Do you want to learn more about The Great Chief Red Cloud? Then you have come to the right place!
Born in a time of great pain and suffering, Red Cloud was one the most important Chiefs of the Oglala Sioux Tribe.
Often he was mistaken as the main leader of all the Sioux Tribes and was one of the last living Chiefs at this time.
With schools and statues erected in his honor makes you wonder what exactly did he do in his life to be honored even after his death?
Let’s explore together the legend of The Great Chief Red Cloud.
Contents
Early Life.
Red Cloud was born in 1822 and was given the name of Mahpíya Lúta which translates in Red Cloud.
Born near which is now present-day central Nebraska, Red Cloud was the son of an Oglala Sioux woman named Walks as She Thinks and his father, Lone Man, who was Brule Sioux.
They named him after a strange weather phenomenon which caused the clouds to appear Red hence the name Red Cloud.
When he was around 5 years old, Red Cloud’s father passed away into the spirit world.
Following his father’s death, Red Cloud was raised by his mother’s uncle, an Oglala Sioux leader named Smoke.
At a young age, Red Cloud sought to distinguish himself as a warrior, he became a fine horseman, good swimmer, hunter, and demonstrated great bravery in the Oglalas’ battles with other tribes, including the Pawnees.
A Lesson Learned.
At about 16 years of age Red Cloud had already broken many horses and had become a great hunter and warrior.
One day, Red Cloud followed a lone buffalo into the badlands where his peers could not hear or see him.
After killing the buffalo he scanned the area for any rival tribes that might attack him while he cut up the meat for packing.
Every few minutes or so Red Cloud scanned the area and felt as if trouble was near by.
Suddenly he heard a loud war cry which sounded like it was just over his head and when he tried to war cry back nothing but a terrified scream came out.
The loud war cry turned out to be his horse which was behind him. Embarrassed at himself he never forgot the incident and used it as way not to be afraid.
Around the age of 20 years old, Red Cloud married Pretty Owl. The diaries of Ohiyesa (Charles A. Eastman) state that was faithful to one wife all his days, even though it was acceptable for prominent Sioux Men to take more than one wife.
He is believed to have fathered five children to whom he was greatly devoted, especially his only son, Jack Red Cloud, whom he counseled to become a great warrior.
Revenge.
After many battles, Red Cloud and his people were at one of the stormiest times in their history when General William S. Harney called all the western bands of the Sioux people to Fort Laramie Wyoming. The meeting was to discuss an agreement between the white men and the Sioux tribes for land, peace, and a right of way through the hostile territory of the Sioux.
Against the wishes of his people and under the influence of whiskey, Chief Bear Bull talked about submission into the white men’s wishes. After his people did not agree with him he became angry and fired upon a group of his own people.
Among these people was Red Clouds Brother who fell dead.
According to the tribe’s customs, it was up to him to get revenge for their deaths.
Calmly without saying a word his faced off with Bear Bull and his son who was trying to protect Bear Bull. He ended up killing both of them getting his revenge and solidifying his place as a leader among his people.
Red Cloud was then given a seat next to the Old Chief Man Afraid Of His Horse.
Grattan Massacre.
In 1854, Red Cloud, and their people were camped Outside of Fort Laramie. An immigrant train moving westward had left a footsore cow behind which a young man had killed in order to get food.
The next day an inexperienced Lt. L. Grattan. with about 30 men returned to their camp of 4,000, about 1,200 of them being armed warrior’s and then drunkenly demanded they give up the young man so he can receive punishment.
The old Chief Conquering Bear came and spoke to the man to tell him it was all a mistake and they would try to make it right.
For some reason, the officer wanted neither explanation nor to make it right but just wanted the young man and a 25$ payment. The old chief refused to be intimidated and was shot dead on the spot.
Following this, Red Cloud led a bloody battle that saw all 30 men dead including the drunken interpreter.
Thus becoming the opening engagement of the First Sioux War.
Red Clouds War.
Also referred to as the Bozeman War or the Powder River War, it was an armed conflict between the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Northern Arapaho on one side and the United States on the other over control in Wyoming and Montana territories from 1866 to 1868.
The war was fought over control of the western Powder River Country in present north-central Wyoming. This grassland, rich in buffalo, was traditionally Crow Indian land, but the Lakota had recently taken control.
The Crow tribe held the treaty right to the disputed area, according to the agreement reached at Fort Laramie in 1851. All involved in “Red Cloud’s War” were parties in that treaty.
In 1863, Many European Americans had blazed the Bozeman Trail through the heart of the traditional territory of the Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Lakota.
It was the shortest and easiest route from Fort Laramie and the Oregon Trail to the famous Montana goldfields.
From 1864 to 1866, the trail was traversed by about 3,500 miners, emigrant settlers and others, who competed with the Indians for the diminishing resources near the hostile trail.
The United States named the war after Red Cloud, who allied with the Cheyenne and Arapaho. The United States army had built forts in response to attacks on civilian travelers, using a treaty right to establish roads, military, and many other posts. All three forts were located in 1851 Crow Indian territory and accepted by these Indians.
The Crow believed they guarded their interests best by cooperating with the US army.
Red Cloud’s War consisted mostly of constant small-scale raids and attacks on the soldiers and civilians at the three forts in the Powder River country, wearing down those garrisons. The largest action of the war, the Fetterman Fight (with 81 men killed on the U.S. side), was the worst military defeat suffered by the U.S. on the Great Plains until the Battle of the Little Bighorn in the Crow Indian reservation ten years later.
Instead of sending more men as retaliation, the government sent a commission to talk with the Sioux. The meeting ended with what came to be called the Treaty Of Fort Laramie.
The Treaty Of Fort Laramie.
Red Cloud was the last to sign the Treaty Of Fort Laramie which took place on a cool spring day in 1868.
The treaty established the Great Sioux Reservation, covering the territory of West River, west of the Missouri River in present-day Nebraska (which had been admitted as a state in 1867), and including parts of South Dakota.
Uneasy relations between the expanding United States and the natives continued. In 1870, Red Cloud visited Washington D.C. and met with Commissioner of Indian Affairs Ely S. Parker (a Seneca and U.S. Army General) and then President Ulysses S. Grant.
In 1871, the US government established the Red Cloud Agency on the Platte River, downstream from Fort Laramie. As outlined in the Treaty of 1868, the agency staff were responsible for issuing weekly rations to the Oglala Sioux, as well as providing the annually distributed supply of cash and annuity goods.
The agent and the Washington officials would determine how much of the annuity was to be paid in cash or goods, and sometimes the supplies were late, in poor condition, inadequate in amount, or never arrived at all.
With peace achieved under the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868, the Lakota and their allies were victorious. They gained legal control of the western Powder River country, took down the forts, and permanently closed the Bozeman Trail that is until the Great Sioux War.
The Great Sioux War.
Their victory, however, only endured for 8 years until the Great Sioux War of 1876, when the US started to take some of their territories again, including the sacred Black Hills which was now the hot spot for many gold miners and settlers.
In 1874, General George Custer led a reconnaissance mission into Sioux territory that reported gold in the Black Hills, an area held sacred by the local Indians. The Army supposedly tried to keep miners out but did not succeed; tensions grew.
In May 1875, Lakota delegations headed by Red Cloud, Spotted Tail, and Lone Horn traveled to Washington, DC in an attempt to persuade the then-President Grant to honor existing treaties and slow the flow of miners into their lands.
The Leaders met on various occasions with Grant, Secretary of the Interior Delano, and Commissioner of Indian Affairs Smith. He told them on May 27 that Congress was ready to resolve the matter by paying the tribes $25,000 for their land and resettling them into Indian Territory located in Oklahoma.
The great Sioux Leaders refused to sign such a treaty, with Spotted Tail reportedly saying about the proposal:
“When I was here before, the President gave me my country, and I put my stake down in a good place, and there I want to stay…. You speak of another country, but it is not my country; it does not concern me, and I want nothing to do with it. I was not born there…. If it is such a good country, you ought to send the white men now in our country there and let us alone.”
Although the chiefs were unsuccessful in finding a peaceful solution, they did not join Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull in the warfare that followed.
The Battle Of the Little Big Horn
The Great Chief Red Cloud was not apart of the upcoming battles and was growing in age and was now more of a councilor than a warrior but he did have a son who was apart of the battles to come.
At mid-day on June 25, 1876, Custer’s 600 men entered the Little Bighorn Valley. Word quickly spread of the impending attack. The older Sitting Bull rallied the warriors and saw to the safety of the women and children, while Crazy Horse set off with a large force to meet the attackers head-on. Despite Custer’s desperate attempts to regroup his men, they were quickly overwhelmed. Custer and some 200 men in his battalion were attacked by as many as 3,000 Native Americans; within an hour, Custer and all of his soldiers were dead.
The Battle of the Little Bighorn also called Custer’s Last Stand, marked the most decisive Native American victory and the worst U.S. Army defeat in the long Plains Indian War. The demise of Custer and his men outraged many white Americans and confirmed their image of the Indians as wild and bloodthirsty. Meanwhile, the U.S. government increased its efforts to subdue the tribes. Within five years, almost all of the Sioux and Cheyenne would be confined to reservations.
Lieutenant General Phil Sheridan was determined to break the power of the Plains Indians once and for all. He ordered Colonel Ranald Mackenzie of the 4th Cavalry to Camp (later Fort) Robinson in Nebraska Territory, to disarm the Sioux leader Red Cloud.
One fall morning in 1876, a few months after the fall of Custer, Red Cloud awoke to find his camp surrounded by Colonel Mackenzie and his men who disarmed his people and brought them into Fort Robinson Nebraska.
The following year they were removed to the Pine Ridge Reservation, where Red Cloud spent his final 30 years as a “reservation Indian.”
Red Clouds Finals Years
The Great Chief Red Cloud spent the 1870s and 80s seeking to mediate peaceful relations between the Sioux and the United States. He was accused by some younger Oglala of selling out, while government officials accused him of secretly aiding the Sioux and Cheyenne bands that defeated General George Custer at Little Bighorn. Red Cloud’s reservation was renamed, Pine Ridge in 1878.
During his later years, The Great Chief Red Cloud lost his sight and had little to do with his people’s affairs.
On a cold winter day in 1909 at the age of 88, Red Cloud passed on into the spirit world at Pine Ridge.
He was one of the last living great chiefs and is buried on his home reserve of Pine Ridge South Dakota.
