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.
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". All three forts were located in 1851 Crow Indian territory and accepted by these Indians. The Crow believed they guarded their interests best by cooperating with the US army.
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. " ... 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."
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. 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". 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. 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".
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.
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. 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.
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.
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. 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. For the Crow, the plains near present-day Wyola, Montana became a field for "large-scale battles with invading Sioux". 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.
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."
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. 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] ...". 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. 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".
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.
After the Powder River Expedition, the U.S. attempted to negotiate safe passage for settlers through Indian territory. In autumn 1865, it negotiated several treaties with Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho leaders. The treaties provided monetary compensation to the Indians in exchange for their agreement to withdraw from the overland routes, established and to be established, in the Powder River country. However, the signatories to these treaties were "Laramie loafers"—Indians who lived near Fort Laramie and lived off handouts. For a treaty to be effective, the Indians who had fought Connor, especially Red Cloud, had to be engaged. No white man could be found to undertake a dangerous mission to find Red Cloud and bring him to Fort Laramie for negotiations, so several of the "loafers" took the task. On March 12, 1866, Red Cloud and his Oglala rode into Fort Laramie. Red Cloud committed to remain peacefully at the Fort until such time as the U.S.'s chief negotiator, E. B. Taylor, arrived with presents for the assembled Indians.
Crows such as Wolf Bow tried to push the whites to take action against the Indian intruders: "Put the Sioux Indians in their own country, and keep them from troubling us. Don't stop fighting them". When possible, the Crow warned the troops of imminent attacks from hostile Indians and they joined soldiers in fending off attempts to capture horses. The strikes and attacks on the soldiers by the Lakota "... appeared to be a great Sioux war to protect their land. And it was but the Sioux had only recently conquered this land from other tribes and now defending the territory both from other tribes and from the advance of white settlers".
Council at Fort Laramie
Negotiations between Red Cloud and other Native American leaders and the United States' representatives began in June 1866. On June 13, however, with the worst possible timing, Colonel Henry B. Carrington commanding the 18th Infantry, arrived at Laramie with the two battalions of the regiment (approximately 1,300 men in 16 companies) and construction supplies. He had orders to establish forts in the Powder River country using the 2nd Battalion of the 18th Infantry. The 3rd Battalion was to garrison posts along the old Oregon Trail, now the Platte Road. Carrington chose the 2nd Battalion because it contained 220 veteran soldiers consolidated after the American Civil War. When Carrington appeared at the negotiations the following day, Red Cloud refused to acknowledge him and accused the U.S. of bad faith in the negotiations. Red Cloud, They Fear Even His Horses, and others withdrew from the negotiations and departed Fort Laramie.
Negotiations continued with a reduced number of Indian leaders. The US offered a substantial inducement for their cooperation: 70,000 dollars per year for the Lakota and 15,000 dollars per year for the Cheyenne. The Indians may have learned that the US often failed to deliver on its promises in treaties for annuities. On June 29, Taylor reported to Washington that a treaty had been concluded and that a "most cordial feeling prevails" between white and Indian. He said that only about 300 warriors, led by Red Cloud, objected to the treaty. The US government expressed optimism that the treaty would be successful in keeping the peace. In December, President Andrew Johnson in his State of the Union address said that the Indians had "unconditionally submitted to our authority and manifested an earnest desire for a renewal of friendly relations." Unbeknownst to Johnson, Carrington at that time was under virtual siege by the Indians at Fort Phil Kearny.
The agreement was not ratified. The United States, as signer of the 1851 Fort Laramie treaty, could only undertake meaningful negotiations about the western Powder River plains with the legitimate holder of the area, the Crow tribe.
Opposing forces
Carrington left Fort Laramie for the Powder River Country on June 17, 1866. He led 700 soldiers, 300 civilians, including wives and children of soldiers, and civilian contractors; 226 wagons full of supplies, a 35-man regimental band, and 1,000 head of cattle for a supply of fresh meat. The number of soldiers reflected the reductions that had been made in the army since the Civil War. Previous military expeditions against the Sioux by Alfred Sully, Henry Hastings Sibley, and Patrick Edward Connor from 1863 to 1865 had numbered more than 2,000 soldiers.
Five hundred of Carrington's men were new recruits and most were infantry, rather than cavalry. He had much less ammunition than the 100,000 rounds promised him. Carrington's men were armed with muzzle-loading Springfield rifles from the Civil War rather than new, faster-firing Spencer carbines and breech loading rifles. He had been "equipped with the men, arms, and supplies to build and garrison forts, not to wage war with an active army."
Carrington did not use Indian scouts, but they could have provided him essential intelligence on his opponents and informed him of a mobile search-and-destroy attack force. Nearly all of the meager successes of the Powder River Expedition a year earlier were attributable to the Pawnee and Omaha scouts who had accompanied the expedition. A scout in another Indian war would say of US soldiers, "Uncle Sam's boys are too slow for this kind of work." Carrington's guide was the seasoned Mountain man Jim Bridger.
Carrington's opponents, the migratory hunting and warrior societies of the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho, had advantages in mobility, horsemanship, knowledge of the country, guerrilla hit-and-run tactics, and the capability to concentrate their forces to achieve numerical superiority. They also had many weaknesses as a fighting force, especially in organization and weapons. During winter and spring, the scarcity of natural resources resulted in their living in small, scattered autonomous groups. In late summer and fall they congregated into large encampments for ceremonies and to make political decisions and plan collective action. Bands were highly decentralized and individual Indians felt little obligation to obey group decisions. The Lakota consisted of seven independent bands, each made up of numerous sub-bands, all of whom operated independently. The Cheyenne had a more structured and centralized political organization.