Red Cloud

He took only one wife in his lifetime, unlike many of the other tribal leaders who used to marry multiple wives. His wife’s name was Pretty Owl and their marriage lasted more than half a century. He was a devoted father to the several children he had with his wife.

After retiring as the tribal chief he lived in the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. During his later years he converted to Christianity and took the name ‘John’. He died in 1909 at the age of 87.

Red Cloud was born as Mahpiya Luta to an Oglala Lakota mother, Walks As She Thinks, and a Brule Lakota chief father, Lone Man. His name literally means “Scarlet Cloud” referring to the strange formation of reddish clouds that hovered when he was born.

His father died while he was young. In the Lakota tribe, matrilineal hierarchy was followed where the children belonged to the mother’s clan. Thus he was raised by his maternal uncle Old Chief Smoke.

He learned to fight and hunt as a young boy and started showing signs of aggressive leadership from an early age. He fought against the neighboring rival clans Pawnee and Crow and scalped several enemies.

The Oglala clan maintained peaceful relations with the white settlers up to the 1860s. During that time gold was discovered on the Montana area—an area which could be reached by the whites only by passing through the tribes’ territory—and the U.S. Army began building a road leading to the gold fields through the tribes’ lands.

The U.S. Army began building a series of forts across the Lakota hunting grounds to protect the road which became known as the Bozeman trail. This trail allowed white miners, immigrants and others directly into the buffalo feeding areas of the tribes. This was unacceptable to the tribes as the whites endangered their resources.

Red Cloud along with the other Lakota tribal chiefs was asked to sign a non-aggression treaty allowing passage across their lands from Fort Laramie to the gold fields of Montana to which he refused.

This led to the Red Cloud’s War—an armed conflict between the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Northern Arapaho on one side and the U.S. Army on the other side. The war started in 1866 and lasted for two years till 1868.

In December 1866 Captain W. J. Fetterman led a troop of 80 men in an attack against a group of Sioux warriors. All the soldiers were killed and their stripped and mutilated bodies were later discovered by the U.S. Army. This incident known as the Fetterman Fight was worst military disaster ever suffered by the U.S. on the Great Plains.

The biggest war he led bears his name: ‘Red Cloud’s War’. It was an armed conflict which was fought between the tribes and the U.S. government over the control of the Powder River Country. He played a significant role in the Fetterman Fight in which 81 white soldiers were killed—it was the worst military defeat suffered by the U.S. on the Great Plains till then.