Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West

Moving from Minnesota to Colorado, Brown focuses on another set of interactions between white settlers and Indigenous Americans during the Civil War years. Colorado was the territory of two major nations, the Arapaho and the southern Cheyenne (both of whom were regular allies of the Sioux), but the US need to build thoroughfares for travel to the West Coast meant that treaties had to be negotiated for land usage. In these initial treaties, the Arapaho and Cheyenne retained all their land rights and pledged to cooperate with the US, but increasing white settlement meant that the treaties’ protections of Indigenous rights were continuously being infringed upon. ­­

The Arapaho and Cheyenne generally desired good relations with the US, and their leaders, like Black Kettle, went to great lengths to be considered friends of white Americans. Nevertheless, the governor of the Colorado Territory and army officials in the area, like Colonel Chivington, considered Indigenous Americans savages and felt no restraint in carrying out massacres against them. The first tensions arose from misunderstandings, but soon every negative interaction was used by US officials as a pretext to cleanse the territory of its Indigenous inhabitants. Small reservations were assigned to the Arapaho and Cheyenne, and any tribal member found not living within their bounds was dubbed a “hostile Indian”: All white citizens of Colorado were given legal permission to “kill and destroy as enemies of the country wherever they may be found, all such hostile Indians” (75). These abuses came to a head in November of 1864, when US soldiers attacked a Native American camp at Sand Creek. In an unprovoked assault, US troops killed more than 100 women and children, along with 28 Indigenous men. “In a few hours of madness at Sand Creek,” writes Brown, “Chivington and his soldiers destroyed the lives or the power of every Cheyenne and Arapaho chief who had held out for peace with the white men” (92). In the end, the remaining Indigenous population of Colorado fled, most joining a powerful coalition of Sioux and Cheyenne in the Powder River region to the north, and a smaller contingent going as exiles to the Kiowa and Comanche territory to the south.

In August of 1865, four columns of soldiers, most of them under the command of General Patrick Connor, launched an invasion of Indigenous territories in Powder River Country (in and around present-day Wyoming). With US cavalry soldiers and Pawnee mercenaries, the columns struck one of the main Arapaho camps and burned whatever they found: “Everything the Arapahos owned—shelter, clothing, and their winter supply of food—went up in smoke” (112). Many members of the Indigenous alliance remained engaged in their annual religious rituals in the area, but others organized sporadic resistance to the advancing columns, especially after an offer of truce was met with violence by US soldiers. Under the command of leaders like Sitting Bull, Red Cloud, and Roman Nose, Sioux warriors set a series of ambushes for the invaders. They practiced and honed their tactics, coming to the realization that their traditional methods of warfare would not work against US troops, who were armed with modern weaponry like howitzers and rifles. Although not always successful, the Sioux’s harassing attacks and the effects of a harsh winter made General Connor’s men retreat back to Fort Laramie.

After the end of the Civil War in 1865, Governor Newton Edmunds of the Dakota Territory established a series of treaties with Sioux villages, which he would use as the basis for creating expanded thoroughfares of travel for white settlers in the West. The treaties had one major problem, however: None of the major Sioux leaders had actually signed them, and one leader in particular, Red Cloud, was proving troublesome to US interests around Fort Laramie. Red Cloud and other Sioux leaders were eventually lured to a treaty negotiation at the fort in the summer of 1866. There, the promises that had previously been made to them were shown to be worthless in comparison to the United States’ overriding interest in establishing a new thoroughfare into Montana, which would run straight through the Powder River Country. Red Cloud responded, “The white men have crowded the Indians back year by year […] and now our last hunting ground, the home of the People, is to be taken from us. Our women and children will starve, but for my part I prefer to die fighting rather than by starvation” (130).

Colonel Henry Carrington (“Little White Chief”) opened the road despite Sioux protestations and began construction of a new fort in the middle of the Powder River region. Red Cloud’s response was to raise a guerilla war against all traffic on the new road: “[his] grand strategy soon became apparent—make travel on the road difficult and dangerous, cut off supplies for Carrington’s troops, isolate them, and attack” (132). Red Cloud’s forces grew as he attracted new allies, and he found ways to supply some of his troops with weaponry that could match that of the US troops. In December of 1866, they successfully lured US soldiers out of their fort and tricked them into a devastating ambush. Red Cloud’s attacks effectively shut down the settlers’ road through Powder River Country. In response, a wave of commissioners from Washington sought to find a solution, leading in 1868 to the United States relinquishing its newly-built fort and road through the region.