Carbon County news., 1937-09-24
Red Cloud, Chief Of the Oglala Sioux,
Was Warrior, Patriot and Diplomat
Both the War Trail and in the Council Lodge He Proved
Hold His Own With His "Whte Brothers"
By
ELMO SCOTT WATSON

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North America. That night
an Indian mother named
I Walks-As-She-Thi sat in
her lodge which was pitched
somewhere on the grassy
/ plains of South Dakota be-
tween the Black Hills and the
Missouri river. She was
cradling in her arm her new
born son andSas the huge ball
!. of fire blazed overhead, she
looked up through the open
ing at the top of the lodge.
High above her she saw a
f1eecy cloud turn a brilliant
red in the glaze of the blaz-
ing star. For a moment she
clasped her little son fearful
. ly to her breast. Then she
laughed and, turning to her
. husband, Chief Lone Man,
exclaimed: ''It is a sign! His
name shall, be Makhpiya
Luta, the Red Cloud"
Walks-As-She- Thinks little real
lied how great that name, thus
lightly given, would become; how
during the next SO years it would
be a name of terror to the white
men who were then just begin
ming to crowd in upon the lands
Of her people, the Teton Sioux.
George E. Hyde, in his recently
published "Red Clouds Folk"
calls the westward drive Of the
Sioux from their ancestral homes
in Minnesota to Montana zone Of
the epic migrations of history"
and says:
''The Oglalas were the spear
head of the Teton Sioux advance,
and from 1910 onwards they
stood squarely in the path Of that
new immigration of pioneer
trains, traders and the protective
military, which threatened their
neWly-won hunting range on the
northern prairies. In the his
toric struggle which ensued,
white reverses revealed the real
might of the Sioux and dur
ing these years of heavy conflict,
between 1865 and 1877, Red Cloud
stood out as one of the greatest
of the Sioux leaders"
Red Cloud had good reason to
dislike the white invaders and to
"stand in their path" He was
left an orphan at the age of three,
his father, Chief Lone Man of the
Brules, dying from the effects of
drinking too much firewater sup
piled by white traders. When he
lost his mother soon afterwards,
his sisters, who were bringing
him up, took him with them to
the camp of Old Smoke, a Saone
Teton chief, near Fort Laramie
and there Red Cloud grew into
young manhood. IT,.
In 1855 Red Cloud learned his
first lesson in "the white mans
Justice" It was when Gen. w. S.
Harvey won his famous ''victory"
at Ash Hollow, where he attacked
the camp of Little Thunder, a
friendly Brule chief, and killed
86 men, women and children.
It was such incidents as these,
plus the grating propensitieS of
their agents, which made the
Og1alas and Brules distrustful of
the white men and as traffic over
the Oregon Trail increased, GER
tain bands of both tribes retired to
the Powder river. Among them
was the Iteshica or "Bad Faces"
with which young Red Cloud was
associated. He won renown as a
warrior in more than one battle
with the Crows and by 1865 he
was rated as a ''shirt-wearer" or
head soldier. But he had yet to
lift a hostile hand against the
white man, although that was
coming soon enough.
Avoiding Trouble.
Mainly due to the efforts of
Man Afraid of His Horses, the |
principal chief of the Oglalas, |
these Powder river Sioux had
avoided collision with the whites. |
They did this even though some
of their tribesmen had joined the
Cheyennes and Arapahoes in the
war which had been raging south
of the Platte.
In March, 1865, a great group
of hostiles from the south joined
the Powder river tribes. 'The
story these southern Indians told
of the outrages the white soldiers
had committed against them
while they were still friendly and
of the retribution they had ex-
acted from the whites, the sight
of the great numbers of captured
horses these hostiles had in their
possession and the plunder that
filed their camps greatly excited
the Powder river bands. It must
have been at this moment that
Man Afraid of His Horses, who
had stood firmly for peace with