This context also helps explain why the 1868 treaty, despite its specific provisions and its formal legal status, did not produce lasting peace.

The Lakota who signed it had reason to be skeptical about American commitments from the beginning.

When those commitments were violated — as they had been violated in virtually every previous treaty — the skepticism was vindicated, and the response was the resistance of 1876.

The Role of Sitting Bull

Sitting Bull deserves specific attention in the context of Red Cloud’s War, not because he was the principal leader of the resistance in this period but because his position in the broader Lakota world during these years illuminates the political complexity of the situation.

Sitting Bull was Hunkpapa Lakota, from a different band than Red Cloud’s Oglala.