Red Cloud's War (also referred to as the Bozeman War or the Powder River War) was an armed conflict between an alliance of the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Northern Arapaho peoples against the United States and the Crow Nation that took place in the Wyoming and Montana territories from 1866 to 1868. The war was fought over control of the western Powder River Country in present-day north-central Wyoming and Montana.
In 1863, 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 Montana gold fields. 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 trail.Fort Phil Kearney/Bozeman Trail Association , accessed 12 Aug 2012
The United States named the war after Red Cloud, a prominent Oglala Lakota chief allied with the Cheyenne and Arapaho. The United States army had built forts in response to attacks on civilian travelers, using a treaty right according to historian Charles J. Kappler to "establish roads, military and other post".Kappler, Charles J.: Indian Affairs. Laws and Treaties. Washington, 1904. Vol. 2, p. 594. http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/Vol2/treaties/sio0594.htm All three forts were located in 1851 Crow Indian territory and accepted by these Indians.The forts were located west of the Powder River, which was the dividing line between the Crow territory and the Lakota territory according to the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851. (see this) The Crow believed they guarded their interests best by cooperating with the US army.Hoxie, Frederick E.: Parading through History. The Making of the Crow Nation in America, 1805–1935. Cambridge, 1995, p. 91. See also Rzeczkowski, Frank: "The Crow Indians and the Bozeman Trail," Montana, The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 49, No. 4 (Winter 1999), pp. 30–47. Papers relating to Talks and Councils held with the Indians in Dakota and Montana Territories in the Years 1866–1869. Washington, 1910, p. 67.
Red Cloud's War consisted mostly of constant small-scale Indian 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.Kappler, Charles J.: Indian Affairs. Laws and Treaties. Washington, 1904, Vol. 2, p. 1008. " ... the most dramatic battles between the army and the Dakota [in the 1860s and 1870s] were on lands those Indians had taken from other tribes since 1851."Ewers, John C.: "Intertribal Warfare as a Precursor of Indian-White Warfare on the Northern Great Plains". Western Historical Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 4 (Oct. 1975), pp. 397–410, quote p. 408.
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. The Crow lost their hunting grounds in the Powder River region to their enemies.Kappler, Charles J.: Indian Affairs. Laws and Treaties. Washington 1904. Vol. 2, pp. 998–1003. http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/Vol2/treaties/sio0998.htm Compare the 1851 Crow treaty territory with the 1868 unceded Indian Territory of the Lakota. With the treaty, "... the [United States] government had in effect betrayed the Crows, who had willingly helped the army to hold the posts for two years".Dunlay, Thomas W.: Wolves for the Blue Soldiers. Indian Scouts and Auxiliaries with the United States Army, 1860–90. Lincoln and London, 1982, p. 40 The victory of the Lakota and their allies endured for eight years until the Great Sioux War of 1876, when the US resumed taking their territories, including the sacred Black Hills. In a 1980 Supreme Court case, United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, the court ruled that tribal lands covered under the treaty had been taken illegally by the US government, and the tribe was owed compensation plus interest. As of 2018 this amounted to more than $1 billion.
Background
As early as 1805, a Crow camp allowed French-Canadian fur trader François Antoine Larocque to follow it across parts of the Powder River area.Hoxie, Frederick E.: Parading Through History. The Making of the Crow Nation in America, 1805–1935. Cambridge, 1995, map over the route p. 38. Utley, Robert M.: "The Bozeman Trail before John Bozeman: A Busy Land," Montana, The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 53, No, 2 (Summer 2003), pp. 20–31. According to him, the Crow "... inhabit the Eastern part of the Rocky Mountains at the head of the Rivière aux Roches Jaunes (Yellowstone River) and its Branches, Bighorn River, Tongue River, Powder River and others and Close to the head of the Missouri".Wood, Raymond W. and Thomas D. Thiessen: Early Fur Trade on the Northern Plains. Canadian Traders among the Mandan and Hidatsa Indians, 1738–1818. Norman and London, 1987, p. 206
From the late 17th century, the Lakota had been moving west into the Plains, enlarging their territory so that by the early 19th century, they controlled the mid-Missouri River region.White, Richard: "The Winning of the West: The Expansion of the Western Sioux in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries", The Journal of American History, Vol. 65, No. 2 (Sept. 1978), p. 321; 28 December 2016 Cheyenne and Lakota warriors attacked a big Crow camp at Tongue River in 1820, known today as the Tongue River Massacre, making their enmity permanent.Hyde, George E.: Life of George Bent. Written From His Letters. Norman, 1987, p. 26. See also Linderman, Frank B.: Pretty Shield. Medicine Woman of the Crows. Lincoln and London, 1974, p. 168. Linderman, Frank B.: Plenty Coups. Chief of the Crows. Lincoln/London, 1962, p. 190. In 1843, United States explorer John Frémont said that Lakota had told him that they would soon fight the Crow and take their land, as the Crow country had about the best bison range in the west.Fremont, John: The Expedition to the Rocky Mountains. Washington, D.C., 1988, p. 146.
In 1851, the area in question was included in a treaty with the United States for the first time, namely in the Fort Laramie treaty. This peace agreement defined territories for the tribes, in an effort by the US to establish peace among Native tribes and protect its own settlers. The treaty was signed by representatives of some factions of the numerous tribes of the Plains and mountainous West, including Crow, Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho; Gros Ventre, Mandan, and Arikara; Assiniboine and other nations. Intertribal warfare had been common among the tribes to gain social and economic advantages in furs, slaves, horses, hunting grounds, and other interests. They continued to wage war against each other into the late 19th century, conducting affairs separate from interaction with US forces and representatives.White: "The Winning of the West" (Sept 1978), p. 320; 28 December 2016
As the big game dwindled in the mid-1850s, the Lakota began to enlarge their hunting grounds and encroached and "ignored the boundaries" of the 1851 treaty.Richard: "The Winning of the West" (1978), quote p. 340 They crossed Powder River (the dividing line between the Lakota territory and that of the Crow) and launched their "own program for expansions" westward at the expense of other Natives.White, "The Winning of the West", (Sept 1978), quote p. 342. For the Crow, the plains near present-day Wyola, Montana became a field for "large-scale battles with invading Sioux".Medicine Crow, Joseph: From the Heart of the Crow Country. New York, 1992, p. 84. By 1860, the Lakota and their allies had driven the Crows away from their treaty-guaranteed hunting grounds on the west side of the Powder River.Serial 1308, 40th Congress, 1st Session, Vol. 1, Senate Executive Document 13, p. 127.
The Lakota winter count by Ben Kindle (Oglala) reflects the fighting between the Crow and the Oglala during these decisive years. In five out of eight "winters" (years) from 1857 to 1864, he refers to Oglala triumphs over the Crow or the reverse. The year 1857 is remembered for a battle in which "The Sioux killed ten Crow Indians." In an 1863 fight, "The Crow killed eight Oglala Sioux."Beckwith, Martha Warren: "Mythology of the Oglala Dakota", The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 43, No. 170 (Oct.–Dec. 1930), pp. 339–442, quote p. 362.
The discovery of gold in 1863 around Bannack, Montana was a catalyst for white settlers to find an economical route to the gold fields. While some emigrants went to Salt Lake City and then north to Montana, pioneer John Bozeman and John M Jacobs developed the Bozeman Trail from Fort Laramie north through the Powder River country east of the Bighorn Mountains to the Yellowstone, then westward over what is now Bozeman Pass. "It is apparent that the great northern routes of travel to and from Montana, both by land and water, lie through the country of the Crow Indians..." established the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1867.Papers relating to Talks and Councils held with the Indians in Dakota and Montana Territories in the Years 1866–1869. Washington, 1910, p. 31. However, the Lakotas "had gradually driven the Crows back upon the headwaters of the Yellowstone", and now they claimed "as a conquest almost the entire country traversed by what is called the Powder River route [Bozeman Trail] ...".Serial 136, 40th Congress, 3rd Session, Vol. 2, House Executive Document No. 1, p. 500. The trail passed through the Powder River hunting grounds of the Lakota or Western (Teton) Sioux. A second trail, the Bridger Trail, passed west of the Bighorns but was longer and therefore less favored.
The Powder River country encompasses the numerous rivers (the Bighorn, Rosebud, Tongue and Powder) that flow northeastward from the Bighorn Mountains to the Yellowstone. The Cheyenne had been the first tribe in this area, followed by bands of Lakota. As more of the northern plains became occupied by white settlement, this region became the last unspoiled hunting ground of the Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho and several of the seven bands of the Lakota.The treaty breaking annexation of the Crow's Powder River area in the 1850s by the Lakotas was the basis for Red Cloud's War against the United States on exactly the same soil a decade later.McGinnis, Anthony: Counting Coup and Cutting Horses. Intertribal Warfare on the Northern Plains, 17381889. Evergreen, 1990, p. 114. Utley, Robert M.: "The Bozeman Trail before John Bozeman: A busy Land". Montana, The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 53, No. 2 (Summer 2003), pp. 20–31. The United States vs. the Lakota was a conflict between "... two expanding empires, with the most dramatic battles occurring on lands only recently taken by the Sioux from other tribes".Calloway, Colin G.: "The Inter-tribal Balance of Power on the Great Plains, 1760–1850". Journal of American Studies, Vol. 16, No. 1 (April 1982), pp. 25–47, quote p. 46. In 1865, Maj. Gen. Grenville M. Dodge ordered the Powder River Expedition against the Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho. Three columns of soldiers numbering 2,675 men, commanded by Patrick E. Connor, moved into the Powder River country. The expedition failed to defeat the Indians in any decisive battles, although it destroyed an Arapaho village at the Battle of the Tongue River. The expedition was a failure in most respects as Lakota Indian resistance to white emigrants traveling the Bozeman Trail became more determined than ever.Brown, Dee. The Fetterman Massacre, Lincoln: U of NE Press, 1962, p. 15