CHAPTER XXII

RED CLOUD STANDS IN THE WAY (1865-1909)

THE SIOUX WHO CLOSED THE ROAD OF THE WHITES

The name Sioux comes down from a longer Chippewa word meaning "adder"

or "enemy." The Indians who bore this name were the powerful Dakotas--the true Sioux of history.

The wide Nation of the Lakota, as these Sioux called themselves, was a league of seven council fires.

The four divisions of the Santees lived in Minnesota; the two divisions of the Yanktons lived between them and the Missouri River; the one large division of the Tetons lived in their Dakota country, west of the Missouri River.

The Santees, the Yanktons and the Tetons spoke their own dialects.

They differed in appearance from one another. They were separated into tribes and bands.

Even as late as 1904 they numbered twenty-five thousand people in the United States. By mind, muscle and morals they have been rated as leaders of the Western red men. They roamed hither-thither, and depended upon the buffalo for food. They waged stout war.

The Tetons were the strongest, and formed half of, the Dakota nation.

It was chiefly they who fought the United States soldiers for so long.

The war opened in 1855, over the killing of a crippled cow by a Min-i-con-jou, at Fort Laramie of Wyoming, on the Oregon Trail of the emigrants.

The Brules, or Burnt Thighs; the Og-la-las, or Scatter-one"s-own; the Hunk-pa-pas, or Those-who-camp-by-themselves; the Min-i-con-jous, or Those-who-plant-beside-the-stream; the Si-ha-sa-pas, or Black-moccasins: these were the Teton Sioux who battled the hardest to save their buffalo and their lands from the white man.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RED CLOUD. Courtesy of The American Bureau of Ethnology.]

Red Cloud at first was chief of the Bad Faces band of Oglala Sioux.

They were a small fighting band, but he was a noted brave. His count showed more coups, or strike-the-enemy feats, than the count of any other warrior of the Oglalas. Before he retired from war, his coups numbered eighty.

He was born in 1822. His Sioux name was Makh-pia-sha, meaning Red Cloud. In the beginning it probably referred to a cloud at sunrise or sunset; later it referred to his army of warriors whose red blankets covered the hills.

When he was forty years old, there was much excitement among the white men to the west of the Sioux range. From the mines of Idaho the gold-seekers had crossed to the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains in western Montana. Mining camps such as Helena, Bozeman and Virginia City sprang up.

The Oregon Trail of the emigrants already pa.s.sed through the Sioux country, and the Sioux had agreed to let it alone. Now the United States asked permission to make a new road, which from Fort Laramie of southern Wyoming would leave the Oregon Trail, and branch off northwest, through the Powder River and the Big Horn country of Wyoming, and on west across Montana, as a short-cut to the gold-fields.

This part of Wyoming really was Crow Indian country; but the Sioux had driven the Crows out, and with the Northern Cheyennes were using the region for a hunting ground. The white man"s trails to the south had frightened the buffalo and reduced the herds; the Powder River valleys were the only ranges left to the Sioux, where they might hunt and always find plenty of meat.

Some of the Sioux chiefs did sign a treaty for the new road. The only Oglalas who signed were subchiefs. Red Cloud did not sign. The United States went ahead, anyway. Troops were sent forward, to begin the work of building the road. Red Cloud, with his Oglalas and some Cheyennes, surrounded them and captured them; held them prisoners for two weeks, until his young men threatened to kill them. Then he released them, with a warning.

"I shall stand in the trail," he said. Those were the words of Pontiac, to Major Rogers, one hundred years before.

United States officials were ordered to Fort Laramie, to talk with the angry Red Cloud. He declined to meet them.

But already a number of white gold-seekers had entered by this Bozeman Trail, as it was known. In June, of the next year, 1866, the United States tried again to get Red Cloud"s name on the paper. A council was called at Fort Laramie.

During the last year, another fort had been located. It was Fort Reno--the first out-post of the new trail, at the Powder River, one hundred and sixty-seven miles along from Laramie.

Red Cloud, and his lieutenant, They-fear-even-his-horses, came in to talk with the United States, at Fort Laramie. A great throng of Indians was present, for Fort Laramie was a busy post.

Nothing could be done with the Red Cloud band. The United States was willing to promise that n.o.body should be allowed to leave the new road, or to disturb any game. Red Cloud only shook his head. He well knew that the white travelers would not obey the law. They would hunt and camp, as they chose.

"Wah-nee-chee!" he said. "No good! Why do you come here and ask for what you have already taken? A fort has been built, and the road is being used. I say again, we will not sell our hunting grounds for a road."

But the United States had decided. The Government had been a.s.sured by the treaty makers that all the Sioux would finally yield. There was last fall"s treaty, as a starter. The Sioux from every band had signed. Besides, the Government could not give up the right to open roads. A railroad had the power to take right-of-way through towns and lands; and a Government wagon road should have the same license.

So certain was the Government that the road would be opened, that even while the council with the Red Cloud Oglalas was in session, there arrived at Fort Laramie Colonel Henry B. Carrington of the Eighteenth Infantry, with seven hundred soldiers.

Red Cloud saw the camp.

"Where are those soldiers going?"

"They are sent to open the new road and build forts."

"The Americans seek to steal our land whether we say yes or no!"

angrily uttered Red Cloud. "They will have to fight."

He and They-fear-even-his-horses (whom the white men called "Young-man-afraid-of-his-horses") seized their rifles, and rode away, and three hundred of their warriors followed them.

"Red Cloud means war," warned the Indians who remained. "The Great Father makes us presents, to buy the road; but the white soldiers come to steal it first. In two moons the white war chief will not have a hoof left."

An express sent after Red Cloud, to ask him to return, was whipped with bows and ordered to get out and tell the white chiefs that Red Cloud would not talk about the road.

Colonel Carrington marched on, into the forbidden land. The officers"

wives were with them. Traders along the line insisted that the Indians were determined to fight; but some of the emigrant outfits bound over the trail to the mines were scornful of danger. One emigrant captain laughed, when the women were timid.

"You"ll never see an Injun unless he comes in to beg for sugar and tobacco," he said. "I"ve been on the plains too long to be scared by such trash."

This was at Fort Reno. That very morning, in broad daylight Red Cloud"s band ran off all the post sutler"s horses and mules while the soldiers looked on. Eighty men pursued, and captured only one Indian pony loaded with goods obtained at Fort Laramie.

Colonel Carrington left a detachment here at the Powder River, to build a better Fort Reno. He marched on.

Meanwhile Red Cloud had been growing stronger. Sioux warriors were hastening to join him. Spotted Tail of the Brules had declined to accept the treaty for opening the road--he waited for Red Cloud; but he was wisely staying at home. However, his Brule young men were riding away in large numbers, and he told the white people at Fort Laramie that if they "went far on the trail they had better go prepared to look out for their hair."

Red Cloud was watching the march of the soldiers. He did not attack; but when he saw them pushing on, and finally making camp to locate another fort, fifty miles northwest of Reno, on Piney Fork of Lodge-pole Creek, in the Big Horn Mountains of northern Wyoming, he again sent a message, by a party of soldiers whom he met and turned back.

"The white chief must take his soldiers out of this country. Let him decide for peace or war. If he wants peace, he can go back to Powder River. The fort there can stay. But no forts shall be built farther on the road, and no soldiers shall march over the road which has never been given to the white people."

Red Cloud wanted an answer at once. He also asked that the white chief come to him with an interpreter, and settle matters in a council. But the messenger was held at the fort for a short time, and Red Cloud moved his warriors to a new place.

Colonel Carrington invited the Sioux to come to the camp; and went ahead building his fort. Some bands of Northern Cheyennes appeared for a talk. They said that Red Cloud had urged them to join the Sioux in keeping the white men out of the hunting grounds, and that he knew what the soldiers had been doing every hour since they left Fort Laramie.

The Cheyennes seemed a little fearful of the Sioux; but said that if they were given provisions, they would stay away from the white trail.

When the Cheyennes returned to the Sioux, Red Cloud asked them what the white chief had said.

"Is he going back to the Powder River?"