Red Cloud
1822–1909 1 entry
Biography
Red Cloud, in Lakota Mahpiya Luta, was a leader of the Oglala Lakota and one of the ablest Native American leaders of the nineteenth century. Born in 1822 near the Platte River, in today’s Nebraska, he rose through his courage in war to lead his people. From 1866 to 1868 he fought what became known as Red Cloud’s War against the forts the US Army had built along the Bozeman Trail through the Powder River country, the hunting grounds of the Lakota.
The war ended with the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868, under which the army abandoned the forts, a rare victory of a Native nation over the United States. In 1870 he travelled to Washington and New York, where he spoke before a large audience at the Cooper Union, asking for justice for his people. He then chose the path of negotiation and spent the rest of his life defending the rights of the Lakota on the Pine Ridge Reservation, where he died in 1909.
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