Red Cloud
Born: September 20, 1822, fork of the Platte River, Nebraska Territory
Died: December 10, 1909, Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota
Also known as: Makhpia-sha
Tribal affiliation: Sioux (Lakota or Teton group, Oglala band)
Significance: Red Cloud led the Lakota Sioux through a difficult period, effectively resisting the onrush of the American westward advance and later helping the Sioux make the transition to reservation life.
Red Cloud was born into the Oglala subtribe of the Teton branch of Lakotas (Sioux) on the High Plains of what is now Nebraska. His father, a headman in the Brule subtribe, was named Lone Man, and his mother was Walks-as-She-Thinks, a member of the Saone subtribe. There is disagreement over the origins of the name Red Cloud. Some sources contend that it was a family name used by his father and grandfather, while others claim that it was coined as a description of the way his scarlet-blanketed warriors covered the hills like a red cloud.
Very little is known about Red Cloud's early life. His father died when he was young, and he was reared in the camp of Chief Old Smoke, a maternal uncle. He undoubtedly spent his boyhood learning skills that were important to Sioux men at the time, including hunting, riding, and shooting. Plains Culture Indians sometimes conducted raids against enemies, and Red Cloud joined his first war party and took his first scalp at age sixteen. Thereafter, he was always quick to participate in expeditions against the Pawnee, Crow, or Ute. Other Oglala frequently retold Red Cloud's colorful exploits in battle. During a raid against the Crow, he killed the warrior guarding the ponies and then ran off with fifty horses. This was a highly respected deed among Plains Indians, whose horses were central to their way of life. On an expedition against the Pawnee, Red Cloud killed four of the enemy--an unusually high number in a type of warfare in which casualties were normally low.
In the early 1840's most Oglala bands camped around Fort Laramie on the North Platte River, where they could obtain a variety of goods from white traders. Red Cloud was part of a band known as the Bad Faces, or Smoke People, under the leadership of his uncle, Old Smoke. Another band in the area, the Koya, was led by Bull Bear, the most dominant headman among the Oglala and commonly recognized as their chief. The two groups frequently quarreled. One day in the fall of 1841, after young men of both sides had been drinking, a member of the Bad Faces stole a Koya woman. Bull Bear led a force to the Bad Face camp and shot the father of the young man who had taken the woman. The Bad Faces retaliated, and when a shot to the leg downed Bull Bear, Red Cloud rushed in and killed him. This event led to a split among the Oglala that lasted for many years. It also elevated Red Cloud's standing among the Bad Faces, and shortly after the incident he organized and led a war party of his own against the Pawnee.
Soon after recovering from wounds suffered in that raid, Red Cloud married a young Lakota woman named Pretty Owl. Sources disagree as to whether he thereafter remained monogamous or took multiple wives, a common practice among prominent Sioux. Nor is there agreement on how many children he fathered, although five is the number most often accepted by scholars. Over the next two decades, Red Cloud's reputation and status continued to grow. By the mid-1860's he was a ruggedly handsome man of medium stature with penetrating eyes and a confident and commanding presence. He was also a band headman and a leading warrior with a growing following among the Bad Faces. Sioux social and political structure was very decentralized; no one person had authority over the whole group. Instead, certain leaders were recognized as chiefs on the basis of ability and achievement. An important member of his band, at this time Red Cloud was not yet a chief.
In the several decades before the Civil War, traders began operating in Sioux territory; they were followed by wagon trains, telegraph construction, and further encroachments by whites. The Sioux welcomed most of the traders and at least tolerated most of the wagon trains, even though whites disrupted hunting by killing indiscriminately and chasing animals away from traditional hunting grounds. By the closing years of the Civil War, American traffic across the northern Plains increased even further. The discovery of gold in the mountains of Montana in late 1862 enticed more whites to cross Sioux land, leading to friction and occasional clashes. The final straw came when the government sent soldiers in to build forts and protect passage along a popular route known as the Bozeman Trail, which linked Montana with the Oregon Trail.
In 1865 many Sioux, including Red Cloud, took up arms in resistance. Several Lakota leaders signed a treaty in the spring of 1866 that would open the Bozeman Trail, but Red Cloud and his many followers held out, insisting on the removal of soldiers. The government tried to ignore Red Cloud for a time, but the Sioux almost completely closed down travel and obstructed efforts to construct the forts. These actions represented the high point in Red Cloud's career as a military strategist. He led his men to a number of victories, most notably the annihilation of Captain William J. Fetterman and eighty-two soldiers in an incident known to whites as the Fetterman massacre and to Indians as the Battle of a Hundred Slain. In November of 1868, when, after negotiations, the army withdrew the troops and abandoned the forts, Red Cloud finally ended the war.
This victory increased Red Cloud's standing among his people, although he still was not the Sioux's exclusive leader. The United States government, however, assumed that he was the head chief and dealt with him as such. In the late 1860's, there was talk of creating a reservation for the Lakota, and Red Cloud surprised everyone by announcing that he would go to Washington, D.C., and talk about the idea. Some have argued that he was motivated by a desire to gain the status among the Sioux that he already enjoyed in the view of federal officials. On the other hand, he may have realized that since some white Westerners opposed granting a reservation--preferring the extermination of Indians--a reservation, if combined with the withdrawal of troops from all Sioux lands, might be the best compromise he could achieve.
He and twenty other Sioux leaders were escorted to the nation's capital in 1870 with great ceremony. Red Cloud did not win everything he wanted, but he clearly emerged as the most famous Native American of his time. He was applauded by many Easterners who sympathized with Indians and saw Red Cloud as a symbol of justifiable response to white advance.
In 1871 Red Cloud settled on the newly created reservation, at the agency named after him. Then, only a few years later, gold was discovered in the Black Hills portion of the reserve, and the government pressured the Sioux to sell the area. When negotiations broke down, events quickly escalated into the Sioux War of 1876-1877. With one eye on the government, Red Cloud publicly opposed the armed action undertaken by some Lakota to stop the flood of prospectors onto their lands, but privately he seemed to sanction such moves. Red Cloud frequently became embroiled in political battles with federal agents on the reservation. He tried to win whatever provisions and concessions he could to ease his people's suffering, and he resisted government efforts to break down traditional cultural and political life. When many Sioux became involved in the controversial Ghost Dance in 1889-1890, Red Cloud avoided early commitment to, or open encouragement of, participation. Many dancers, however, believed that they had his support anyway. Red Cloud's frequent compromise position and his seeming cooperation with government agents sometimes made him suspect among some of his people, and, as a consequence, his influence steadily eroded. He died on the reservation on December 10, 1909.
Red Cloud emerged as a military and political leader at a dramatic and tragic time in the history of the Lakota Sioux. Once powerful nomadic buffalo hunters, their lives were being changed forever. The relentless westward advance of whites constricted their land base, destroyed the buffalo upon which their economy depended, and ultimately brought about their impoverishment. Moreover, government attempts to destroy traditional Sioux ways of life on the reservation, while never completely successful, resulted in severe cultural disruption.
For a time, Red Cloud resisted militarily as effectively as any Native American leader ever had. Then, when American domination became clear, he attempted to balance the two worlds of Indian and white, hoping to win the best results possible for his people under the circumstances. This was a difficult task, and he did not satisfy everyone. He was attacked from both sides--by whites for not doing more to encourage his followers to assimilate into the white world, and by some Sioux for being too willing to give in to government authorities.
Red Cloud stood as a symbol to many Indians (and some whites) of strong defense of homelands and culture, while to other whites he epitomized the worst in Indian treachery and savagery. For both sides, the name Red Cloud conveyed immense power. In the 1960's and 1970's, with the rise of the Red Power movement and a rejuvenation of Indian culture, he again became a symbol--this time to a generation of young Indian (and sometimes white) political activists who found inspiration in what they saw as his defiance in the face of unjust authority.
Bibliography: Cook, James H. Fifty Years on the Old Frontier. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1923.
DeMallie, Raymond J., ed. The Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk's Teachings Given to John G. Neihardt. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984.
Hyde, George E. Red Cloud's Folk: A History of the Oglala Sioux Indians. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1937.
___________. A Sioux Chronicle. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1956.
Larson, Robert W. Red Cloud: Warrior-Statesman of the Lakota Sioux. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997.
Olson, James C. Red Cloud and the Sioux Problem. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965.
Paul, R. Eli, ed. Autobiography of Red Cloud: War Leader of the Oglalas. Helena: Montana Historical Society Press, 1997.
Robinson, Doane. A History of the Dakota or Sioux Indians. Aberdeen, S.Dak.: News Printing, 1904. Reprint. Minneapolis, Minn.: Ross and Haines, 1958.
Utley, Robert M. The Last Days of the Sioux Nation. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1963.
Larry W. Burt
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