RED CLOUD STANDS IN THE WAY (1865-1909)
THE SIOUX WHO CLOSED THE ROAD OF THE WHITES
The name Sioux comes down from a longer Chippewa word meaning "adder"
or "enemy." The Indians who bore this name were the powerful
Dakotas--the true Sioux of history.
The wide Nation of the Lakota, as these Sioux called themselves, was a
league of seven council fires.
The four divisions of the Santees lived in Minnesota; the two divisions
of the Yanktons lived between them and the Missouri River; the one
large division of the Tetons lived in their Dakota country, west of the
Missouri River.
The Santees, the Yanktons and the Tetons spoke their own dialects.
They differed in appearance from one another. They were separated into
tribes and bands.
Even as late as 1904 they numbered twenty-five thousand people in the
United States. By mind, muscle and morals they have been rated as
leaders of the Western red men. They roamed hither-thither, and
depended upon the buffalo for food. They waged stout war.
The Tetons were the strongest, and formed half of, the Dakota nation.
It was chiefly they who fought the United States soldiers for so long.
The war opened in 1855, over the killing of a crippled cow by a
Min-i-con-jou, at Fort Laramie of Wyoming, on the Oregon Trail of the
emigrants.
The Brules, or Burnt Thighs; the Og-la-las, or Scatter-one's-own; the
Hunk-pa-pas, or Those-who-camp-by-themselves; the Min-i-con-jous, or
Those-who-plant-beside-the-stream; the Si-ha-sa-pas, or
Black-moccasins: these were the Teton Sioux who battled the hardest to
save their buffalo and their lands from the white man.
[Illustration: RED CLOUD. Courtesy of The American Bureau of
Ethnology.]
Red Cloud at first was chief of the Bad Faces band of Oglala Sioux.
They were a small fighting band, but he was a noted brave. His count
showed more coups, or strike-the-enemy feats, than the count of any
other warrior of the Oglalas. Before he retired from war, his coups
numbered eighty.
He was born in 1822. His Sioux name was Makh-pia-sha, meaning Red
Cloud. In the beginning it probably referred to a cloud at sunrise or
sunset; later it referred to his army of warriors whose red blankets
covered the hills.
When he was forty years old, there was much excitement among the white
men to the west of the Sioux range. From the mines of Idaho the
gold-seekers had crossed to the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains in
western Montana. Mining camps such as Helena, Bozeman and Virginia
City sprang up.
The Oregon Trail of the emigrants already passed through the Sioux
country, and the Sioux had agreed to let it alone. Now the United
States asked permission to make a new road, which from Fort Laramie of
southern Wyoming would leave the Oregon Trail, and branch off
northwest, through the Powder River and the Big Horn country of
Wyoming, and on west across Montana, as a short-cut to the gold-fields.
This part of Wyoming really was Crow Indian country; but the Sioux had
driven the Crows out, and with the Northern Cheyennes were using the
region for a hunting ground. The white man's trails to the south had
frightened the buffalo and reduced the herds; the Powder River valleys
were the only ranges left to the Sioux, where they might hunt and
always find plenty of meat.
Some of the Sioux chiefs did sign a treaty for the new road. The only
Oglalas who signed were subchiefs. Red Cloud did not sign. The United
States went ahead, anyway. Troops were sent forward, to begin the work
of building the road. Red Cloud, with his Oglalas and some Cheyennes,
surrounded them and captured them; held them prisoners for two weeks,
until his young men threatened to kill them. Then he released them,
with a warning.
"I shall stand in the trail," he said. Those were the words of
Pontiac, to Major Rogers, one hundred years before.
United States officials were ordered to Fort Laramie, to talk with the
angry Red Cloud. He declined to meet them.
But already a number of white gold-seekers had entered by this Bozeman
Trail, as it was known. In June, of the next year, 1866, the United
States tried again to get Red Cloud's name on the paper. A council was
called at Fort Laramie.
During the last year, another fort had been located. It was Fort
Reno--the first out-post of the new trail, at the Powder River, one
hundred and sixty-seven miles along from Laramie.
Red Cloud, and his lieutenant, They-fear-even-his-horses, came in to
talk with the United States, at Fort Laramie. A great throng of
Indians was present, for Fort Laramie was a busy post.
Nothing could be done with the Red Cloud band. The United States was
willing to promise that nobody should be allowed to leave the new road,
or to disturb any game. Red Cloud only shook his head. He well knew
that the white travelers would not obey the law. They would hunt and
camp, as they chose.
"Wah-nee-chee!" he said. "No good! Why do you come here and ask for
what you have already taken? A fort has been built, and the road is
being used. I say again, we will not sell our hunting grounds for a
road."
But the United States had decided. The Government had been assured by
the treaty makers that all the Sioux would finally yield. There was
last fall's treaty, as a starter. The Sioux from every band had
signed. Besides, the Government could not give up the right to open
roads. A railroad had the power to take right-of-way through towns and
lands; and a Government wagon road should have the same license.
So certain was the Government that the road would be opened, that even
while the council with the Red Cloud Oglalas was in session, there
arrived at Fort Laramie Colonel Henry B. Carrington of the Eighteenth
Infantry, with seven hundred soldiers.
Red Cloud saw the camp.
"Where are those soldiers going?"
"They are sent to open the new road and build forts."
"The Americans seek to steal our land whether we say yes or no!"
angrily uttered Red Cloud. "They will have to fight."
He and They-fear-even-his-horses (whom the white men called
"Young-man-afraid-of-his-horses") seized their rifles, and rode away,
and three hundred of their warriors followed them.
"Red Cloud means war," warned the Indians who remained. "The Great
Father makes us presents, to buy the road; but the white soldiers come
to steal it first. In two moons the white war chief will not have a
hoof left."
An express sent after Red Cloud, to ask him to return, was whipped with
bows and ordered to get out and tell the white chiefs that Red Cloud
would not talk about the road.
Colonel Carrington marched on, into the forbidden land. The officers'
wives were with them. Traders along the line insisted that the Indians
were determined to fight; but some of the emigrant outfits bound over
the trail to the mines were scornful of danger. One emigrant captain
laughed, when the women were timid.
"You'll never see an Injun unless he comes in to beg for sugar and
tobacco," he said. "I've been on the plains too long to be scared by
such trash."
This was at Fort Reno. That very morning, in broad daylight Red
Cloud's band ran off all the post sutler's horses and mules while the
soldiers looked on. Eighty men pursued, and captured only one Indian
pony loaded with goods obtained at Fort Laramie.
Colonel Carrington left a detachment here at the Powder River, to build
a better Fort Reno. He marched on.
Meanwhile Red Cloud had been growing stronger. Sioux warriors were
hastening to join him. Spotted Tail of the Brules had declined to
accept the treaty for opening the road--he waited for Red Cloud; but he
was wisely staying at home. However, his Brule young men were riding
away in large numbers, and he told the white people at Fort Laramie
that if they "went far on the trail they had better go prepared to look
out for their hair."
Red Cloud was watching the march of the soldiers. He did not attack;
but when he saw them pushing on, and finally making camp to locate
another fort, fifty miles northwest of Reno, on Piney Fork of
Lodge-pole Creek, in the Big Horn Mountains of northern Wyoming, he
again sent a message, by a party of soldiers whom he met and turned
back.
"The white chief must take his soldiers out of this country. Let him
decide for peace or war. If he wants peace, he can go back to Powder
River. The fort there can stay. But no forts shall be built farther
on the road, and no soldiers shall march over the road which has never
been given to the white people."
Red Cloud wanted an answer at once. He also asked that the white chief
come to him with an interpreter, and settle matters in a council. But
the messenger was held at the fort for a short time, and Red Cloud
moved his warriors to a new place.
Colonel Carrington invited the Sioux to come to the camp; and went
ahead building his fort. Some bands of Northern Cheyennes appeared for
a talk. They said that Red Cloud had urged them to join the Sioux in
keeping the white men out of the hunting grounds, and that he knew what
the soldiers had been doing every hour since they left Fort Laramie.
The Cheyennes seemed a little fearful of the Sioux; but said that if
they were given provisions, they would stay away from the white trail.
When the Cheyennes returned to the Sioux, Red Cloud asked them what the
white chief had said.
"Is he going back to the Powder River?"
"No," answered Black Horse, of the Cheyennes. "The white chief will
not go back, and his soldiers will go on."
"What presents did he give you?"
"All we wanted to eat. He wishes the Sioux and the Cheyennes and all
the other Indians to go to Fort Laramie, and sign the treaty, and get
more presents. I think that we had better take the white man's hand
and presents, rather than fight him and lose everything."
"No!" replied Red Cloud. "The white man lies and steals. My lodges
were many; now they are few. The white man wants all. He must fight,
and the Indian will die where his fathers died."
With that, the Sioux unstrung their bows and whipped the Cheyennes on
the face and back, crying, "Coup!" as if they were striking the enemy.
So Black Horse sent word that the Sioux intended war.
The fort was named Fort Phil Kearney. It was built of timber cut in
the pine woods seven miles distant, and was surrounded by a palisade or
high fence of thick pickets set upright.
Saw mills were placed in the woods, and the wood-camps were protected
by block-houses. Almost one hundred wagons were used, to haul the logs
and boards.
One hundred miles onward, another fort was started: Fort C. F. Smith.
The Crows informed Colonel Carrington that Red Cloud had tried to
enlist even them--that all the Sioux were uniting to drive out the
white men from this region, and that in the fall there would be a "big
fight" at the two forts.
White Mouth and Rotten Tail said that they were half a day in riding
through the Sioux village; there were fifteen hundred lodges. In
truth, Chief Red Cloud had over two thousand warriors, with whom to
stand in the path.
And there he stood. Nobody might doubt that. His raiders watched
every mile of the trail back to Powder River, and not an emigrant train
got through. He himself, with two thousand warriors, guarded Fort
Kearney, where the white chief lived.
Nobody might venture from it to hunt game. The wood wagons might move
only when many together and well armed. Not a load of hay could be
brought in without strong escort. After a time no mail could be sent
on to Fort Smith.
Colonel Carrington had five companies of infantry and one company of
the Second Cavalry. The infantry was mostly recruits. Their guns were
old style muzzle loaders; but the band had the new Spencer
breech-loaders.
He asked for better guns and more ammunition. The Government was not
certain that the Sioux could do much against soldiers of a country
which had just been trained by a four years' war, and Carrington was
left to prove it.
Chief Red Cloud had his first chance to prove the opposite on December
6. He had been amusing his warriors by letting them gallop past the
fort and shout challenges to the soldiers to come out and fight; then
when the cannon shot at them, they dodged the shells--but did not
always succeed.
The big guns that shot twice surprised them.
On the morning of December 6 Red Cloud struck in earnest, and had
planned to strike hard. He had a line of signal flags seven miles
long, by which to direct his army. Then he sent a company to attack a
wood train.
The attack on the wood train brought the troops out of the fort. One
detachment of thirty-five cavalry and a few mounted infantry was
commanded by Captain William J. Fetterman. He was very anxious to
fight Indians; in fact, the officers all had set their hearts upon
"taking Red Cloud's scalp."
Captain Fetterman rescued the wagon train, by chasing the Sioux away;
but in about five miles Red Cloud faced his men about and closed. It
was an ambuscade. The troopers of the cavalry were stampeded, and the
captain found himself, with two other officers and a dozen men,
surrounded by yelling warriors.
Colonel Carrington arrived just in time to save him; but young
Lieutenant H. S. Bingham of the Second Cavalry was killed, and so was
Sergeant Bowers.
When Captain Fetterman had returned to the fort he had changed his mind
regarding the prowess of the Sioux, whom he had thought to be only
robbers.
"I have learned a lesson," he remarked. "This Indian war has become a
hand-to-hand fight, and requires great caution. I'll take no more
risks like that of today!"
Red Cloud was not satisfied. His warriors had not done exactly as he
had told them to do. He bided his time.
On the morning of December 21 he was again ready. His men were
stationed, waiting for a wood train to appear. It appeared, starting
out to chop timber in the pine woods, and haul the logs to the fort.
It was an unusually strong train--a number of heavy wagons, and ninety
armed men.
Red Cloud let it get about four miles along, and ordered it attacked.
He had spies upon a ridge of hills, to watch the fort.
When the attack was heard at the fort, soldiers dashed out. The Red
Cloud warriors allowed the wagon train to think that it had whipped
them. He withdrew, across the ridge.
The leader of the soldiers was Captain Fetterman, again. He had asked
for the command. With him was Captain Fred H. Brown, who expected to
go back to Fort Laramie, and wished, first, to get a scalp. He and
Captain Fetterman were rivals for scalps and had almost forgotten the
affair of December 6. They were gallant soldiers, but reckless.
Altogether the detachment numbered seventy-nine officers and men, and
two scouts named Wheatley and Fisher.
Captain Fetterman was distinctly ordered by Colonel Carrington to do
nothing but rescue the wagon train. He must not cross the ridge in
pursuit of the Sioux.
Captain Fetterman did not move directly for the place of the wagon
train. He made a circuit, to cut off the attacking Sioux, at their
rear, or between the wagon train and the ridge to the north of it.
He had taken no surgeon, so Dr. Hines was hurried after him. The
doctor came back in another hurry. He reported that the wagon train
was on its way to the timber, without the captain; and that the captain
had disappeared, over the ridge! Many Indians were in sight, and the
doctor had been obliged to stop short.
Now, on a sudden, there was a burst of distant gun-fire. In twelve
minutes a second detachment of soldiers was on the run, from the fort
for the battle; wagons and ambulances and more men followed; and soon
only one hundred and nineteen men remained.
The firing was very heavy, in volleys--then in fire-at-will; then it
died down--quit. Not a sound could be heard, as the women and men in
Fort Kearney strained their ears and eyes.
Presently a courier from the second detachment galloped headlong in.
He said that the valley beyond the ridge was swarming with Sioux; they
yelled and dared the soldiers to come down to the road there. But of
the Captain Fetterman command, no trace could be sighted.
The soldiers and the reinforcements stayed out all the afternoon. They
returned at dark; but of the eighty-one others, none came back. All of
them, the entire eighty-one, had fallen to the army of Red Cloud.
Nobody was alive to tell the story of the fight. The signs on the
field were plain, though; and of course the Red Cloud warriors knew
well what had occurred.
Captain Fetterman had crossed the ridge, to chase the Sioux. Two
thousand Red Cloud men were waiting for him. They permitted him to
advance to the forbidden road. The white soldiers fought until their
ammunition was almost spent. Then the Red Cloud men rushed. Only six
of the white soldiers were shot; the rest were killed by hand.
The plan of Red Cloud and his chiefs had been laid to get all the
troops out of the fort, together; kill them and seize the fort.
But the warriors had not waited long enough. Their victory was too
quick, and they lost too many men, themselves, in the one fight:
seventy, of killed and wounded, they said; sixty-five of killed, alone,
said the red blotches on the field.
Still, Red Cloud had closed the road with the bodies of the soldiers.
He had made his word good.
The garrison in Fort Kearney gave up all thought of glory by capturing
Red Cloud; and this winter there was no more fighting. How many
warriors Red Cloud had, to "cover the hills with their scarlet
blankets," nobody knew; but the count ran from three thousand to five
thousand.
The spring came, and the summer came, and the road had not been opened.
In more than a year, not a single wagon had passed upon it, through the
hunting grounds of the Sioux.
Another white chief had been sent to take command of Fort Phil Kearney.
He was Brigadier General H. W. Wessels. All this summer the soldiers
were having to fight for wood and water. The contractor in charge of
the teams hauling lumber complained that he must have more protection
or he would be unable to do the work.
Captain James Powell of the Twenty-seventh Infantry was ordered out to
protect the lumber camps. He took Lieutenant John C. Jenness and
fifty-one men.
The wood choppers had two camps, about a mile apart. The captain
detailed twenty-five of his men to guard the one camp, and escort the
wagon trains to the fort; with the twenty-six others he made a fort of
wagon boxes, at the second camp.
He arranged fourteen of the wagon boxes on the ground, in a circle.
Some of the boxes had been lined with boiler iron. Two wagons were
left on wheels, so that the rifles might be aimed from underneath. The
boxes were pierced low down with a row of loop-holes. The spaces
between the ends of the boxes were filled with ox-chains, slabs and
brush. He had plenty of ammunition and plenty of new breech-loading
rifles.
The little fort was located in an open basin, surrounded by gentle
hills. He directed the men of the other camp to come in at the first
sign of trouble.
The Sioux were at hand. Red Cloud had been merely waiting for the
soldiers to march out and make it worth his while to descend. He was
resolved to destroy Fort Kearney this year, before the snows.
It seemed to him that again he had the soldiers where he wanted them.
Word of the flimsy little corral spread a laugh among his two thousand
warriors. The squaws and old men were summoned from the allied Sioux
and out-law Cheyenne village, to come and see and be ready with their
knives.
On the morning of August 2 he so suddenly attacked the unfortified wood
camp that he cut it off completely. Two hundred of his men captured
the mule herd; five hundred of them attacked the wagon train there,
burned the wagons and drove the soldiers and teamsters and choppers who
were outside the corral, in flight to Fort Kearney. Scalps were taken.
Now it was the turn of the puny corral, and the rest of the soldiers.
He could see only the low circle of wagon-boxes. They were covered
with blankets; underneath the blankets there were soldiers--few and
frightened.
The hill slopes around were thronged with his people, gathered to watch
and to plunder. He felt like a great chief indeed. And at wave of his
hand eight hundred of his cavalry dashed in a thundering, crackling
surge of death straight at the silent circle.
On they sped, and on, and on, and were just about to dash against the
circle and sweep over, when suddenly such a roar, and sheet of flame,
struck them in the face that they staggered and melted. Now--while the
guns were empty! But the guns were not yet empty--they belched without
pause. Veering right and left around a bloody lane the warriors,
crouching low, tore for safety from the frightful blast.
Red Cloud could not understand. His own men were well armed, with
rifles and with muskets captured from the soldiers during the past year
or supplied at the trading post. It seemed to him that there were more
soldiers under those blankets than he had reckoned. But he knew that
his men were brave; his people were watching from the hills; he had no
mind for defeat.
In the corral Captain Powell had told his twenty-six soldiers and four
civilians to fight for their lives. The poor shots were ordered to
load guns and pass them as fast as possible to the crack shots.
Red Cloud rallied his whole force, of more than two thousand. He
dismounted eight hundred and sent them forward to crawl along the
ground, as sharpshooters; they ringed the corral with bullets and
arrows.
He himself led twelve hundred, afoot, for a charge. His young nephew
was his chief aide--to win the right to be head chief after Red Cloud's
death.
But although they tried, in charge after charge, for three hours, they
could not enter the little fort. Sometimes they got within ten
yards--the soldiers threw augers at them, and they threw the augers
back--and back they reeled, themselves. The guns of the little fort
never quit!
Red Cloud still could not understand. He called a council. In the
opinion of his chiefs and braves, the white soldiers were armed with
guns that shot of themselves and did not need reloading.
The squaws on the hills were wailing; his men were discouraged; many
had fallen. So finally he ordered that the bodies be saved, and the
fight ended. His braves again crawled forward, behind shields, with
ropes; tied the ropes to the bodies, in spite of the bullets, and
running, snaked the bodies away behind them.
"Some bad god fought against us," complained the Red Cloud people.
"The white soldiers had a great medicine. We were burned by fire."
And all the Indians of the plains, hearing about the mystery, when the
breech-loading rifles mowed down the Sioux and the Cheyennes, spoke of
the bad god fight that defeated Chief Red Cloud.
The Sioux reported that they had lost eleven hundred and thirty-five
warriors. Red Cloud's nephew was sorely wounded in the charge.
Captain Fetterman's loss was Lieutenant Jenness and two men killed, two
men wounded. He said that when the reinforcements, with the cannon,
arrived from Fort Kearney, while the Sioux were removing their dead, he
was in despair. Another charge or two and he would have been wiped out.
But the road remained closed. Red Cloud remained in the path. This
fall the Government decided that, after all, it had no right to open
the road. In April of the next year, 1868, another treaty was signed
with the Sioux and the Cheyennes, by which the United States gave up
any claim to the Powder River and Big Horn country, and the Indians
promised to let the Union Pacific Railroad alone.
Red Cloud did not sign. "The white men are liars," he insisted; and he
waited until the three forts, Smith and Kearney and Reno, were
abandoned. Then, in November, after his warriors had burned them, and
all the soldiers were gone out of the country, he put his name to the
treaty.
Thus he won out. He had said that he would close the road, and he had
done it.
Through the following years he remained quiet. He had had his fill of
fighting. His name was great. He was head chief of the Red Cloud
agency, later called Pine Ridge. Spotted Tail of the Brules controlled
the other agency, later called Rosebud.
Red Cloud always closely watched the whites. He was at peace, but
suspicious. When the Black Hills were finally demanded by the United
States, he sent out men to count the buffalo. The number in sight was
too small. Some day, soon, the Indians would have no meat on their
hunting grounds. Therefore Red Cloud decided that the red men must
begin to live by aid of the white man; and he favored the
reservations--even the sale of the Black Hills so that his people would
be made rich enough to settle down.
He was looked up to as a warrior and a councillor, but the United
States did not trust him; and after a time, put Spotted Tail over him,
in charge of the two agencies. This made bad feeling, and Red Cloud
and Spotted Tail did not speak to each other. However, his own people,
who rose under Sitting Bull, urged him to join with them, in vain.
Red Cloud lived to be a very old man. He became almost blind, and
partly paralyzed. He stuck to his one wife. They were together for
many years.
He died in December, 1909, in a two-story house built for him by the
Government on the Pine Ridge agency in South Dakota. He was aged
eighty-seven. Five years before he had given his chief-ship over to
his son, young Red Cloud, who carried the name. It is a name that will
never be forgotten.