The elimination of those herds — outside the treaty’s provisions, beyond any legal challenge available to the Lakota — was the final unraveling of what the 1868 settlement had briefly created.

Red Cloud at Washington

The accounts of Red Cloud’s visits to Washington in the early 1870s offer a window into his political sophistication and his reading of the situation he was trying to manage.

He visited Washington in June 1870, accompanied by other Lakota leaders and by agency officials.

The visit was intended to be a demonstration of American power — taking Indigenous leaders to the capital to show them the resources of the United States, making clear the futility of continued resistance.

For some leaders who made similar visits in this era, the strategy worked: the scale of American industrial and military capability genuinely impressed and sometimes demoralized.