Red Cloud

• Red Cloud

  Respected war leader of the Lakota Sioux Tribe
• Gold discovered in Montana


  1862
• Bozeman Trail


  Short cut used by gold prospectors to reach Montana, crossing through important Lakota Sioux hunting grounds
• Gold prospectors using the Bozeman Trail

  Trespassing Indian land
• Lakota Sioux


  Responded by attacking the gold prospectors
• 1866 treaty negotiations between US government and Lakota Sioux

  1. US wanted to persuade Lakota Sioux to allow prospectors to travel safely through Bozeman Trail

  2. Before talks began, Red Cloud discovered US had begun building forts along Bozeman Trail

  3. Red Cloud realised US would allow prospectors to travel Bozeman Trail whether Lakota Sioux agreed or not

  4. Red Cloud called off negotiations and chose to fight instead
• Lakota Sioux attacked a fort along the Bozeman Trail


  21st December 1866
• Fetterman's trap

  • Lakota Sioux tactic of sending a few men to be spotted, leading US soldiers into an ambush
  • Over 1,000 Lakota Sioux warriors surrounded and murdered Fetterman's 80 men, stripping, scalping and mutilating them
• Fetterman's trap was the US army's worse defeat ever against Plains Indians
• Fetterman's trap

  Convinced the government they needed to try persuade the Lakota Sioux to allow prospectors to travel through the Bozeman Trail, rather than continue fighting them
• Fetterman's trap resulted in the second Fort Laramie Treaty