Red Cloud’s formal political authority was stripped from him by an American bureaucratic decision.

He continued to advocate, continued to speak, continued to appear in public and make his case.

He was photographed many times — striking photographs that show a man who aged from the vigorous warrior of the 1860s to the elderly patriarch of the twentieth century, but who maintained throughout his bearing and his evident force of personality.

He went blind in his final years but continued to receive visitors and give interviews.

His final public statements, as reported by the journalists who visited him at Pine Ridge, reflect a consistent position: the promises made in the 1868 treaty had been broken, and the United States owed his people what had been promised.