Return to Beginning of Article: Text-Only | Graphics-Intensive
By Bornali Halder
© 2002 by Bornali Halder
Url: http://www.lakotaarchives.com/laklaramiepr.html
The Oglala began encountering white men and their families coming west in increasing numbers in their - "creeping slowly up the Platte" as one author has put it. The emigrants were complaining of being threatened by the Sioux. The emigrants brought with them diseases that the Sioux had never encountered before. In 1849, for example, Asiatic cholera struck most of the western Sioux camps. The US established a military post at an old trading post in Sioux country, called Fort Laramie. There was increasing resentment among the Indians that their lives and their territories were being trespassed upon.
In 1851, the US persuaded various Plains nations to sign the Fort Laramie Treaty. Article 2 of the treaty declared: "The aforesaid nations do hereby recognize the right of the United States Government to establish roads, military and other posts, within their respective territories."
The territories of the signatory Indian nations, including the Sioux, the Cheyenne, and the Arapaho, were clearly delineated. The Black Hills was situated within Sioux territory. The government also guaranteed that Indian tribes would be given rations of food and clothing, known as annuity goods. However, the treaty failed to recognise the disparate nature of the western Sioux, each band and camp of which occupied different regions of the Plains, and each one politically discrete.
Instead, the treaty lumped together all the different bands into one nation. In fact, only a few band leaders, selected by the traders, had been allowed to sign the treaty. No Oglala leader signed, only those of the Brulé and Missouri River Sioux. For some reason, at the treaty council where the signing took place, Brave Bear, a Brulé, was made 'head-chief' of all the Teton Sioux, even though, up to this time, no such category as a head-chief had existed among the Sioux.
The signing of the 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty inaugurated a new era in the relations between Euroamericans and Oglala Sioux. Because, once a year, the Teton Sioux camped near Fort Laramie to await the Indian agent and the annuity goods, there was often trouble from both Sioux and the soldiers stationed there. Harassment moved in all directions: from the Sioux, from the emigrants and from the soldiers. Many people of all groups began to get wounded or killed.
All this unrest made the government (and the traders) nervous, and they appointed Thomas Twiss as a new Indian Agent, and General W. S. Harney to command troops into Fort Laramie. Twiss ordered all the 'friendly' Teton to camp near the fort, and all 'hostile' Sioux to remain north. Harney's troops moved north in pursuit of the northern, so-called 'hostile' Sioux and many Sioux were killed during this campaign.
The western Sioux sent a pipe around among themselves, summoning all the Teton to council. The great council met, in the summer of 1857, near Bear Butte on the northern edge of the Black Hills. The Sioux were well aware of the intensification of white settlement along the Missouri in Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Dakota, and of the harassment the border tribes were receiving in resisting to sell or leave their lands. The gathered bands of the western or Lakota Sioux decided that they would resist anymore encroachment on their land.
The Homestead Act of 1862 encouraged increasing numbers of white settlers to move upon the Plains. That same year, during the Civil War, the 'Sioux Uprising' took place in Minnesota, where Santee Dakota Sioux raided many settler camps in retaliation against the Americans taking their lands. US Troops stormed up the Missouri forcing the Santee to flee northward, or westward across the Missouri to join the Teton.
In the north, the Bozeman Trail into Montana brought many settlers into the region. In the south, the Sioux who were hunting along the Platte River began to feel the presence of heavy travel along the Overland and the Santa Fe roads. Moreover, increasing numbers of non-Indians were hunting buffalo for trade and sport and the herds were diminishing at an astonishing rate.
Diminishment of the buffalo meant that Indian nations had to increasingly rely on government rations. Discovery of gold in Colorado increased the rush of Americans across the plains and added to the southern Sioux's problems. In 1864, the troops wiped out two or three Cheyenne villages on the south Platte, stirring up the anger of both Cheyenne and Sioux. The Sioux were ordered to keep out of the Platte Valley and they agreed, for the sake of peace.
In 1864, over a hundred Cheyenne and Arapaho families, mainly women, were killed at Sand Creek in Colorado by US troops. The Sand Creek Massacre incensed Indians all across the Plains. In the winter of 1864, Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho gathered to plan a revenge attack on US troops in the southern Platte, which they carried out successfully early in 1865. They planned and executed another great raid along the Platte, moving north, attacking troops, settlers, and emigrant travellers. Some 1000 lodges moved up through the plains of western Nebraska, towards the Black Hills.
Meanwhile, the Powder River Sioux were still hunting buffalo and raiding the Crow Indians, their old enemies. The northern group of Teton, however, was less placid, vowing to attack any whites that entered their lands from the Missouri west toward the lower Powder River country. Much fighting ensued between Sioux and troops in this region. By the time the southern Indians had reached the Powder River Sioux in March 1865, they were greatly incited by the stories of land encroachment and military harassment, and they accepted the pipe of war.
The so-called 'Indian Wars' caused a great furore among westerners who insisted Washington do something to subdue the plains Indian tribes. Forces rapidly assembled to invade the Powder River lands. The Sioux joined the Cheyenne and Arapaho and planned a huge attack on US troops. More and more federal troops were sent out on what came to be known as the Powder River Expedition of 1865, to fight the Sioux.
In full dress of shields, bonnets, war-shirts and weapons, the Indian nations, 1000 lodges strong, successfully fought back the US. The US expedition failed miserably, and cost the government huge amounts of money.
Movements were aloft in Congress to suspend the movement of troops and try more 'peaceful' methods to gain peace and appropriate Indian land. Thus marked a shift in Federal Indian policy towards more humane methods of dealing with the 'Indian problem'. Treaties were seen to be the way forward, and a Sioux peace commission was established. A handful of 'friendly' Sioux leaders from the Missouri River region were gathered and coaxed into signing a peace treaty in October 1865. Note, however, that none of the chiefs of the resentful and angry bands attacking troops in the Powder River region were present at this treaty signing.
The new peace policy "contained the germs of conflict" (Hyde 1937:137), however. While the treaty accepted by the more placid Missouri River tribes declared the right of the US to open roads and build posts in Sioux country, the western Plains Sioux were bitterly determined to stop any further white encroachment on their lands. When finally the US realised their oversight, they tried to persuade the Powder River Sioux to sign the peace treaty. Only one group of Brulé acquiesced.
It was around this time, 1865 to 1866, that Red Cloud's name began to be spoken of, by Indians and whites alike, as a prominent Sioux leader who was encouraging 'his people' to fight the whites out of Sioux lands.
The western Sioux continued attacking and raiding every wagon-train that passed along the Bozeman Trail. They pushed in close to the forts, successfully attacking troops and running off stock. In the winter of 1866, the Sioux, including a young Crazy Horse, successfully attacked troops near the Tongue River, near Fort Phil Kearny. The new [military] posts, Phil Kearny, Reno, and C. F. Smith, were solidly set in the heart of the only good hunting grounds the northern Sioux now possessed. The government believed that if these forts were maintained in the heart of Indian country, sooner or later the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho would have to come in and conform to the government's bidding.
For those Sioux and Cheyenne who had signed the 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty, the situation seemed to them to be more secure. An agency had been created for them near the forks of the Platte, and they were back on their old hunting grounds. However, their complacency did not last long when they began to notice with increasing alarm that they were being pressed on all sides by settlers advancing into Indian territory at astonishing speed. This advancement was facilitated by the Union Pacific and Kansas Pacific railroads. Moreover, white hide hunters were slaughtering the buffalo with the finest of rifles.
In the north, throughout the spring and summer of 1867, the Oglala leader Red Cloud was pressing his campaign to fight the whites out of Sioux country, and attacks along the Bozeman and on military forts were frequent. It was make or break time for the US government: they had either to give in to the Sioux, or else flood Sioux country with troops and fight a long and expensive war.
In the fall of 1867, Washington decided to prepare a new Sioux treaty. This treaty would basically provide for the removal of all the Teton Sioux to a reservation - the 'Great Sioux Reservation' - which would cover all of the present state of South Dakota west of the Missouri River. Agencies would be established on the reservation at which the Sioux would be clothed, fed, educated and basically provided for for four years. After that time, it was hoped that the Sioux would be sufficiently trained to be self-sufficient. A provision was made that, in return for signing the treaty, all the forts would be abandoned and the Powder River and Bighorn countries would be recognised as unceded Indian territory accessible only to the Sioux and Cheyenne (no whites) for hunting purposes.
In 1868, after having bribed them with goods, including arms and ammunition, the Treaty Council managed to obtain the signatures of Spotted Tail, chief of the 'friendly' Brulé; Little Wound, chief of the friendly Bear band of the Oglala; and another Oglala chief, Man-Afraid-Of-His-Horse. Enticed by promises of arms and ammunition, more hostile Powder River Oglala came out to Fort Laramie to sign the treaty, in exchange for the above, plus knives, axes, kettles, blankets, and army rations, before returning once again to the Powder River region. The rest of the treaty party was hastening up to Fort Rice to meet the upper Missouri Sioux in council, once again laden down with 'presents'. These Sioux also signed.
Both Red Cloud, the Hunkpapa Lakota leader Sitting Bull, and other Lakota leaders held firm in their resolve not to sign until the government had fulfilled its promise to abandon the forts in their country. When the leaders saw the troops finally marching away, they came down to Laramie and signed the treaty on 6 November.
As Sioux bands began to be pushed towards the Missouri River, it became apparent that many Sioux leaders had not been made to clearly understand that their signing of the treaty necessitated a move to a small reservation in the Dakotas. A few years later, Lakota leaders stated that they had been told that the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty was simply an agreement to restore peace and trade, nothing more. They claimed the treaty had not been read out to them. Many bands resisted the order to remove to the new reservation, bitter at what they saw as deception, and continued to hunt and roam their vast territory.
The Great Sioux Reservation contained no buffalo and little small game. Indians who had complied with official pressure to relocate relied upon agency handouts such as rations, guns, ammunition, and clothing. The troops, meanwhile, were combing the region south of the Platte for remaining bands of Oglala and Cheyenne, pushing the Indians out of their traditional hunting grounds and destroying their camps.
In 1870, the US summoned Red Cloud and a large delegation of Oglala, and Spotted Tail and his Brulé leaders to Washington. The Sioux demanded their right to hunt freely, that no roads be built across their land, and that more trading posts be built so the Sioux could trade equitably. President Grant's response was simply the suggestion that the Sioux go to the Missouri and be farmers.
© 2002 by Bornali HalderReturn to Beginning of Article: Text-Only | Graphics-Intensive