(1821/22-1909)
Oglala chief
Although Red Cloud was one of the most celebrated of all the Oglalas, the facts of his early life, including the date and place of his birth, are obscure. All that can be said with some certainty is that he was born near the forks of the Platte River in 1821 or 1822. Similarly, his rise to a position of leadership is difficult to document. It is clear, however, that as a young man he developed a reputation for both bravery and cruelty, particularly in expeditions against the Pawnees. By the middle 1860s he was a leading Oglala warrior and was recognized by the whites as a chief. (The whites insisted in their dealings with the Indians that someone speak for each tribe as a chief.)
Red Cloud's principal military achievement lay in forcing the United States to abandon the Bozeman Trail between the North Platte River and the goldfields of Montana. Following the failure of the Fort Laramie conference of 1866, which Red Cloud left in a huff, the Indians stopped virtually all civilian travel on the trail. The little forts—Reno, Phil Kearny, and C. F. Smith—that the army had established to protect travelers could hardly protect their own garrisons. On December 21, 1866, the Sioux massacred Lieutenant Colonel W. J. Fetterman and eighty men sent out from Fort Phil Kearny to protect a train sent out to gather wood. The Fetterman massacre dramatized the failure of the army's Indian policy and gave new impetus to calls for negotiating peace with the Sioux, and particularly with Red Cloud. Red Cloud, however, refused to negotiate until the Bozeman forts were abandoned. The army abandoned the forts in August 1868, but Red Cloud did not arrive at Fort Laramie to discuss peace until November 4; he had sent word that he would make his winter's meat before coming in. After three days of haggling he "put his mark" on the treaty.
The Fort Laramie negotiators dealt with various Sioux tribes throughout the summer of 1868. In signing the treaty, the Indians, in exchange for presents and the promise of annuities and other benefits, agreed to abandon the warpath and locate on a large reservation north of the state of Nebraska and west of the Missouri River. The Treaty of 1868 was a long and complicated document that the Indians found difficult to understand. There is little evidence that its most celebrated signatory understood the treaty, or, if he did, that he had any intention of abiding by it. From the beginning Red Cloud made it clear that he had no intention of living north of the Platte Valley. Indeed, he had signed the treaty because he thought it would make it possible for him to return to the area around Fort Laramie.
There followed a decade of frustrating negotiations in which representatives of the government tried to explain the terms of the treaty to Red Cloud and persuade him to abide by them. He made four trips to Washington to visit with the president. These trips, extensively covered by the press, provided Red Cloud with a splendid platform from which to criticize the government's Indian policy, and he used it effectively. He was an imposing figure with a flair for the dramatic, and he spoke with rare eloquence, even through indifferent interpreters. On his first trip east, in 1870, he visited New York City as well as Washington. He spoke to deafening applause before an overflow crowd at the Cooper Institute. He was lionized by various reform groups but was a thorn in the flesh of those who were trying to carry out the government's "peace policy." He was a central figure in the conflict between the army and the Interior Department over who should have authority over the Plains Indians. He resisted all efforts to locate his people away from the Platte Valley, although not with force. He also made life difficult for most of the agents assigned to the tribe.
Finally, in 1878 Red Cloud agreed to locate on the Pine Ridge Reservation in western South Dakota. He soon engaged in a much-publicized controversy with the agent, Dr. Valentine T. McGillycuddy, which concluded with the agent's resignation.
Despite his many difficulties with the government, Red Cloud kept the peace he had agreed to at Fort Laramie in 1868; one of the results of his trips to Washington was an appreciation of the overwhelming power of the white man. He recognized the folly of going to war, but he tried to win as many concessions as possible. He opposed the movement of gold seekers and settlers to the Black Hills, for example, but he did not participate in the Custer massacre. He lent encouragement to the "hostiles," however, and his son Jack was in the Little Bighorn fight. Red Cloud also retained some influence with Crazy Horse. It was he who persuaded the noted war chief to come in to Fort Robinson. In 1890 Red Cloud discouraged participation in the Ghost Dance, trying to avert the troubles that led to the Wounded Knee massacre.
As the years wore on, Red Cloud had increasing difficulty with those younger members of the tribe who wanted to resume the warpath. They felt that he no longer was an effective leader. At the same time, there were those who felt that he was an obstructionist who impeded his people's progress along the white man's road. Both judgments have some validity. The noted frontiersman Captain James H. Cook observed that "during Red Cloud's life, he and his people had to meet such conditions as never before had confronted his tribe." With the old guideposts gone, he made his way as best he could. He, more than any of the other old chiefs, was associated with the erosion of the traditional way of life. He was perhaps one of the most important transition figures in the history of the American Indian.
George E. Hyde, Red Cloud's Folk (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1937); James C. Olson, Red Cloud and the Sioux Problem (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965).
James C. Olson
University of Missouri
