The nationality of
Chief (?) Red Leaf was Wazhazha Oglala.
1 Also known as (?) Wahpasa. (?) was born circa 1840. He was war after November 13, 1854 at
Platte River Region, Lakota Territory; (1854) Page 87-88
In the aftermath of the clash at Bordeaux’s Trading Post, the Sioux began fragmenting into small bands, going their own way in search of game, though the Cheyennes and Arapahoes, who had avoided becoming involved in the trouble, remained peaceably disposed in the area. Conquering Bear died of his wounds several days after the fight and the Sioux, having obtained their annuity goods, albeit by force, only invited further trouble by staying in the area. Nevertheless, once their noncombatants had been removed a safe distance to the north, war parties began frequenting the Oregon Trail, prompting Agent Alfred J. Vaughan at Fort Pierre, to predict: “. . . any white man found on the road will certainly be killed by them. They state openly that next spring they will
keep parties constantly on the emigrant route, and kill all they find.”1 That the threat was real was evidenced on November 13 when a small party of Brule warriors, among them Red Leaf, Spotted Tail, Young Conquering Bear, and Long Chin, returned to the Platte to kill white men in retaliation for the chief’s death. The raiders pounced on the mail coach at Cold Spring, twenty-four miles below Fort Laramie, killing the driver and the conductor riding alongside. The only passenger, Salt Lake businessman Charles A. Kinkaid, was wounded in the leg, but managed to escape with his life. The Indians destroyed the mail, and made off with the mules, along with over $10,000 in gold coin, leading the Sioux to record 1854 in their winter count as the year of “Much Money.” The attack caused Reeside to withdraw from the mail contract, forcing Isaac Hockaday to also dissolve his partnership in passenger service. The increased trouble along the Upper Platte finally moved the army to send two additional companies of the Sixth Infantry to reinforce Fort Laramie.2
2 Frank Salaway interview, November 3, 1906, Eli Ricker Collection, Nebraska State Historical Society. copy in vertical files, library, Fort Laramie NHS; John S. Gray, “The Salt Lake Hockaday Mail,” Annals of Wyoming, (fall 1984), p. 13; Antoine Bordeaux interview, typescipt notes, p. 442, Camp Collection, Brigham Young University; A Tenth Infantry officer marching over the trail in 1857 recorded that they “passed near or rather through the gap where the mail party was killed the same year [1854].” Jesse A. Gove, TheUtah Expedition 1857 - 1858, (Concord: 1928), p. 49; An attack on Fort Laramie was registered on August 28, 1854, yet no mention of it is found in the post records. Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army, (Urbana: 1965), II, p. 401(hereinafter cited as Historical Register with vol.). This may allude to an occasion when approximately 200 Cheyennes rode into the post at about 10 o’clock at night and fired three shots. Obviously, they considered it to be only a symbolic raid. Unfortunately, no date was recorded, but we know that Whitfield arrived soon after the Grattan fight. John W. Whitfield to Colonel Cumming, September 27, 1854, ARCIA, 1854, p. 94.
(1855) Page 95-96
Thunder Bear subsequently sent word to Twiss that he desired peace, and to prove his good intentions, he would see that those guilty of the mail coach murders were turned over to government authorities. The agent placed little confidence in the promise, but to his surprise, Spotted Tail, Long Chin, and Red Leaf appeared at the agency on October 17th, expressing their earnest desire to surrender themselves to prevent any further war being made on the Brules. They were told they would be imprisoned at Fort Leavenworth, to which they acceded, but they were not then prepared to make such a long a journey. The men promised to return in ten days, after they had seen to the welfare of their families and gathered necessary belongings. The other two perpetrators, they informed Major Hoffman, were mere boys. One had gone off among the Sioux near the Missouri River, while the other was seriously ill and could not travel. Nevertheless, Hoffman insisted they be brought in. A delegation comprising Little Thunder, Man Afraid, and other chiefs assured Hoffman a few days later that they would comply as an added gesture of good faith. Since winter was already setting in, the major determined to send the first three captives to Fort Leavenworth for confinement as soon as they returned. They would be accompanied by a guard detachment, as well as a small party of their relatives. When the others surrendered, they would either be jailed at Fort Laramie for the winter, or sent to Leavenworth with one of the mail escorts.11
A month later, Red Leaf’s nephew appeared at the fort to present himself as a prisoner in lieu of the man who had gone with the Missouri River Sioux. The fifth member of the raiding party, probably Young Conquering Bear, still lay ill with consumption in the Brule village. The nephew was shackled to a ball and chain and placed in a lodge adjacent to the post guardhouse until he could be transferred to Leavenworth when the road cleared in spring. Meantime, the youth changed his mind about being a surrogate prisoner and took advantage of a chance to escape on January 2 while one of his two guards was eating supper. Having cut the shackle bolt with an axe provided earlier by a Sioux woman, the Brule burst out of the tepee within twenty feet of the startled sentry and scampered away. The guard fired a futile shot at the shadowy figure as he vanished into the darkness. The sergeant of the guard and eight men quickly took up the chase, and behind them followed a lieutenant and twenty-five more infantrymen, yet the Indian made good his escape.12
11 Hoffman to Assistant Adjutant General, Sioux Expedition, November 4, 1855, Sioux Expedition Letters.
12 Hoffman to Major D. F. Winship, November 6, 1855, Letters Sent, Fort Laramie, Records of U. S. Army Continental Commands, 1821 – 1920, R. G. 393, N. A., Washington, D. C., (hereinafter cited as LS, Fort Laramie); Hoffman to Captain Alfred Pleasonton, December 13, 1855, ibid; Hoffman to Pleasonton, January 6, 1856, ibid; Hoffman to Captain Henry W. Wharton, March 21, 1856, ibid; Captain A. P. Howe to Hoffman, January 4, 1856, Sioux Expedition Letters.
(1866) Page 407
As winter approached, the hostiles, except for small raiding parties, withdrew to the villages in the north. It came as no surprise to Van Voast when two emissaries from Red Leaf's Brules arrived at Fort Laramie asking to know if the band could come in. It was a threadbare ploy: fight in summer, repent in fall—and draw government rations all winter. Aware that Red Leaf was allied with Red Cloud, Van Voast told the chief he could do as he pleased, but he preferred that Red Cloud and the others "stay and fight this winter—that I wanted him to fight till he was satisfied . . . that the Soldiers had given them all summer to make peace but they had no ears—that soon the Soldiers would give them ears."58
57 Lieutenant George A. Armes, commander of the detachment from Fort Sedgwick, was later cited in General Orders No. 20, Dept. of the Platte, November 26, 1866 for his conduct in this affair. Annual Report of the Secretary of War, House Exec. Doc., No. 1, 40th Cong., 2d Sess. (Washington, D. C.: 1867), p. 478; Post Returns, November 1866, Fort Laramie.
58 Van Voast to A. A. A. G., Dept. of the Platte, October 16, 1866, LS, Fort Laramie.
(1867) Page 419-420
Speeding across Nebraska on the new railroad, the commissioners planned to first confer with Spotted Tail at North Platte, and interview Colonel Carrington at the nearby post. Afterward they would travel to Fort Laramie where they would hold a council with all the Indians in the area. Moving on, they would secure a strong military escort to Fort Phil Kearny in hopes of meeting there with Red Cloud himself. They, in fact, were so confident that a peaceful solution could be reached that they dispatched a message from Fort McPherson inviting the Oglala leader to rendezvous with them at one of the very posts he was endeavoring to destroy. It should have come as no surprise when Red Cloud spurned the proposal, but Man Afraid and Red Leaf, with some three hundred followers, elected to give up the war and go to Fort Laramie for treaty goods. When other small bands began to straggle in during early May, Palmer granted the commissioners permission to hold a council within the reservation, a mile or two north of the fort beyond the Platte. Man Afraid showed up within a week, but he was disappointed to discover that because army provisions had dwindled to only a thirty-day supply for the garrison, Palmer had ceased issues to the Indians until the Interior Department could feed them.17
17 Palmer to Brigadier General Alfred Sully, May 9, 1867, ibid; Apparently, Judge Kinney was sent up the Bozeman Trail, while the rest of the commissioners remained at Fort Laramie. Palmer made arrangements for a 150-man cavalry escort, but when Kinney found that he could coordinate his trip with a troop movement of the Twenty-seventh Infantry, Kinney decided to accompany them. Palmer to Sully, May 8, 1867, ibid; Palmer to Judge I. F. Kinney, May 12, 1867, ibid.
(1868) Page 437-38
In December, with the Fort Laramie garrison settled in for the winter, Sioux leaders Blue War Club, Red Leaf, and American Horse came in too late to meet with the commissioners and receive their presents. Winter was always a hard time for the Indians and relying on the white man's seemingly endless supplies at that season had become a way of life. Post Commander Adam J. Slemmer accommodated them to the extent possible in view of their peaceful disposition, knowingly violating the letter of Sherman's orders. Soon afterward, Red Cloud's son and nephew showed up on the chief's behalf to gain the army's assurance that he would be accorded safe treatment if Red Cloud came to talk to Agent Patrick. Slemmer assured them that his men would take no action, so long as the warriors behaved themselves by not committing any depredations. Red Leaf's band, still wary, went into camp on Rawhide Creek, some fifteen miles north of the post during February. About fifty of Red Cloud's own Oglalas soon joined them, but the chief and his principal lieutenants, along with eight hundred lodges of their people, remained on Powder River waiting for the army to abandon Forts C. F. Smith and Phil Kearny. Only then would Red Cloud consider making a treaty.1
1 Lieutenant Colonel A. J. Slemmer to A. A. A. G., Dept. of the Platte, January 16, January 22, February 19, February 27, and March 5,1868, Letters Sent, Fort Laramie, Records of U. S. Army Continental Commands 1821 - 1920, Record Group 393, National Archives, Washington, D. C. Microfilm copies in library, Fort Laramie NHS (hereinafter cited as LS, Fort Laramie).
(1868) Page 442
Sherman and Tappan were delayed in getting to the council until the first week in May, but Red Cloud had yet to appear anyway. The committee now complete, meetings immediately got underway with the Brules. Twenty-five chiefs and headmen, including Spotted Tail, Red Leaf, and Swift Bear, were the first to sign on April 29. A week later, the Crows, attached their names to the document granting them a reservation between the Big Horns and the Yellowstone. However, Sherman revealed a surprisingly limited understanding of intertribal relations when he predicted that, "in due time, they, too, will find it to their interest to go down the Missouri river and settle among the Sioux."6 The two nations had been bitter enemies for most of a century since the Sioux had elbowed them from the Black Hills, and in subsequent decades the Crows had resolutely contested their invasion of the Powder River region.
(1868) Page 444
Meantime, in accordance with the orders of the Indian Commission, agency operations ceased at Fort Laramie effective June 5. Agent Patrick thereupon relocated the Upper Platte Agency at North Platte to be nearer Spotted Tail's Brules, who had gone off to their familiar hunting grounds on the Republican. Red Leaf and his band were on the Niobrara that summer for the same purpose. Many of the Loafers and the white "squaw men" associated with them also followed the agency.9 But, the young warriors were always difficult to control and a few depredations occurred along the lines of the Union Pacific as well as the Kansas Pacific route to Denver. Patrick did not admit that his charges had committed any violations of the treaty, if in fact he was aware of them, but complained to Nebraska Indian Superintendent H. B. Denman that so long as they remained outside the permanent reservation, there could be no farming, no schools, no acculturation into a European society. Spotted Tail and others had come to discuss these matters with him, he related, at the same time voicing their complaints that no annuity goods had been forthcoming. Both Denman and Patrick knew why—the contract for the soon-to-be eliminated Upper Platte Agency had already been cancelled. The Indians subscribing to the treaty would be concentrated on the Missouri, rather than being scattered from the Big Horns all the way to Nebraska and Kansas, and changing the distribution point for rations was a way to lure them there.
9 Patrick reported that approximately "600 half-breed white men married to Indian families" from Fort Laramie passed by North Platte on June 30. They were joined by about 150 "similar persons," whereupon the entire cavalcade moved off toward the new reservation on the Missouri. Patrick refers to a detached group as the "Laramie Snipes," a term the author has not encountered elsewhere, probably referring to the Sioux scouts formerly cooperating with the army. M. T. Patrick to H. B. Denman, August 22, 1868, LS, Fort Laramie.
(1868) Page 447
Red Cloud, accompanied by Red Leaf, Big Bear, Grass, and his wife, finally made his long-awaited appearance at Fort Laramie on November 4. The chief, who had so recently been the terror of the Bozeman Trail, made an instant impression on some members of the garrison. "Red Cloud is a plain looking Indian about forty years old, and about six feet high and very quiet when spoken to," wrote an officer's wife, . . .[He] has a very pleasant smile, and no show or dash in any movement." Unable to resist a more womanly observation, she daringly noted that Big Bear had "the most splendid chest and shoulders I ever laid my eyes upon."13 Sutler Bullock entertained the Indian delegation and the officers at his residence with a feast of coffee, soup, potatoes, and cooked rice, spiced with raisins and sugar. Post Commander William McE. Dye, however, looked with less favor on Red Cloud's cool demeanor. He "affected a great deal of dignity and disinterestedness while other chiefs arose, advanced & shook hands with the officers with apparent cordiality, he remained seated; and [illegible] gave the ends of his fingers to the officers who advanced to shake hands with him."14
14 Dye to Ruggles, November 20, 1868, LS, Fort Laramie.
2 He witnessed the meeting of
Chief (?) Dull Knife; The Treaty of Fort Laramie was an agreement between the United States and the Lakota nation, signed in 1868 at Fort Laramie in the Wyoming Territory, guaranteeing to the Lakota ownership of the Black Hills, and further land and hunting rights in South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana. The Powder River Country was to be henceforth closed to all whites. The treaty ended Red Cloud's War. The treaty included articles intended to "insure the civilisation" of the Lakota; financial incentives for them to farm land and become competitive - and stipulations that minors should be provided with an "English education" at a "mission building". To this end the US government included in the treaty that white teachers, blacksmiths and a farmer, a miller, a carpenter, an engineer and a government agent should take up residence within the reservation. Repeated violations of the otherwise exclusive rights to the land by gold prospectors led to the Black Hills War.
Fort Laramie Treaty, 1868 (Full-Text)
http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/four/ftlaram.htm.
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