Red Cloud, 1822-1909

Red Cloud was born close to the forks of the Platte River, near the modern-day city of North Platte, Nebraska. His mother, Walks as She Thinks, was an Oglala Lakota and his father, Lone Man, was a Brulé Lakota leader. They came from two of the seven major Lakota divisions.

As was traditional among the matrilineal Lakota, in which the children belonged to the mother's clan and people, Red Cloud was mentored as a boy by his maternal uncle, Old Chief Smoke (1774–1864). Old Chief Smoke played a major role in the boy's childhood, as the leader of the Bad Faces. He brought Red Cloud into the Smoke household when the boy's parents died around 1825. At a young age, Red Cloud fought against neighboring Pawnee and Crow bands, gaining much war experience.

Red Cloud's War was the name the U.S. Army gave to a series of conflicts fought with Native American Plains tribes in the Wyoming and Montana Territories. The battles were waged between the Northern Cheyenne, allied with Lakota and Arapaho bands, against the Army between 1866 and 1868. In December 1866, the Native American allies attacked and defeated a United States unit in what they would call the Fetterman Massacre (or the Battle of the Hundred Slain), which resulted in the most U.S. casualties of any Plains battle up to that point.

Captain William J. Fetterman was sent from Fort Phil Kearny with two civilians and 79 cavalry and infantrymen to chase away a small Native American war party that had attacked a wood-gathering party days before. Captain Frederick Brown accompanied Fetterman; the two were confident in their troops and anxious to go to battle with the Native Americans. They disobeyed orders to stay behind the Lodge Trail Ridge and pursued a small decoy band of warriors, led by a Native American on an apparently injured horse. The decoy was the prominent warrior Crazy Horse. Fetterman and his troops followed the decoy into an ambush by more than 2,000 Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho. Combined Native American forces suffered only 14 casualties, while they killed the entire 81-man U.S. detachment.

Following this battle, a U.S. peace commission toured the Plains in 1867 to gather information to help bring about peace among the tribes and with the U.S. Finding that the Native Americans had been provoked by white encroachment and competition for resources, the commission recommended assigning definite territories to the Plains tribes. The Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, Arapaho, and other bands settled for peace with the U.S. under the Treaty of Fort Laramie. The U.S. agreed to abandon its forts and withdraw completely from Lakota territory.

The treaty established the Great Sioux Reservation, covering the territory of West River, west of the Missouri River in present-day Nebraska (which had been admitted as a state in 1867), and including parts of South Dakota. Uneasy relations between the expanding United States and the natives continued. In 1870, Red Cloud visited Washington D.C., and met with Commissioner of Indian Affairs Ely S. Parker (a Seneca and U.S. Army General), and President Ulysses S. Grant.

In 1871, the government established the Red Cloud Agency on the Platte River, downstream from Fort Laramie. As outlined in the 1868 Treaty, the agency staff was responsible for issuing weekly rations to the Oglala, and providing the annually distributed supply of cash and annuity goods. The agent and Washington officials would determine how much of the annuity was to be paid in cash or goods, and sometimes the supplies were late, in poor condition, inadequate in amount, or never arrived at all. Red Cloud took his band to the agency (a predecessor of the Native American reservation) and tried to help them in the transition to a different way of life. In the fall of 1873, the agency was removed to the upper White River in northwestern Nebraska.

According to Charles A. Eastman (Ohiyesa) Red Cloud was the last to sign "..having refused to do so until all of the forts within their territory should be vacated. All of his demands were acceded to, the new road abandoned, the garrisons withdrawn, and new treaty distinctly stated that the Black Hills and the Big Horn were Indian country, set apart for their perpetual occupancy, and that no white man should enter that region without the consent of the Sioux. ... Scarcely was this treaty signed, however, when gold was discovered in the Black Hills, and the popular cry was: "Remove the Indians!"... The government, at first, entered some small protest, just enough to "save its face"... but there was no serious attempt to prevent the wholesale violation of the treaty."

Red Cloud settled at the agency with his band by the fall of 1873. He soon became embroiled in a controversy with the new Indian agent, Dr. John J. Saville.

In 1874, Lieutenant Colonel George Custer led a reconnaissance mission into Sioux territory that reported gold in the Black Hills, an area held sacred by the local Native Americans. Previously, the army had unsuccessfully tried to keep miners out of the region, and the threat of violence grew. In May 1875, Lakota delegations headed by Red Cloud, Spotted Tail, and Lone Horn traveled to Washington in an attempt to persuade President Grant to honor existing treaties and stem the flow of miners into their lands. The Native Americans met on various occasion with Grant, Secretary of the Interior Delano, and Commissioner of Indian Affairs Smith. He told them on May 27 that Congress was ready to resolve the matter by paying the tribes $25,000 for their land and resettling them into Indian Territory. The delegates refused to sign such a treaty, with Spotted Tail saying about the proposal:

When I was here before, the President gave me my country, and I put my stake down in a good place, and there I want to stay. ... You speak of another country, but it is not my country; it does not concern me, and I want nothing to do with it. I was not born there. ... If it is such a good country, you ought to send the white men now in our country there and let us alone.

Although Red Cloud was unsuccessful in finding a peaceful solution, he did not take part in the Lakota war of 1876–1877, which was led by Tȟašúŋke Witkó (Crazy Horse) and Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake (Sitting Bull).

In the fall of 1877, the Red Cloud Agency was removed to the upper Missouri River. The following year it was removed to the forks of the White River, in present-day South Dakota, where it was renamed the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

Red Cloud became an important leader of the Lakota as they transitioned from the freedom of the plains to the confinement of the reservation system. His trip to Washington, DC, had convinced him of the number and power of European Americans, and he believed the Oglala had to seek peace.

In around 1880, he visited (not for the first time) the palaeontologist and geologist Othniel Marsh in New Haven, Connecticut. Marsh had first visited the Red Cloud Agency in 1874, alleging, among other things, that "the Indians suffered for want of food and other supplies because they were cheated out of annuities and beef cattle and were issued inedible pork, inferior flour, poor sugar and coffee and rotten tobacco."

In 1884, he and his family, along with five other leaders, converted and were baptized as Catholics by Father Joseph Bushman.

Red Cloud continued fighting for his people, even after being forced onto the reservation. In 1887, he opposed the Dawes Act, which broke up communal tribal holdings, and allocated 160-acre (65 ha) plots of land for subsistence farming to heads of families on tribal rolls. The U.S. declared additional communal tribal lands as excess, and sold them to immigrant settlers. In 1889, Red Cloud opposed a treaty to sell more of the Lakota land. Due to his steadfastness, and that of Sitting Bull, government agents obtained the necessary signatures for approval only through subterfuge, such as using the signatures of children. Red Cloud negotiated strongly with Indian Agents such as Dr. Valentine McGillycuddy.

Outliving nearly all the other major Lakota leaders of the Indian Wars, Red Cloud died on Pine Ridge Reservation in 1909, at the age of 87, and was buried there in the cemetery now bearing his name. In old age, he is quoted as having said, "They made us many promises, more than I can remember. But they kept but one -- They promised to take our land ... and they took it."

Announcements of Red Cloud's death and recognition of his achievements were printed in major newspapers across the country. As had been typical of the U.S. perception during Red Cloud's prominence in war, The New York Times' article on his death mistakenly described him as leader of all the Sioux bands and tribes, but noted his abilities as a leader and diplomat. While he was a prominent leader, the Lakota were highly decentralized and never had one overall leader, especially of the major divisions, such as Oglala and Brulé.

Red Cloud was the most photographed American Indian of the nineteenth century. There are 128 known photographs picturing Red Cloud. He was first photographed in 1872 in Washington D.C. by Mathew Brady, just before meeting with President Grant. He was also among the Indians photographed by Edward S. Curtis.

In 2000, he was posthumously selected for induction into the Nebraska Hall of Fame. He has been honored by the United States Postal Service with a 10¢ Great Americans series postage stamp.

In 1871, the town of Red Cloud, Nebraska was named in his honor.

Theodore Sorensen wrote in Kennedy that President John F. Kennedy considered naming one of the 41 for Freedom ballistic missile submarines after Red Cloud, but apparently bowed to Pentagon concerns that the name could be misinterpreted as being pro-Communist even though Red Cloud was not a Communist, owing to the symbolism of the time (early 1960s, during the Cold War era) using the color red to represent Communism.

Moss Icon, an Annapolis-based post-hardcore band, released their Mahpiua Luta 7" EP in 1989. The lyrics to their 1992 song "Sioux Day" contain repeated references to Red Cloud.