Biographies of Plains Indians: Red Cloud - 1820-1909 - American Indian Relief Council is now...

On June 9, 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant met with Sioux Chief Red Cloud at The White House in Washington, D.C. From the article:

"When the U.S. troops built forts along the Bozeman Trail, Red Cloud and his followers cut off food supplies and laid siege to Fort Phil Kearney for two years. Attacks were launched against troops and settlers. The native warriors employed guerilla tactics. Captain William Fetterman led a relief party in 1866 of eighty-one men. He boasted that with eighty men he could ride through the Sioux nation. He never returned.

In 1868 the government finally requested a cessation of raids and signed the Fort Laramie Treaty guaranteeing the Powder River country as well as the Black Hills to be reserved for the Lakotas forever. Native American warriors burned down every fort along the trail. They knew that forever is not a long time in U.S. government treaties with Native Americans.

Red Cloud traveled to Washington to meet with President Grant and on to New York where he made a speech. Returning to the Plains a Sioux agency was named for him in present-day South Dakota. Red Cloud spent the 1870s and 80s seeking to mediate peaceful relations between the Sioux and the United States. He was accused by some younger Oglala of selling out, while government officials accused him of secretly aiding the Sioux and Cheyenne bands that defeated General George Custer at Little Bighorn. Red Cloud’s reservation was renamed Pine Ridge.

During his later years Red Cloud lost his sight and had little to do with his people’s affairs. He died at Pine Ridge in 1909. In the course of his lifetime he had watched the West go from the heyday of the Plains horse culture to an era of the almost complete eradication of Native Americans."