During his life, Red Cloud played a critical role in resisting white expansionism. Unfortunately,
though, the story of the American West is a story with few happy endings.
These are the tragic details about Red Cloud.
Maȟpíya Lúta, also known as Red Cloud, was born around May 1821,
near where the North and South Platte Rivers unite in what was considered
Nebraska Territory. His father was a Brulé Lakota and his mother was an Oglala Lakota.
Together they belonged to a subdivision of the Oglala known as the Bad Face band.
There are conflicting accounts about Red Cloud's early life. According to Red Cloud:
Photographs of a Lakota Chief, Red Cloud's father died of alcoholism when Red Cloud was young,
and as a result, he was brought up by his mother's brother,
known as Old Chief Smoke. But according to other accounts, Red Cloud's father survived
until Red Cloud was 28 and died during a disagreement with Bear Bull, an Oglala leader.
One of the earliest events in Red Cloud's life is relatively well-documented, though.
According to the Autobiography of Red Cloud, when Red Cloud was 16 he joined a raid
party against the Pawnee, who had recently slain his cousin. The raid was successful,
and Red Cloud had soon made a name for himself after another successful ambush against the Crows.
By 1850, Red Cloud had married Pretty Owl, also known as Lean Woman and Mary Good Road, and they
remained together until his death in 1909. She later died in 1940 at the assumed age of 104.
Before the 1860s, the Sioux had relatively few contacts with white people. But once gold
was discovered on their land, white people started flocking across the
country. According to Representative Americans: The Civil War Generation,
the South Platte River valley had seen an earlier gold rush in 1859,
and once gold was found in Montana in 1862, the Bozeman Trail was promptly established.
According to Northern Plains Reservation Aid, the Bozeman Trail was a pre-established trail
that had been used for thousands of years by different Native groups in North America.
Such roads were incredibly common across the North American landscape prior to colonization,
and according to An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States,
the developed system of roads worked to the advantage of the European colonists. The
Bozeman Trail also connected to the Oregon Trail, bringing hordes of miners and settlers right into
the heart of the buffalo feeding grounds that were so vital to the Native tribes of the Great Plains.
As white settlers started moving down the trail, forts were built along the Bozeman
Trail by the U.S. Army to protect the settlers, with little concern for the Native inhabitants.
Indeed, since the 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty had established the area as a protected
hunting land for the Native tribes, the forts were clearly a treaty violation.
In 1865, Red Cloud began leading a series of attacks against the white men on the Bozeman
Trail that lasted until 1868. Known as Red Cloud's War, Red Cloud united the Lakota Sioux,
Northern Arapaho, and Northern Cheyenne against white settlers, miners, and soldiers.
During the war, the U.S. Army suffered one of their biggest military disasters at the
Battle of the Hundred-in-the-Hands on December 21, 1866. After Captain William Fetterman had
"boasted" that he could easily pass through the Sioux Nation, Red Cloud planned an ambush.
All 81 American soldiers ended up dead. The fiasco led the United States government to invite Red
Cloud - along with more than a hundred Native leaders - to discuss terms for a new treaty.
The negotiations lasted for two years. In the end, though, Red Cloud negotiated the Fort Laramie
Treaty of 1868, which required the U.S. government to abandon several forts along the Bozeman Trail.
It also established the Great Sioux Reservation and gave the Lakota possession over the
western half of South Dakota, as well as parts of Wyoming and Montana territory.
It was a major victory for Red Cloud. But it wouldn't be long
before the United States government started reneging on their obligations.
In 1870, Red Cloud traveled to meet with President Ulysses S. Grant in Washington,
D.C., which led to the establishment of the Red Cloud Agency, a reservation in Nebraska
territory for his tribe. However, it wasn't long before the United States government moved
the Oglala Lakota while simultaneously carving up the Great Sioux Reservation.
After General Custer found gold in the Black Hills in 1874,
miners started flooding into Sioux territory once more. In 1875, Red Cloud traveled to Washington,
D.C. with other Native leaders, once again to request that the existing treaties be honored.
But Congress tried negotiating a relocation of the Sioux instead.
The Lakota leaders, including Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, refused this new arrangement,
which led to the Great Sioux War of 1876, and the Battle of Little Big Horn,
also known as Custer's Last Stand. Red Cloud was notably absent from the war, but his attempts to
find a middle path backfired. Because of his absence, many Oglala considered him a traitor,
while the American government accused him of conspiring with the other Native leaders anyway.
After being established in 1871, the Red Cloud Agency was moved four times
before the end of the decade, as the U.S. government slowly chipped away
at the land that had been promised to Red Cloud and the other Native leaders.
The loss of the Black Hills in 1876 was immeasurable, and continues to be a point
of contention between the Sioux and the United States government to this day. In the 1980s,
the Supreme Court offered over $100 million to the Sioux as compensation for the Black Hills, but the
Sioux refused the money, stating that, quote, "the payment is invalid because the land was never for
sale and accepting the funds would be tantamount to a sales transaction." The settlement remains
in a trust and is now valued at over $1.3 billion, which the tribe refuses to accept.
"That confiscation is illegal and that the tribes
must have some of their ancestral lands returned to them."
When war didn't work, legislation was also used.
The Sioux Bill of 1889 carved the reservation into even smaller pieces,
allowing white people to claim roughly nine million acres of land that had been reserved
for the Native people - or almost half of the reservation's original 20 million acres.
On the reservation, Red Cloud quickly found that the promises made by the United States
government were hollow. But at the same time, he ended up recruiting a most unlikely ally.
According to Red Cloud and the Sioux Problem, in 1874, Red Cloud had made the acquaintance of
Othniel C. Marsh, a notorious fossil hunter, who was excavating in the Dakota badlands.
Marsh had to persuade Red Cloud that he was looking for fossils and not gold,
but in the end they became friends and allies.
Red Cloud gave Marsh some coffee, tobacco, sugar, and flour to show the abysmal quality of rations
that were being distributed by the United States government, which led Marsh to file
a complaint with the Board of Indian Commissioners in addition to making a public statement about how
the Sioux were being treated. In 1883, Red Cloud paid Marsh a visit in New Haven, Connecticut,
and there's even a record of the two of them having kept up a correspondence.
It's said that Red Cloud referred to Marsh as "Big Bone Chief."
Although it's claimed that Red Cloud later stated that the samples he gave
Marsh weren't representative, the investigation did actually lead the
government into changing their contractors for flour and pork. They also replaced Dr.
John J. Saville, the reservation agent at the time - for better or worse.
In the 1880s, a white man by the name of Dr. Valentine McGillycuddy was assigned as the new
reservation agent for the Oglala Lakota. Though McGillycuddy had been a friend of Crazy Horse,
he and Red Cloud clashed often. At the core of their dispute was the
broader issue of assimilation, as the United States government
enacted policies that forcefully stripped Native peoples of their cultural identity.
Though he lobbied the government for better conditions and treatment of Native people,
McGillycuddy ultimately saw himself as tasked with bringing civilization to the Oglala people,
while Red Cloud fought to preserve their heritage, language, and culture. In particular, Red Cloud
objected to Native children being sent away to boarding schools that provided an education,
but also indoctrinated Native youth with American ideals.
In 1880, McGillycuddy gathered a council of Sioux together and demanded that they
renounce Red Cloud as their leader in an attempt to undermine Red Cloud's authority.
At the same time, Red Cloud repeatedly criticized McGillycuddy over his
mismanagement of government supplies and food meant for the reservation.
And according to The Plains Sioux and U.S. Colonialism from Lewis and Clark to Wounded Knee,
other grievances included threats of withholding rations and suppression of the Sun Dance.
The government, it turned out, had their own issues with McGillycuddy,
as they thought he was too sympathetic to the Native causes. He was ultimately removed.
In 1890, a new religious movement swept through the Native people.
Called the Ghost Dance, practitioners believed that the proper execution of
the dance ritual would call the spirits of the dead to the living
and bring about a new era of peace and prosperity for all Native peoples - in part by ending white
expansion into the West. To Ghost Dancers, the movement symbolized the hope of a better future.
To the United States government, it was a dangerous rallying point for insurrection.
And once again, Red Cloud was caught in the middle.
Even though Red Cloud himself did not participate in the dance, his son did,
leading some in the government to accuse Red Cloud of instigating dissention.
Red Cloud responded by trying to break up the Ghost Dance. On December 10th, 1890,
Red Cloud wrote in a letter to Thomas A. Bland of the National Indian Defense Association,
"I haven't been to see the dancing. I will try to stop it. Those Indians are fools. The winter
weather will stop it, I think. Anyway, it will be over by spring. I don't think there will be
any trouble. They say that I have been in the dance. That is not right. I have never seen it."
Some historians believe that Red Cloud's stance was political rather than religious,
and that he hoped to avoid violence by stopping the Ghost Dance.
Sadly, his instincts proved to be all too correct. On December 15, just five days after
he wrote the letter, his fellow Native leader Sitting Bull was killed by government agents
attempting to break up the Ghost Dance, and on December 29th, U.S. troops killed 153 Lakota,
mostly women and children, at the infamous massacre at Wounded Knee.
During the final years of his life, Red Cloud took on the name "John" and converted to Christianity.
Having become blind by the end of his life, his wife Pretty Owl assisted him
until Red Cloud died at the age of 88 at Pine Ridge Reservation on December 10th, 1909.
According to Biography, Red Cloud outlived most of his contemporary Native leaders.
However, by the end of his life Red Cloud had lost much of his influence,
especially after McGillycuddy was successful in having him deposed as leader.
Still, he had also become one of the most famous Native people in the world,
in large part due to the many photographs of him that were widely distributed.
He posed in dozens of photos, sometimes dressed in his normal clothing, and other times wearing the
costume of the colonizer. Overall, there are at least 128 known photographs of Red Cloud.
The book Red Cloud: Photographs of a Lakota Chief suggests that Red Cloud
used photography as a way to enhance his reputation and thus his political influence,
Before Red Cloud died, he was visited by an anthropologist. Red Cloud lamented the poor
state of affairs. Even though the government had promised to provide food for Native people,
they were forced to beg in order to receive anything, in part because the land they had
been moved to was much less habitable than their traditional lands. He said,
"I wish there was someone to help my poor people when I am gone."
Unfortunately, this hasn't yet happened. Starting in 2016, the Lakota Oyate and the Dakota
Oyate of the Standing Rock Reservation began protesting the construction of an oil pipeline,
with many claiming that the pipeline was a treaty violation if it passed through Native land,
in addition to citing the various health risks associated with living near the pipeline.
The protests were once again met with violence from local and federal government, which deployed
the National Guard to disperse protestors. Private security firms even unleashed attack dogs.
"Our ancestors, they went through a terrible time in their lifetime. And right now,
they can't even rest at peace...because of the destruction of the pipeline."
The legal battle continues in court, but more than a century after Red Cloud's death,
the outcome so far seems to be the same.
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