  This illustration of the battle of December 21, 1866, created by the Sioux brave American Horse, depicts U.S. Army soldiers surrounded on Massacre Ridge. Courtesy National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

  Appalled by the Fetterman Massacre, in 1867 the U.S. government sent a peace commission to Fort Laramie to negotiate an end to what became known as “Red Cloud’s War.” Courtesy American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  Even after Red Cloud’s victories, some docile Lakota “chiefs,” confronted by Wyoming’s harsh winters, continued to frequent Fort Laramie to trade for food delivered by U.S. Army supply wagons. Courtesy American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  One of several delegations that Red Cloud (center) led to Washington, D.C., between 1870 and the 1890s, where he met with U.S. government officials, including presidents, to advocate on behalf of the Sioux. Courtesy American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  Sitting Bull, the Hunkpapa Sioux leader, photographed in 1881, refused to travel to the Powder River Country join Red Cloud’s fight against the United States in 1866. Ten years later, however, he and Crazy Horse defeated Gen. George Custer at Little Bighorn. Courtesy Library of Congress.

  Long retired as warriors, American Horse (left) and Red Cloud posed for the photographer John C. H. Grabill on the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1891. Courtesy Library of Congress.

  Henry Carrington and Frances Grummond Carrington were guests of honor at the dedication of the Fetterman monument in 1908 at the site of the former Fort Phil Kearny. Courtesy Wyoming State Archives.

  Red Cloud late in life, uncharacteristically wearing a full headdress. He lived his last years peacefully with his wife, Pretty Owl. Courtesy National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book would not have been possible without the courtesy and expertise of curators, researchers, historians, and all those others who staff the centers where so much information—some of it proving quite difficult to unearth—was found and generously shared with us. In particular, we are grateful to the American Antiquarian Society and Jackie Penny; American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, and Rick Ewig, John Waggener, and Hailey Kaylenne Woodall; American Museum of Natural History and Barry Landua, Kristen Mable, and Mai Reitmeyer; Bozeman Trail Association; Center for Western Studies and Elizabeth Thrond; East Hampton Public Library; Eli Ricker Collection; Fort Phil Kearny State Historic Site and Christopher Morton; John Jermain Memorial Library; Library of Congress and Frederick Plummer and Courtney Pruitt; Montana Historical Society and Rebecca Kohl and Zoe Ann Stoltz; Nebraska State Historical Society and Andrea Faling; Smithsonian Institution and Megan Gambino, Daisy Njoku, and Gina Rappaport; South Dakota Historical Society and Patti Edman; South Dakota State Archives and Matthew Reitzel; Western History Association; The Wyoming Room, Sheridan County Public Library, and Judy Slack; and Wyoming State Archives and Cindy Brown.

  We want to give a special me
ntion to the eminent historian Robert Utley, who kindly agreed to review a draft of this manuscript for omissions and any errors in both judgment and fact. His remarks and guidance were, and are, greatly appreciated. He made our book better.

  Similarly, we send special thank-yous to Mary Anne Red Cloud and the other members of the Red Cloud family, as well as the residents of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and the hardworking staffers at the Red Cloud Heritage Center, for their insights and recollections.

  From the beginning of this project we received enthusiastic support from Jofie Ferrari-Adler, Jonathan Karp, Sarah Nalle, and everyone at Simon & Schuster. We are very grateful to them for it. And however many times we thank Nat Sobel and the crack staff at Sobel-Weber Associates, it is never enough—but here is one more thank you anyway.