Red Cloud

Native American leader

• Born: 1822
• Birthplace: Blue Creek, near North Platte (now in Nebraska)
• Died: December 10, 1909
• Place of death: Pine Ridge, South Dakota

Red Cloud led the Lakota (Sioux) Indians through a difficult period, effectively resisting the onrush of American westward advance and later helping the Lakota make the transition to reservation life under American rule.

Early Life

Red Cloud was born into the Oglala subtribe of the Teton branch of Lakota, or Dakota people (more popularly known as Sioux) on the high plains of what is now Nebraska. His father, a headman in the Brulé 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.

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 Lakota 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 the age of sixteen. Thereafter, he was always quick to participate in expeditions against Pawnee, Crows, or Ute. Other Oglala frequently retold Red Cloud’s colorful exploits in battle. During a raid against the Crows, 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.

During 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 Lakota. There is no agreement on how many children he fathered, although five is the number most 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 an increasing following among the Bad Faces. Lakota social and political structure was 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.

Life’s Work

In the several decades before the Civil War, traders began operating in Lakota territory, followed by wagon trains, telegraph construction, and more. The Lakota welcomed most of the traders and at least tolerated most of the wagon trains, even though whites disrupted hunting by killing indiscriminately and chasing many 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 Lakota 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 that linked Montana with the Oregon Trail.

In 1865, many Lakota, 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 a removal of soldiers. The government tried to ignore Red Cloud for a time, but the Lakota almost completely closed down travel and obstructed efforts to construct the forts. This was 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 Lakota’s exclusive leader. The U.S. government, however, assumed that he was the head chief and dealt with him as such. During 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 Red Cloud was motivated by a desire to gain the status among the Lakota that he already enjoyed in the view of federal officials. On the other hand, he may have realized that since many white Westerners opposed a reservation and preferred the extermination of Indians, a reservation, combined with the withdrawal of troops from all Lakota lands, an important objective to Red Cloud, might be the best compromise he could achieve. He and twenty other Lakota 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 Lakota 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 Lakota 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 indeed had his support. 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.

Significance

Red Cloud emerged as a military and political leader at a dramatic and tragic time in the history of the Lakota people. Onetime powerful nomadic buffalo hunters, they were going through far-reaching changes. American westward advance constricted their land base, destroyed the buffalo upon which their economy depended, and ultimately brought about their impoverishment. Moreover, government attempts to destroy traditional Lakota ways of life on the reservation, while never completely successful, resulted in cultural shock.

For a time, Red Cloud resisted militarily as effectively as any Native American leader ever had. Then, when American domination became clear, he attempted delicately 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 Lakota 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 and meaning. During 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

Allen, Charles Wesley. Autobiography of Red Cloud: War Leader of the Oglalas. Edited by R. Eli Paul. Helena: Montana Historical Society Press, 1997. Red Cloud gave an oral account of his life to a historian in 1893, and Allen later prepared a manuscript with Red Cloud’s recollections. The manuscript languished in the offices of the Nebraska State Historical Society for decades until it was published by the Montana Historical Society in 1997.

Cook, James H. Fifty Years on the Old Frontier. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1923. Neither scholarly nor complete in its coverage of Red Cloud, it does contain some interesting, colorful, and firsthand descriptions of the Lakota leader and some of his exploits by a prominent frontiersman and close friend.

DeMallie, Raymond J., ed. The Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk’s Teachings Given to John G. Neihardt. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984. Does not focus on Red Cloud’s life specifically, but provides direct accounts of various events in his life, especially surrounding the 1875-1876 Black Hills controversy, as told by Black Elk and other Lakota participants to poet John Neihardt.

Goodyear, Frank H., III. Red Cloud: Photographs of a Lakota Chief. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003. Red Cloud was photographed many times because he believed these photographs helped him serve as a mediator between the Oglala Lakota and the federal government. This book contains more than eighty photographs by Mathew Brady, Edward Curtis, and other photographers. It also features a biographical and historical analysis written by Goodyear.

Hyde, George E. Red Cloud’s Folk: A History of the Oglala Sioux Indians. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1937. Less complete and authoritative than the more recent book by James C. Olson, but generally well written and reliable. Focuses on the earliest period of which historians have any knowledge of Lakota history to about the end of the Sioux War of 1876-1877.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. A Sioux Chronicle. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1956. A continuation of Red Cloud’s Folk that carries the story of the Oglala to the tragedy at Wounded Knee in 1890. Contains less information about Red Cloud, because his role was diminishing by the end of the nineteenth century. However, it does offer useful material on Red Cloud’s part in Lakota history after the creation of the reservation during the 1870’s.

Olson, James C. Red Cloud and the Sioux Problem. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965. The best and most complete account of Red Cloud. Except for some background information on the Lakota and Red Cloud’s early life, it begins with the period immediately after the Civil War and ends with the death of Red Cloud in 1909.

Robinson, Doane. A History of the Dakota or Sioux Indians. Aberdeen, S.D.: News Printing, 1904. Reprint. Minneapolis, Minn.: Ross and Haines, 1958. First printed by the South Dakota State Historical Society in 1904, this book bears the mark of scholarship in an earlier era in its attitude toward Indians. It is so factually solid and complete that it still stands as an important source for information on Red Cloud.

Utley, Robert M. The Last Days of the Sioux Nation. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1963. An excellent history of the events surrounding the famous Massacre of Wounded Knee, including material about Red Cloud’s participation in that event that reveals something about his role in Lakota society in 1890.