This Date in History: 150 Years Ago Today (Part Two)

This Date in History: A Dead-of-Winter Deadline 150 Years Ago Today

(Part Two)

After the 1868 treaty, conflicts in that region stayed below a “boil” over the next five years or so. Although it led to ill feelings amongst the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, the 1868 treaty did set the Black Hills aside from white settlement, ceding it to the Sioux nation. It was “unceded lands,” another provision of that treaty, that set much of the stage for later conflicts, however. Other issues contributed as well.

First, as with the previous treaty, not all leaders and not all bands had agreed to the 1868 treaty. The treaty did set aside what was called the Great Sioux Reservation, located entirely in the Dakota Territory. However, Fort Rice was located on that reservation land designated for the Sioux. The fort were seen by Sioux as an intrusion. It violated promises made in the unratified treaty of 1851. It also sat entirely too close to the “Paha Sapa,” or Black Hills, which remained sacred to the  Sioux and other tribes. Non-treaty Sioux, particularly under Sitting Bull, sometimes harassed Fort Rice.

Secondly, the treaty designated “Unceded” lands. These were to be set aside as hunting grounds for use by treaty Indians when they needed to supplement the annuities of beef, flour and other supplies the U.S. Government had promised to provide. However, non-treaty tribes roamed freely on and off those unceded lands, and whites did too. As many as half the reservation Indians freely left their reservations to hunt during warmer months. They would return to their reservations for the winter. This too would become a factor in 1876 events.

A third factor and sad reality was that widespread corruption existed amongst various tribal agents.  Even William Belknap, President Grant’s Secretary of War, received lavish kickbacks. (More on this later.) Sutlers and agents were all under military supervision or contracts. Many would require trade or payment for the supplies that had been promised to the Indians living on their “agencies.”

In other cases, Indian agents would sell those supplies to whites rather than issue them to the Indians for whom they were intended. Again, Belknap got kickbacks. (Soldiers in remote forts would be gouged too. I’ll write more about this scandal later.) The government then tried using civilian agents, but the same type of problem occurred. The “agency,” or “treaty” Indians, often had to leave their reservations and hunt simply to avoid starvation.

Not that this issue was entirely one-sided. The written account by Fanny Kelly, a white settler who had been kidnapped by Sioux Indians not far from Fort Laramie, tells another reality. The Indians who held her captive would go to the appointed reservations in order to receive “presents,” or supplies, then they would leave again and wreak havoc with white settlers throughout the region. The issue certainly had two sides.

The issue of treaty Indians leaving their reservations to hunt was compounded as agents and traders often supplied firearms and ammunition to them. Those armaments were valued for hunting, and traders valued the buffalo robes and furs received in return. Those firearms, however, would also be used against white settlers and soldiers.

A fourth factor in this brewing conflict was the expansion of railroad travel and transportation. The first transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, and a more northerly route was being surveyed. By 1873 the Northern Pacific Railway had extended as far as Bismarck, in Dakota Territory, which sat on the Missouri River. Across the Missouri, Fort Abraham Lincoln had been established. The goal and intention was for the Northern Pacific to extend across Montana Territory and on to the Pacific coast by that desired northerly route.

One problem was that the intended route went directly through the Unceded Lands in southern Montana Territory. Survey expeditions with military escorts were sent, in the “national interest,” to survey the best route, roughly following the Yellowstone River drainage. Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer led parts of one of those military escorts. His contingent twice fought against Crazy Horse in 1873, three years before they met at the Little Bighorn. The actions of the Oglala Sioux when Custer charged them might have shaped his expectations three years later when he charged their encampment on the “Greasy Grass.”

The 1873 railroad surveys ground to a halt due to the economic Panic of 1873. Due to the resulting depression, the Northern Pacific Railway went bankrupt and spent years restructuring. That panic, in turn, seems to have led political and military leaders in the U.S. government to turn a blind eye when new gold strikes became a possibility. In fact, those leaders might have encouraged a new gold rush. The problem was that gold was rumored in the Black Hills, which had been promised and ceded to the Sioux.

In 1874 a military expedition was sent into the Black Hills. It was sent, supposedly, to police incoming prospectors and keep white intruders off those ceded lands. The expedition’s mission was also to look for a suitable site for a new fort. The stated purpose included protection of treaty Indians from non-treaty tribes.

That expedition was led by none other than George Custer. Soon another rumor leaked out – perhaps intentionally – that gold was found “at the grass roots” in those Black Hills. Then the rush was on full-bore. Treaty and non-treaty tribes alike took exception to this broken promise and its violation of their sacred lands. Inevitably, more conflicts arose.

By 1875 the U.S. government tried more than once to purchase the Black Hills. Those attempts were refused by treaty and non-treaty tribes alike. As 1875 wore on, military leaders were ready to abandon the Peace Policy. Finally the military gave up and decided just to try forcing even non-treaty tribes onto the respective reservations.

With approval of his Commander in Chief, the General Phillip Sheridan, who oversaw the Department of the Missouri, issued his deadline. Agents were to pass along the edict that all non-treaty Indians, Cheyenne and Sioux alike, must “come in” to their tribes’ assigned reservations. They must do so no later than this date in history: January 31, 1876.

Sheridan’s “order” did not even reach the various Indian agents until December 22, 1875. Worse, it demanded that tribes leave their winter camps, in which they huddled to wait out the snow and cold (throughout the warmer months they hunted, dried meat and roots and berries and stored them as “pemmican” to sustain them through the harsh winter months.) Sheridan’s deadline demanded that they travel through conditions that even the Seventh Cavalry would not brave until May of 1876.

The stage was set: an unreasonable demand that could not possibly be honored in the time-frame that was allowed. (That type of demand would be repeated less than 18 months later, leading to tragic conflict for the Nez Perce to the west.) War was the only possible result.

The U.S. Army favored winter campaigns against Plains Indians. Reference Custer’s 1867 attack on Black Kettle’s Southern Cheyenne village on the Washita River in what is now Oklahoma. The strategy was also used in the 1870 Marias Massacre by Major Eugene Baker in what was even then viewed as a despicable act. It would continue into 1877 against remnant bands after Custer’s last battle on the Little Bighorn. It is a topic unto itself, to be discussed in future posts. For many, the stage set by that January 31, 1876 deadline was the beginning of the end. It was 150 years ago today.