Brulé Sioux Spotted Tail’s Pledge of Peace

 | Wild West  | 0 comments  | Print This Post  | Email This Post

Many years later, a former soldier of the 11th Kansas Cavalry tried to explain the reasons for the Indian War of 1865. Sergeant Stephen Fairfield remembered that whites had previously found gold and silver in the mountains beyond the Great Plains and that thousands of miners had bolted through Indian country, killing and destroying the game. ‘Long trains of wagons were winding their way over the plains;’ he wrote, ‘the mysterious telegraph wires were stretching across their hunting grounds to the mountains, engineers were surveying a route for a track for the iron horse, and all without saying as much as `By your leave’ to the Indians. Knowing that their game would soon be gone, that their hunting grounds taken from them, and that they themselves would soon be without a country, they had resorted to arms to defend their way of life and themselves.’

There were more specific reasons, however. Beginning in April 1864, a series of incidents between Plains Indians (mostly Cheyennes and Sioux) and white emigrants, traders and military patrols had elevated intermittent violence into a reign of death and destruction. The climax of killing in 1864 came on November 28, when Colonel John Chivington led his 3rd Volunteer Cavalry in a dawn raid on the Southern Cheyennes and Arapahos camped on Sand Creek in west-central Colorado Territory. Believing themselves under the protection of Fort Lyon, the Indians were unprepared and completely surprised. At least 130 of them died.

At the Cheyenne camp on Smoky Hill, survivors gathered in council. They decided to ask nearby allies to join with them in a war of vengeance. Invitations went to the Northern Arapaho camp and to Sioux groups living on the Solomon Fork. A large village soon assembled. Leading the Cheyennes were Leg-in-the-Water, Little Robe and a reluctant Black Kettle. Foremost among the Cheyenne Dog Soldiers, who assumed a leadership role, were Tall Bull, White Horse and Bull Bear. The half-Cheyenne sons of William Bent, George and Charles, pledged their support. Joining the coalition were Northern Arapahos under Little Raven, Storm and Big Mouth. Finally came Pawnee Killer’s Oglalas and Spotted Tail’s Brulé Sioux. At the same time, messengers journeyed north to the headwaters of the Powder River to tell the Oglala, Minneconjou and Sans Arcs Sioux and the Northern Cheyennes of the killing. These groups later joined their tribesmen in one last united campaign.

Library of Congress

Spotted Tail, who showed much martial prowess in his younger days, was a highly respected peace chief by the 1860s, but he was not destined to die peacefully.

At this time, Spotted Tail was 41 years old, a veteran of the Grattan Fight against U.S. troops in 1854 and the Battle of Blue Water Creek against Brevet Brig. Gen. William Harney’s forces in 1855. He had been in a military prison for a year, after having surrendered for participating in the killing of three stagecoach employees. He was a practiced and fearless fighter who had counted many coups. Knowing the white world better than his contemporaries, he was aware of the might of his enemies.

Retribution began on January 7, 1865, with an attack on Julesburg, Colorado Territory, where the combined Indian force killed four noncommissioned officers and 11 enlisted men of the 7th Iowa Volunteer Cavalry, stationed at nearby Fort Rankin. On February 2, they returned to loot and burn the settlement, keeping the 7th Iowa troops confined in their post. Troops under William O. Collins, regimental leader of the 11th Ohio Cavalry headquartered at Fort Laramie, hurried east to engage the raiders. They clashed at Mud Springs and Rush Creek, in western Nebraska, on February 4-6 and February 9, as the warriors had begun to move north and west to join their tribesmen in the Powder River country of Wyoming and Montana. Casualties were light on both sides, but the overwhelming strength of the Sioux and Cheyennes made pursuit impractical.

At this point, Spotted Tail and his followers decided to leave the coalition. They had done their part, and they were reluctant to leave the country where they had lived for many years. In a short time, they declared themselves friendly and went into camp near Fort Laramie, intending to distance themselves from the war that would continue when the southern tribes reunited with their northern counterparts.

By early June, about 1,500 friendly Indians camped near Fort Laramie, including Spotted Tail and the Southern Brulés. Military leaders decided to send them to Fort Kearny, where they would be away from the war zone and could plant a crop to provide temporary sustenance. On June 11, the friendlies and a number of white traders with their mixed-blood progeny left the post with an escort of about 22 7th Iowa Cavalry and Indian police commanded by Captain William Fouts.

The night of June 13 found the travelers camped on Horse Creek, near the site of the Fort Laramie Treaty Council of 1851. At a clandestine meeting held that night, most of the chiefs and headmen decided that they would rather suffer death than live in a starving condition at Fort Kearny, close to their Pawnee enemies. When troops marched out the next day, the Sioux remained in camp. Returning to investigate, Fouts found an argument in progress between peace and war factions. Suddenly, the Brulé Chief White Thunder turned and fired his rifle at the unlucky commander. In the ambuscade that followed, one bullet pierced Fouts’ heart and another entered his head. All of the remaining Sioux, including the Indian police, left in a hurry, fleeing north. During the next months, Spotted Tail and his followers stayed far away from the whites, camping on the upper reaches of the Powder River, about 260 miles north of Fort Laramie.

The Indian War of 1865 began to draw to a close in September.

In late July Brig. Gen. Patrick E. Connor’s retaliatory Powder River Expedition had traveled north to chastise the Sioux, Cheyennes and Arapahos for the killing of young Lieutenant Caspar Collins and 28 men in the Battles of Platte Bridge and Red Buttes. On August 29, Connor’s main column struck a large Arapaho village on the Tongue River, killing 63 Indians, burning 250 lodges, capturing 500 ponies, and burning tons of dried food and other supplies. At the same time, Connor’s other two columns ran into trouble in Montana, losing hundreds of horses while skirmishing with large parties of coalition warriors. When Connor was recalled a few weeks later, the expedition disbanded, presumed to be a failure.

The winter that followed was one of the severest ever known in the region, and it brought the Indian War of 1865 to an end. Some of the Sioux began coming in for peace talks in March, their women, children and elderly sick and hungry. To survive the terrible winter, they had killed and eaten most of their ponies. As Spotted Tail put it: ‘Our hearts were on the ground, my brother….If we had to swim through the snow, we would have come.’ In the chief’s case, there was an additional reason: Colonel Henry Maynadier, who commanded the West Sub-District of Nebraska from Fort Laramie, had received a message from Spotted Tail telling him that he wanted to bring the body of his deceased daughter to the post for burial. Some believed that the young woman had contracted consumption, but Maynadier speculated that exposure and the Indians’ hard life were the reasons for her death. The chief had picked an opportune time, for the ranking officer at Fort Laramie was a man of varied experience and tact, ideally suited to the situation. Born in 1830, Maynadier had graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1851. He had served initially with the 1st U.S. Artillery, then switched to the 10th Infantry, where he fought at Vicksburg and Fredericksburg. Becoming a major in the 12th Infantry on November 4, 1863, he received a number of special assignments for the next 16 months, including a stint in the Office of the Adjutant General in Washington. He became colonel of the 5th U.S. Volunteers on March 27, 1865. Maynadier had received the brevet rank of major general of volunteers on March 13, 1865, for distinguished service on the frontier in operations against hostile Indians and accomplishing much toward bringing about peace with warring tribes. The post commander at the time was Major George M. O’Brien. Born in Ireland, O’Brien entered the Volunteer service as a major of the 7th Iowa Cavalry on July 13, 1863.

Spotted Tail’s daughter had spent some time around Fort Laramie and become fascinated with white ways. She may, in fact, have lived at Fort Laramie with relatives while her father was in prison in 1855-56. Known as Mini-Aku (Brings Water), she had been born in 1848, making her about 18 years old. She was the eldest daughter of the first of Spotted Tail’s three wives and his favorite. A small, delicate, comely, high-spirited girl, some said that she had fallen in love with an officer, perhaps from a distance. Her final wish was that her last resting place be in the post cemetery, near the burial of Old Smoke, a relative and chief who had lived near Fort Laramie for many years as a friend of the whites. Maynadier remembered the girl, whom he had met some five years before when she was about 12 years old, and he welcomed the chief’s coming.

On March 8, 1866, Maynadier and several officers, accompanied by a flagman, rode forth to meet the incoming chief and his party, numbering about 40 lodges. They had traveled the distance in 15 days. At the post, the colonel opened the council with words of condolence and welcome. In a conciliatory manner, he pointed to the American flag, saying: ‘You see a red stripe and a white stripe side by side, and they do not interfere with one another. So the red man and the white may live in this country in harmony.’ He then asked if Spotted Tail wished to have his daughter placed in the cemetery and Christian rites performed. The chief assented in a speech of great eloquence and feeling, shedding tears as he spoke.

Wrapped in buffalo robes and bound with cords, the girl’s body lay in state in a room in ‘Old Bedlam,’ the ranking officer’s office and living quarters. Hastily arranged muskets, sabers and flags decorated the walls. Maynadier instructed his carpenters to have a coffin made, and post trader Colonel William G. Bullock donated a fine red cloth to cover it. Maynadier suggested a sunset burial, telling Spotted Tail that ‘as the sun went down it might remind him of the darkness left in his lodge when his beloved daughter was taken away, but as the sun would surely rise again, so she would rise, and some day we would all meet in the land of the Great Spirit.’ Tears appeared again on the chief’s cheeks as Maynadier spoke.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to

Tags: 19th Century, American Indian Wars, Historical Conflicts, Historical Figures, Native American History, The Wild West, Wild West