Red Cloud's War

Part of the Sioux Wars, American Indian Wars

Date	1866 to 1868
Location	Western Powder River Country (Crow Indian treaty territory)
Result	Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Northern Arapaho victory

Belligerents

United States (and Crow Indians)

Lakota
Northern Cheyenne
Northern Arapaho

Commanders and leaders

Col.Henry B. Carrington
Capt.William Fetterman †

Red Cloud
Crazy Horse
Man Afraid Of His Horses
Hump (High Backbone)

Strength

700 soldiers, 300 civilians.

1,500 to 2,000

Casualties and losses

~200 killed

Unknown, probably about 100 killed

Red Cloud's War (also referred to as the Bozeman War or the Powder River War) was an armed conflict between the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Northern Arapaho on one side and the United States in Wyoming and Montana territories from 1866 to 1868. The war was fought over control of the western Powder River Country in present north-central Wyoming. This grassland, rich in buffalo, was traditionally Crow Indian land, but the Lakota had recently taken control. The Crow tribe held the treaty right to the disputed area, according to the major agreement reached at Fort Laramie in 1851. All involved in "Red Cloud's War" were parties in that treaty.

In 1863, European Americans had blazed the Bozeman Trail through the heart of the traditional territory of the Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Lakota. It was the shortest and easiest route from Fort Laramie and the Oregon Trail to the Montana gold fields. From 1864 to 1866, the trail was traversed by about 3,500 miners, emigrant settlers and others, who competed with the Indians for the diminishing resources near the trail.

The United States named the war after Red Cloud, a prominent Oglala Lakota chief allied with the Cheyenne and Arapaho. The United States army had built forts in response to attacks on civilian travelers, using a treaty right to "establish roads, military and other post". All three forts were located in 1851 Crow Indian territory and accepted by these Indians. The Crow believed they guarded their interests best by cooperating with the US army.

Red Cloud's War consisted mostly of constant small-scale Indian raids and attacks on the soldiers and civilians at the three forts in the Powder River country, wearing down those garrisons. The largest action of the war, the Fetterman Fight (with 81 men killed on the U.S. side), was the worst military defeat suffered by the U.S. on the Great Plains until the Battle of the Little Bighorn in the Crow Indian reservation ten years later. "[T]he most dramatic battles between the army and the Dakota [in the 1860s and 1870s] were on lands those Indians had taken from other tribes since 1851."

...
Wikipedia