Red Cloud's War

Red Cloud's War
Part of the Sioux Wars
Battle locations
Date 1866–1868 Location Powder River Country Result Native American victory
Belligerents
United States Crow Nation	Lakota Northern Cheyenne Northern Arapaho
Commanders and leaders
Henry B. Carrington William Fetterman †	Red Cloud Crazy Horse Man Afraid Of His Horses High Backbone
Strength
700 soldiers 300 civilians	1,500–2,000
Casualties and losses
~200 killed[1]	Unknown

Red Cloud's War (also referred to as the Bozeman War or the Powder River War) was an armed conflict between an alliance of the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Northern Arapaho peoples against the United States and the Crow Nation that took place in the Wyoming and Montana territories from 1866 to 1868. The war was fought over control of the western Powder River Country in present north-central Wyoming.

In 1863, European Americans had blazed the Bozeman Trail through the heart of the traditional territory of the Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Lakota.^[2] It was the shortest and easiest route from Fort Laramie and the Oregon Trail to the Montana gold fields. From 1864 to 1866, the trail was traversed by about 3,500 miners, emigrant settlers and others, who competed with the Indians for the diminishing resources near the trail.^[2]

The United States named the war after Red Cloud, a prominent Oglala Lakota chief allied with the Cheyenne and Arapaho. The United States army had built forts in response to attacks on civilian travelers, using a treaty right to "establish roads, military and other post".^[3] All three forts were located in 1851 Crow Indian territory and accepted by these Indians.^[4] The Crow believed they guarded their interests best by cooperating with the US army.^[5]

Red Cloud's War consisted mostly of constant small-scale Indian raids and attacks on the soldiers and civilians at the three forts in the Powder River country, wearing down those garrisons. The largest action of the war, the Fetterman Fight (with 81 men killed on the U.S. side), was the worst military defeat suffered by the U.S. on the Great Plains until the Battle of the Little Bighorn in the Crow Indian reservation ten years later.^[6] " ... the most dramatic battles between the army and the Dakota [in the 1860s and 1870s] were on lands those Indians had taken from other tribes since 1851."^[7]

With peace achieved under the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868, the Lakota and their allies were victorious. They gained legal control of the western Powder River country, took down the forts and permanently closed the Bozeman trail. The Crow lost their hunting grounds in the Powder River region to their enemies.^[8] With the treaty, "... the [United States] government had in effect betrayed the Crows, who had willingly helped the army to hold the posts for two years".^[9] The victory of the Lakota and their allies endured for eight years until the Great Sioux War of 1876, when the US resumed taking their territories, including the sacred Black Hills.^[10] In a 1980 Supreme Court case, United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, the court ruled that tribal lands covered under the treaty had been taken illegally by the US government, and the tribe was owed compensation plus interest. As of 2018 this amounted to more than $1 billion.