Northern Plains Indian Wars

By 1866, twenty years of confrontation had occurred on the Northern Plains as Indian tribes clashed over food, water, and grass, while European Americans pressed all the tribes in the quest for mineral wealth and settlement lands. The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 attempted to curtail these confrontations by establishing territorial boundaries for many Plains Indians, allowing the United States Government to build roads and forts, and permitting all signators to cross one another’s territory unmolested and unhindered, but diminishing buffalo herds and discoveries of gold led to continuing and escalating conflict. Gold discovered in southwest Montana led to the establishment of the Bozeman Trail in 1863, and by the fall of 1865 numerous fights with European Americans had allied the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho, while the Crow supported the military against them. New negotiations with the Northern Plains Indians began at Fort Laramie in June 1866, but some leaders did not sign, and when Carrington’s command arrived to establish three forts on the Bozeman Trail, Red Cloud and other leaders walked out, declaring that war would occur if the trail was used and the forts constructed. Carrington regarrisoned Fort Reno and established Forts Phil Kearny and C.F. Smith, while the leaders who refused to sign prepared for war. Red Cloud, an Oglala Sioux leader opposed to forts on the Bozeman Trail, helped assemble the coalition of tribes that defeated Fetterman’s command in Red Cloud’s War, though later trips east convinced him of the futility of continued warfare. During the fall of 1866, Red Cloud gathered Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors, raids on the Bozeman Trail forts increased, and Colonel Henry B. Carrington, commander at Fort Phil Kearny, was ordered to act more aggressively even as he requested more troops, better arms, and more ammunition. On December 21, 1866, Captain William J. Fetterman led eighty-one men to relieve a wood train under attack after decoys drew his force over Lodge Trail Ridge, where eight hundred to twelve hundred Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors had prepared an ambush in the Peno Creek Valley; in about one hour his command was surrounded and defeated, and Fort Phil Kearny lost eighty-one men, while Indian oral history indicates twenty or more casualties among the warriors. With the arrival of reinforcements, supplies, and two successive commanders, Fort Phil Kearny was reorganized, soldier training increased, and skirmishes continued through the spring and summer of 1867, while better arms and ammunition contributed to successful defenses in the Hay Field Fight and Wagon Box Fight on August 1 and 2. Debate in the East intensified after the Fetterman Fight, and the expense and unpopularity of frontier warfare, together with postwar equipment and logistics problems, shaped events as Fort Fetterman was established in 1867 but the Treaty of 1868 closed the Bozeman Trail and Forts Phil Kearny, Reno, and C.F. Smith, created reservations for the Sioux like those set up for the Cheyenne and Arapaho in 1866, and placed the Interior Department in charge of the tribes. An uneasy peace lasted for six years in the Powder River country until gold was discovered in the Black Hills in 1874, after which the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho were at war on the Little Big Horn River.

Wyoming · United States