The Lakota Leader Who Forced The U.S. Army To Abandon Its Forts — And Won A War Most Americans Never Learned About

It doesn’t go away because it isn’t taught.

Red Cloud watched those forts burn.

Then he signed the treaty.

Now you know why.

— FINAL END —

The Sand Creek Context: Why Mistrust Was Warranted

Red Cloud’s refusal to sign a treaty while American soldiers remained in the Powder River Country becomes even more comprehensible when placed in the context of what had happened at Sand Creek in Colorado just two years before the 1866 Fort Laramie council.

On November 29, 1864, a force of Colorado militia under Colonel John Chivington had attacked a Cheyenne and Arapaho village at Sand Creek.