Saga of the Sioux

by Dee Brown

  Incidents such as this, together with Red Cloud’s continuing war, brought travel by settlers and other civilians to an end through the Powder River country. The government was determined to protect the route of the Union Pacific Railroad. But even the chief army general William Tecumseh Sherman, called Great Warrior Sherman by the Indians, was beginning to wonder if it might not be advisable to leave the Powder River country to the Indians in exchange for peace along the Platte Valley.

  Late in July 1867, after holding their Sun Dances and medicine-arrow religious ceremonies, the Sioux and Cheyenne decided to wipe out one of the forts on the Bozeman Trail. Red Cloud wanted to attack Fort Phil Kearny, but Dull Knife and Two Moon thought it would be easier to take Fort C. F. Smith because Cheyenne warriors had already killed or captured nearly all the soldiers’ horses there. Finally, after the chiefs could reach no agreement, the Sioux said they would attack Fort Phil Kearny, and the Cheyenne went north to Fort C. F. Smith.

  On August 1, some 500 or 600 Cheyenne warriors caught 30 soldiers and civilians in a hayfield about two miles from Fort C. F. Smith. The defenders were armed with new Springfield repeating rifles, which the Cheyenne had not yet seen. When the warriors charged the soldiers’ log corral, they met such a heavy barrage of rifle fire that only one warrior was able to penetrate the fortifications, and he was killed. The Cheyenne then set ablaze the high dry grass around the corral.

  This was enough for the Cheyenne that day. Many warriors sustained bad wounds from the rapidly firing guns, and about 20 were dead. They started back south to see if the Sioux had had any better luck at Fort Phil Kearny.

  The Sioux had not. After making several fake attacks around the fort, Red Cloud decided to use the decoy trick that had worked so well with Captain Fetterman. Crazy Horse would attack the woodcutters’ camp, and when the soldiers came out of the fort, High Back Bone would swarm down on them with 800 warriors. Crazy Horse and his decoys carried out their assignment perfectly, but for some reason, several hundred warriors rushed out of concealment too soon, warning the soldiers of their presence.

  To salvage something from the fight, Red Cloud turned the attack against the woodcutters, who had taken cover behind a corral of 14 wagon beds reinforced with logs. Several hundred mounted warriors made a circling approach, but these defenders were also armed with Springfields. Faced with rapid and continuous fire from the new weapons, the Sioux quickly pulled their ponies out of range.

  The Indians considered neither the Hayfield nor the Wagon Box battles, as they were later called, a defeat. Although some soldiers may have thought of the fights as victories, the United States government did not. Only a few weeks later, General Sherman himself was traveling westward with a new peace council. This time the military authorities were determined to end Red Cloud’s war by any means short of surrender.

  In the late summer of 1867, Spotted Tail received a message from Nathaniel Taylor, the commissioner responsible for negotiating a treaty with the warring tribes. The Brulés had been roaming peacefully below the Platte, and the commissioner asked Spotted Tail to inform as many Plains chiefs as possible that ammunition would be issued to all friendly Indians sometime during the Drying Grass Moon (September). The chiefs were to assemble at the end of the Union Pacific Railroad track, which was then in western Nebraska. Great Warrior Sherman and six new peace commissioners would come there on the Iron Horse to parley with the chiefs and discuss how to end Red Cloud’s war.

  Spotted Tail sent for Red Cloud, but the Oglala chief again declined, sending Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses to represent him. Though not a chief, the respected Oglala warrior Pawnee Killer agreed to go. The Cheyenne chief Turkey Leg said he would attend. The two Brulé chiefs, Swift Bear and Standing Elk, as well as Big Mouth and other Laramie Loafers also made the trip. Several other Brulé chiefs responded to the invitation as well.

  On September 19, a shiny railroad car arrived at Platte City station, and Great Warrior Sherman, Commissioner Taylor, Major General William S. Harney, known to the Indians as White Whiskers Harney, Black Whiskers Sanborn, and others stepped out.

  Commissioner Taylor began the proceedings. “We are sent out here to inquire and find out what has been the trouble. We want to hear from your own lips your grievances and complaints. My friends, speak fully, speak freely, and speak the whole truth…. ​War is bad, peace is good. We must choose the good and not the bad…. ​I await what you have to say.”

  Spotted Tail replied, “The Great Father has made roads stretching east and west. Those roads are the cause of all our troubles…. ​The country where we live is overrun by whites. All our game is gone. This is the cause of great trouble. I have been a friend of the whites, and am now…. ​If you stop your roads, we can get our game. That Powder River country belongs to the Sioux…. ​My friends, help us; take pity on us.”

  On the following day, Sherman addressed the chiefs, blandly assuring them that he had thought of their words all night and was ready to give a reply. “The Powder River road was built to furnish our men with provisions,” he said. “The Great Father thought that you consented to give permission for that road at Laramie last spring, but it seems that some of the Indians were not there and have gone to war.”

  Subdued laughter from the chiefs may have surprised Sherman, but he went on, his voice taking a harsher tone. “While the Indians continue to make war upon the road, it will not be given up. But if, on examination, at Laramie in November, we find that the road hurts you, we will give it up or pay for it. If you have any claims, present them to us at Laramie.”

  Sherman launched into a discussion of the Indians’ need for land of their own, advised them to give up their dependence upon wild game, and then he dropped a thunderbolt: “We therefore propose to let the whole Sioux nation select their country up the Missouri River, embracing the White Earth and Cheyenne rivers, to have their lands like the white people, forever, and we propose to keep all white men away except such agents and traders as you may choose.”

  General William Tecumseh Sherman, commander in chief of the U.S. Army during the Sioux wars. Sherman was born and raised in Ohio, not far from where the Shawnee chief Tecumseh was born. Sherman’s father was a great admirer of Tecumseh and, out of respect for the Shawnee leader, made Tecumseh his son’s middle name. [LOC, DIG-cwpbh-00593]

  As these words were translated, the Indians expressed surprise. So this was what the new commissioners wanted them to do—pack up and move far away to the Missouri River! For years the Teton Sioux had been following wild game westward; why should they go back to the Missouri to starve? Why could they not live in peace where game could still be found? Had the greedy eyes of the white men already chosen these bountiful lands for their own?

  During the remainder of the discussions, the Indians were uneasy. Swift Bear and Pawnee Killer made friendly speeches in which they asked for ammunition, but the meeting ended in an uproar when Great Warrior Sherman proposed that only the Brulés should receive ammunition. When Commissioner Taylor and White Whiskers Harney pointed out that all the chiefs had been invited to the council with the promise of hunting ammunition, Sherman withdrew his opposition, and small amounts of ammunition were given to the Indians.

  Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses wasted no time in returning to Red Cloud’s camp on the Powder River. If Red Cloud had had any intention of meeting the new peace commissioners at Laramie during the Moon of Falling Leaves (November), he changed his mind after hearing his representative’s report.

  On November 9, when the commissioners arrived at Fort Laramie, they found only a few Crow chiefs waiting to meet with them. The Crows were friendly, but one of them—Bear Tooth—made a surprising speech in which he condemned all white men for their reckless destruction of wildlife and the natural environment:

  Fathers, your young men have devastated the country and killed my animals, the elk, the deer, the antelope, my buffalo. They do not kill them to eat them; they leave them to rot where they fall. Fathers, if I went into your coun
try to kill your animals, what would you say? Should I not be wrong, and would you not make war on me?

  Nature’s Cattle, an 1899 illustration of buffalo and antelope by Charles M. Russell. Millions of buffalo roamed the prairie for centuries. Between 1868 and 1881, white hunters killed about 31 million. By 1890, buffalo were almost extinct. [LOC, USZ62-115203]

  A few days after the commissioners’ meeting with the Crows, messengers arrived from Red Cloud. He would come to Laramie to talk peace, he informed the commissioners, as soon as the soldiers withdrew from the forts on the Powder River road. The war, he repeated, was being fought for one purpose—to save the valley of the Powder, the only hunting ground left his nation, from intrusion by white men.

  For the third time in two years, a peace commission had failed. Before the commissioners returned to Washington, however, they sent Red Cloud a shipment of goods with another plea to come to Laramie as soon as the winter snows melted in the spring. Red Cloud politely replied that he had received the peace offering and that he would come to Laramie as soon as the soldiers left his country.

  In the spring of 1868, Great Warrior Sherman and the same peace commission returned to Fort Laramie. This time they had firm orders from an impatient government to abandon the forts on the Powder River road and obtain a peace treaty with Red Cloud. This time they sent a special agent from the Office of Indian Affairs to personally invite the Oglala leader to a peace signing. Red Cloud told the agent he would need about 10 days to consult with his allies and would probably come to Laramie during May, the Moon When the Ponies Shed.

  Only a few days after the agent returned to Laramie, however, a message arrived from Red Cloud: “We are on the mountains looking down on the soldiers and the forts. When we see the soldiers moving away and the forts abandoned, then I will come down and talk.”

  This was all very humiliating to Great Warrior Sherman and the commissioners. They managed to obtain the signatures of a few minor chiefs who came in for presents, but as the days passed, the frustrated commissioners quietly departed one by one for the East. By late spring, only Black Whiskers Sanborn and White Whiskers Harney were left to negotiate. Red Cloud and his allies remained on the Powder through the summer, keeping a close watch on the forts and the road to Montana.

  At last the reluctant War Department issued orders for the abandonment of the Powder River forts. On July 29, the troops at Fort C. F. Smith packed their gear and started marching southward. Early the next morning, Red Cloud led a band of celebrating warriors into the post, and they set fire to every building. Fort Phil Kearny was abandoned a month later, and the honor of burning it was given to the Cheyenne under Little Wolf. A few days after that, the last soldier departed from Fort Reno, and the Powder River road was officially closed.

  After two years of resistance, Red Cloud had won his war. For a few more weeks, he kept the treaty makers waiting, and then on November 6, surrounded by an escort of triumphant warriors, he came riding into Fort Laramie. Now a conquering hero, he would sign the treaty: “From this day forward all war between the parties to this agreement shall forever cease. The government of the United States desires peace, and its honor is hereby pledged to keep it. The Indians desire peace, and they now pledge their honor to maintain it.”

  That peace, and the respect for Sioux and Cheyenne land, would last only four years.

  EIGHT

  Breaking the treaty of fort Laramie

  These promises have not been kept…. ​ All the words have proved to be false.

  —SPOTTED TAIL OF THE BRULÉ SIOUX

  In the Sioux Treaty of 1868, also known as the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868) to distinguish it from another treaty signed at Fort Laramie in 1851, the United States government set aside the following land for the Sioux: most of Dakota Territory south and west of the Missouri River, the Powder River country of eastern Wyoming Territory and southeastern Montana Territory, and a large section of northwest Nebraska. This land was basically divided into two types: open wilderness, which included Paha Sapa, the Black Hills, and reservations or agencies, which were scattered throughout the treaty land. The largest of these was called the Great Sioux Reservation. Smaller reservations were created for chiefs who had signed the treaty. Red Cloud and Spotted Tail were each given reservations in northwestern Nebraska. Other reservations were located along the western bank of the Missouri River.

  According to the treaty, all Sioux who agreed to live on reservations in this area would receive money and supplies from the government on a regular basis. They would also be given instructors and receive other assistance to help them learn the ways of the white man. Deciding whether to move to the reservations or not was difficult for the Sioux peoples. They knew it meant abandoning their traditional way of life. Red Cloud, Spotted Tail, and other older chiefs saw that the only way for their people to survive was to move to the reservation. But younger chiefs who had not signed the treaty, including Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, rejected reservation life and chose to live and hunt in the wilderness areas. The rebellious independence of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse made them heroes among the young warriors who had followed their parents to the reservation. They resented the way the white men were treating them. It was only a matter of time until that resentment led to another war.

  Before it was later divided into smaller reservations, the Great Sioux Reservation occupied what is now the western half of South Dakota and the southwestern quarter of North Dakota.

  Not long after Red Cloud and Spotted Tail and their people settled on their reservations, rumors began to fly among the white settlements that immense amounts of gold were hidden in Paha Sapa, the Black Hills.

  Paha Sapa was the center of the world for the Sioux, the place of gods and holy mountains, where warriors went to speak with the Great Spirit and await visions. In the 1868 treaty, the United States gave the Sioux the Black Hills forever and made it forbidden for white men to trespass. But four years after the treaty had been signed, white miners were violating the treaty, searching the rocky passes and clear streams of Paha Sapa for the yellow metal that drove white men crazy. When Indians found these crazy white men in their sacred hills, they killed them or chased them out. By 1874 there was such a mad clamor from gold-hungry Americans that the army was ordered to explore the Black Hills. The United States government did not bother to obtain consent from the Indians before starting on this invasion, although the treaty of 1868 prohibited white men from entering without the Indians’ permission.

  This 1875 Harper’s Weekly woodcut illustration shows agents at Red Cloud’s reservation distributing rations and goods to the Sioux. [LOC, USZ62-38020]

  During the Moon of the Red Cherries (July), more than 1,000 mounted soldiers marched across the Plains from Fort Abraham Lincoln to the Black Hills. They were the Seventh Cavalry, and at their head rode Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer. The Sioux called him Pahuska, or Long Hair.

  When Red Cloud heard about Long Hair’s expedition, he and the chiefs of the Cheyenne, Arapaho, and other Sioux tribes protested. The anger of the Indians was strong enough that the Great Father, President Ulysses S. Grant, announced his determination “to prevent all invasion of this country by intruders so long as by law and treaty it is secured to the Indians.”

  But when Custer reported that the hills were filled with gold “from the grass roots down,” parties of white men began forming like summer locusts, crazy to begin panning and digging. The trail that Custer’s supply wagons had cut into the heart of Paha Sapa soon became known as the Thieves’ Road.

  George Armstrong Custe r in a photo taken in 1865, when he was about 25 years old. [LOC, DIG-cwpgb-05341]

  In the autumn following Custer’s expedition, the Sioux who had been hunting in the north began returning to the Red Cloud agency. They were angry as hornets over the invasion of Paha Sapa. Some talked of forming a war party to go after the miners who were pouring into the hills. Red Cloud listened to the talk, but advised the young men to be patient. H
e was sure the Great Father would keep his promise and send soldiers to drive out the miners. Though still angry, the young warriors calmed down. Then in October, J. J. Saville, the government agent at Red Cloud’s reservation, did something foolish that wrecked Red Cloud’s diplomacy and caused the young warriors to reject the old chief’s leadership.

  Red Cloud and his followers had settled near Camp Robinson (in 1878 it would be named Fort Robinson) in the far northwest corner of Nebraska, about 20 miles south of the Dakota Territory border. In addition to the soldiers’ fort, the government had constructed a number of homes and buildings close to Red Cloud’s settlement, including an agency warehouse used to store supplies and goods for Red Cloud’s people. This warehouse, along with some other government buildings, was surrounded by a stockade. Saville told some white workers to begin setting up a flagpole so that the United States flag could fly over the stockade. The Indians protested. Long Hair Custer had flown flags in his camps across the Black Hills; they wanted no flags or anything else in their agency to remind them of soldiers. Saville ignored the protests. When workers started digging a hole for the flagpole, a band of young warriors came with axes and began chopping the pole to pieces. Saville ordered them to stop, but they paid no attention. The agent went to Red Cloud’s office nearby and begged him to stop the warriors. Red Cloud refused.

  Furious, Saville brought in cavalry troops. Tensions quickly rose, and though some warriors tried to burn down the stockade, the older chiefs Red Dog and Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses (now known as Old-Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses because his son had taken the name Young-Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses) managed to end the demonstration before anyone was hurt or killed.