Kevin Costner's the West (2025) s01e07 Episode Script

From their first movement
through the Appalachians,
Americans pushed
westward driven by their desire
for opportunity and land.
At every turn, they must fight
with the original occupants,
causing generations of
conflict with Native Nations.
When gold was found in Montana in 1862,
thousands of Americans
charged overland
claimed by the Lakota Sioux.
As their leader Red Cloud,
and a young warrior named
Crazy Horse counterattack,
the Lakota will face the US Army,
and achieve a victory that will astonish the nation.
People live on myths,
and the myths that really
in the American experience
are the myths of the West.
The mountains were higher,
the deserts were harsher,
the snows were deeper.
The American West evokes wonder,
possibility, opportunity.
The figure of the mountain man.
Notorious outlaws.
The cowboy.
The discovery of gold in California.
This train of wagons
pulling across the prairie.
Everyone has a reason
to love this land.
But most of that land
was already occupied.
We've been residents
for over 10,000 years.
But this is a clash of two different ways
of seeing life itself.
Fighting for the future of
your country, on the one hand,
and fighting for the
destiny of the new republic
on the other.
The history of the
Western is a creation story.
It is the creation of what we
think of as modern America.
The West is a place
where anything is possible.
It is the essence of the American dream.
The core of this is, what should we be as a nation?
The reckoning is approaching.
The West is this canvas on which
American dreams
grow larger than life.
In the summer of 1862,
The United States is consumed
by civil war.
The conflict plunges
Washington into debt,
and with each bullet fired,
the federal government
moves closer to a financial crisis.
Then, a potential solution
emerges in an unexpected place.
In 1862, when gold was discovered
in Montana,
it was great news for Lincoln
and for the entire Union.
Lincoln later said that
war is a terrible thing,
and this war is the most terrible of all,
and the skies were hung with black.
But it wasn't just the cost in lives,
it was the cost of maintaining the military.
California was already contributing
its gold to the Union,
but now Montana could contribute its gold as well.
It was a huge boost for the union,
when that boost was absolutely necessary.
One of the most important factors
in the entire history of the
West is the discovery of gold.
Every time this happens,
white civilization briefly goes mad.
Thousands upon thousands
and thousands of people set out in search of gold.
At the time of the gold strike,
Montana was not yet a state.
For Americans, it was an unknown wilderness,
part of the vast and sparsely populated
The Great Plains have a forbidding image
in the minds of American settlers,
in the middle decades
of the 19th century.
For American farmers, the Great Plains,
and this is seen on
many maps of the time,
is still part of the great American desert.
And the Americans look at
this great prairie,
which is the center of the
North American continent,
and see, it's land
that can be left to the Indians.
Forces transforming the West elsewhere,
have largely bypassed this
part of the Northern Plains
and is now dominated
by the Lakota Sioux,
who control more than 740,000
square kilometers of land,
an area almost the size of Mexico.
The Lakota are native
to western Minnesota,
and they're not as strong,
they're not as numerous.
But through the acquisition of the horse
at the beginning of the 18th century,
they moved
to the Great Plains,
and were very successful
in harvesting bison.
Bison are the primary food source
for Plains Indians like the Lakota,
and they use every single one of them.
Bones as tools and weapons,
skins for clothing and shelter.
But along the southern edge
of Lakota territory,
where thousands of migrants
follow the Oregon Trail westward,
the bison population is rapidly declining.
These wagon trains
are cutting down trees,
they're muddying the water.
They are actually destroying
bison migration areas,
and permanently altering
the ecosystem for the worse.
In a treaty signed in 1851,
the Lakota and other Plains Nations,
agree to allow these migrants to pass freely.
In return, they will be granted
permanent sovereignty,
over their lands by the United States.
At Fort Laramie,
the federal government
begins a process of recognition
native control and authority throughout
vast portions of the northern plains,
and recognition of the boundaries
of several Native nations.
But in 1863, frontiersman
John Bozeman
began guiding miners along a new route.
Forking northwest from
the Oregon Trail at Fort Laramie,
it shortens the trip to the
new goldfields by six weeks,
and crosses the
Lakota's most prized land.
The pristine Powder River Basin.
In the 1860s, this region
became the last
best place for the Lakota.
Not only does it have
massive herds of bison,
but it also has rivers,
and it was a place where the Lakota
came from all over to live.
The Bozeman Trail
transects some of the most
valuable hunting grounds
the Lakota had,
and when you create a trail like this,
it's really going to bother the bison,
and he's going to make them go away.
And so, the conflict arose
between Americans searching for gold,
and the Lakota, who
had been told in 1851
by the U.S. government,
that this land was theirs forever,
and suddenly
it's no longer forever.
The Lakota decide to stand up to them,
Among them is a war chief
of the Ogallala band, Red Cloud.
Red Cloud says, we will fight
to protect this homeland.
Red Cloud is recognized
as one of the great leaders of the Lakota.
He is one of the great
leaders in American history.
Red Cloud
orphaned at a young age,
when his father died of alcoholism.
He was raised by his uncles,
and driven to be the best
man he could be
for the Lakota.
He will rise to military success
through attacks on
American settler trains,
in which he distinguishes himself
as a fighter at a very young age.
Over the next two years,
Red Cloud launches raids
along the Bozeman Trail,
sparking widespread fear
among travelers bound for Montana.
And with Union troops
fighting in the Civil War,
he faces almost no opposition.
Infrastructural forms of federal government,
basically nonexistent,
in many places in the post-secession Western North America.
That's how limited the federal government is,
during the Civil War era.
But that begins to change
with the surrender of the South in 1865.
At this very moment,
The United States begins
to turn its eyes toward the West,
and think about incorporating
these wide spaces
in what is the United States.
And the defining struggle for that,
is that it belongs to the Native peoples who live there.
By 1866, some 2,000 miners had already made their way
along the Bozeman-Montana trail.
And despite the red cloud
the raids, there are more on the way.
To protect them, General Ulysses S. Grant
assigns a Union war hero,
to lead the army west of the Mississippi.
William Tecumseh Sherman.
From the beginning, Sherman
has few soldiers.
At the end of the war,
the last thing people want to do,
is support large armies,
whether financially or otherwise.
They are also very focused
on rebuilding the South,
which also included the
occupation of the South
by US Army forces.
And so, there was less political support
for maintaining a large
army and sending it
to participate in the war in the West.
From a peak of over a million,
the U.S. Army has been reduced to about 38,000 men,
with the majority deployed to the South.
Even so, Sherman decides to build three forts,
at key points along the
500-mile Bozeman Trail.
He assigns the task to a Civil War officer
with engineering talent
and no combat experience,
Colonel Henry Carrington.
He was very good at recruiting,
he was very good at administration.
What he never did during
the Civil War was fire a gun.
American combat forces
emerge from the Civil War
with a sense of superiority.
They're a modern army,
they have mechanized weapons,
and therefore the assumption is,
that it should be relatively easy
to dispatch a group of wild Indians.
In June 1866,
a wagon train makes its way
westward along the Platte River.
with 225 wagons and
a retinue of soldiers.
and civilians.
One of the things that's very different
about this occupation by the US military,
is that the military brings
their families with them,
women and children.
And what the Lakota leaders
at that moment realize is that,
they're here to stay.
The Plains Indians understand,
now is the time
or we turn this around,
or our ship sinks.
The red cloud draws a line,
and basically says, let's fight.
Trying to ensure safe passage
for gold miners and settlers
heading to Montana Territory,
Colonel Henry Carrington
plans to build three forts
along a key section of the Bozeman Trail.
Fort Reno, Fort C.F. Smith,
and at the foot of the Bighorn Mountains,
its regional headquarters,
Fort Phil Kearny.
Colonel Ring-Ton Car was
sent to the Bozeman Trail
to establish these forts,
despite his lack of military experience.
And General Sherman tells him,
It's going to be a
frontier assignment.
In this, you must bring
your wife and your children.
Build an incredible fort.
It's 17 acres, a huge amount of land,
all surrounded by a huge
wall of ponderosa pine.
And what's enclosed
within this great wall,
is truly a city.
It's a true community,
and it's built in a very
very short time.
For Red Cloud,
the arrival of the military
is an act of war.
Knowing he can't fight alone,
he does something extraordinary.
So what Red Cloud does is,
he will meet with other tribal leaders.
He urges them to
combine their forces,
to confront this new threat to them,
which is the U.S. Army entering
the Powder River Valley,
at an unprecedented level of force.
Red Cloud finds his strongest allies
among bands of the
Arap a Ho and the Cheyenne.
Two years earlier, they survived
a brutal massacre
at the hands of the U.S. Army,
in Sand Creek, Colorado.
The Sand Creek massacre is probably
the seminal event in the northern plains
during this period.
In 1864, Colonel
Chivington led his troops
against the Rapa Ho and Cheyenne,
and killed approximately 140 women and children
in this camp, led by two peace chiefs,
which he had systematically attempted to establish
peaceful relations
with the United States.
Their bodies are mutilated,
and are displayed in
Denver at the opera.
The hatred
this instills in the
Northern Cheyenne people,
is difficult to calculate.
Red Cloud brings together
a coalition
of Plains warriors,
including fighters from the
Lakota, Rapa Ho, and Cheyenne.
Red Cloud even reaches out to the Crow,
who were known as the
historical enemy of the Lakota.
It's a bridge too far for the crow,
but it shows how creative he was
in thinking of this coalition
that was needed to
fight the US military.
Even with a force of 2,000 behind him,
Red Cloud waits for his moment
and gets to know his enemy.
Luckily, the inexperienced ton-car ring
has chosen to build Fort Phil Kearny on the open prairie.
From higher ground,
Red Cloud and his men,
can see over the walls.
The location Colonel Car Ring Ton chooses
is several kilometers from
the nearest supply of wood,
and that means he'll have to send
woodcutting expeditions
several kilometers away,
every day.
As autumn brings cooler weather,
wood becomes even more vital, forcing Carrington's men
to venture five miles
from the safety of the fort
to the nearest woods.
Waiting for them there,
is one of Red Cloud's fiercest fighters,
a young warrior named Crazy Horse.
Remains of Crazy Horse
the most mysterious warrior
of all time.
As a young man, he had a vision,
that he couldn't be killed
in battle by his enemies,
and he's already famous for fighting
with that kind of abandon.
Crazy Horse is probably
about 22 years old.
He embodied the character
of a
and experienced battle leader.
And so, when Red Cloud
sees this inside Crazy Horse
Red Cloud is going to give him
a real leadership role
in this fight.
Surrounded by an endless sea of grass,
soldiers inside the fortress live
every day under siege,
knowing that beyond the walls,
an invisible enemy lurks.
Red Cloud adopts a
calculated
to decipher his enemy.
He doesn't mount large attacks,
instead, he mounts dozens
of these guerrilla attacks.
For the ton car ring,
most of his soldiers
were newly recruited.
They were immigrants,
that this was the next
best job they could get.
And so, when they see
these cars coming back
with the dead, who have been mutilated,
this is very shocking and
and terrifying for them.
For these soldiers,
who were sitting there
watching these gold miners
flowing toward
the Montana gold fields,
those gold fields held an
extremely powerful lure.
Almost a man a day,
by late autumn, is deserting.
By the end of September,
Red Cloud and his allies have carried out
dozens of deadly raids
around Fort Phil Kearny.
Colonel Henry Carrington
has already buried eight of his men.
Carrington is writing many letters
to his commanding officers saying,
I need more men, I need
more horses, I need better weapons.
I think Carrington's tone
becomes increasingly agitated,
and insistent throughout the fall,
as these attacks pile up and pile up.
She tries to appear
in control,
while at the same time,
fearing for her own life.
Colonel Car Ring Ton
didn't have the resources
of the army he was promised,
and there were times in time
where Car Ring Ton had
fewer than 10 agents,
fewer than 20 serviceable horses.
And on top of that,
There were women and
children in this fort too.
How are you going to protect them?
How are you going to keep them safe?
America in 1866
is still rebuilding after
a devastating civil war,
and Andrew Johnson is
one year into his presidency,
having taken office after
Lincoln's assassination.
This former slave owner
must now oversee the
Reconstruction of the South.
After the
Civil War, on the one hand,
you have a diminished
federal authority
in many parts of the American West.
On the other hand, you have the growth,
mining extractive economies,
occurring in western Montana
that are bringing thousands of migrants
through the Indian homeland.
With the army focused
on rebuilding the South,
and protecting the freed slaves,
Western forces are short
of troops and supplies.
But at the besieged Fort Phil Kearny,
Carrington's desperate cry for help is finally answered.
In September 1866,
he welcomed new soldiers,
more horses, and a
new second-in-command,
Captain William J. Fetterman.
Fetterman is a true
Civil War hero.
He is cited for bravery.
He's with Sherman during
the March to the Sea,
so he's everywhere
during the Civil War,
and he has this really
remarkable military record.
Captain Fetterman, when you arrive,
you receive a hero's welcome
from many of the younger officers.
And a small clique forms around you,
which leads to a certain division
between him and Colonel Car Ring Ton.
Colonel Ring of the Ton Car is cautious.
He's a small human being
who has never seen combat,
while Captain Fetterman
is aggressive, brave, strong,
the epitome of a cavalry officer.
And so, this contrast,
really leads to a certain division
within the officer corps
at Fort Phil Kearny.
Among the soldiers
who arrive with Fetterman,
he's an impulsive officer, eager for action.
Lieutenant George W. Grummond
had some discipline problems,
drinking, partying,
fighting, that sort of thing.
He was court-martialed
several times during the Civil War,
and had a reputation for being very reckless,
and jumping the gun on command
when he was supposed to
be following orders.
But he has no experience.
None of these men had any experience
fighting Native Americans.
Remember, these are a
group of Civil War veterans
and their expectation of war
is to line up
on the battlefields,
and they're just sort of
hammering each other down.
In the past,
when the military confronts native peoples in the east,
you're dealing with peoples
who are largely sedentary.
Suddenly, when you move west,
you're dealing with peoples
who are semi-nomadic.
They're always on the move.
The Lakota light cavalry
was probably the best
in the world at the time.
These men could do
anything on horseback.
They had been in combat
since they were teenagers,
and had been trained for combat
since they were children.
Their knowledge of the landscape,
where the hills are
where the valleys are,
unparalleled.
So, they truly have every advantage
against any kind of
encroachment into their territory.
After he arrives,
Captain Fetterman sets out to drill
his ragged collection of soldiers.
Now they are eager to
take the fight to their enemy,
So are the commanders in St.
who order Car Ring Ton
to attack the Lakota
in their winter encampments.
But Car Ring Ton receives a
report that confirms his fears.
An old explorer tells Car Ring Ton
that there are towns and villages
from Northern to Rap to Ho,
Northern Cheyenne,
and Lakota bands just
north of where they are,
From 1,000 to 1,500 teepees,
And it says a lot about Red Cloud at that moment,
being able to gather such a large number,
and a rather diverse group of gangs.
Outnumbered by Red Cloud's forces,
the car ring calls off the attack.
Instead, he digs in,
using his troops only to
protect
who still have to venture
kilometers to collect fuel.
After months of skirmishes
and killing
individuals here and there,
red cloud decides
he's going to attack not only
the lumberjacks themselves,
but when the relief force arrives,
They're going to engage
them too,
and try to separate them.
On December 6th, Red
Cloud has his chance.
The signal arrives
that the caravan that's
out there trying to get the wood
is being attacked.
At the first sign of the enemy,
Lieutenant Grummond and
a handful of other soldiers
break formation,
and gallop after a group
of Lakota led by Crazy Horse.
Everyone was excited
for their first opportunity
to really go on the offensive,
and so, these officers
basically went off on their own.
And this is when the soldiers
are really attacked.
Grummond soon discovers that not only is he surrounded,
but he's forgotten his pistol.
He manages to fight back
with only a saber,
but two other agents are killed,
and their bodies mutilated.
One is found impaled on a tree stump,
the other with his head severed in half.
Red Cloud loses 10 men,
but gains valuable knowledge.
The Lakota realize that
the U.S. Army
cannot resist a retreating Native American force,
because of that superiority mentality,
the perfect example of
underestimating your opponent.
In the winter of 1866,
a Native American coalition led by
the Lakota warrior Red Cloud,
is harassing Fort Phil Kearny almost daily.
The American commander,
Colonel Car Ring Ton,
is reduced to six officers,
overseeing 300 soldiers.
At Fort Phil Kearny, in December,
more than a hundred people,
including soldiers and travelers, were killed.
The bodies were often mutilated.
It created this sense of fear
among the soldiers and the travelers.
It also created a lot of pressure on the ton of car ring.
He's starting to receive other orders
that he should be more aggressive.
His own officers are telling him
that he should be more aggressive,
and so he's trying to juggle all of that.
Colonel Carrington
will not bravely come out
and attack the forces
as ordered.
Instead, he's going to be banded,
during a Lakota siege.
At night, he sleeps in his uniform,
because he knows that
there's a force out there,
that can wipe him off the map.
After the successful
ambush on December 6,
Red Cloud and his allies begin working
on an even bolder plan,
Red Cloud has already
created this coalition of
Cheyenne, a rap to hola
Lakota, about 2,000 warriors
hidden in these valleys, which
are about three miles apart.
He wants to shock
and frighten the American army
so significantly that they will
abandon this fort.
He decides to create something
completely unforeseen,
and create this huge ambush.
The only problem is how to get
a large group of soldiers out of the fort?
For the next two weeks,
Red Cloud scouts will study
the fort from the high ground,
using mirrors and smoke signals
to relay messages about
troop movements within the interior.
Red Cloud is probing,
and is learning about his enemy,
how his enemy will react
in different situations.
But while Red Cloud gathers information,
Car Ring Ton gives strict orders.
We shouldn't venture
beyond Lodge Trail Ridge,
the rise between the fort
and the Bozeman Trail to the north.
Then Lodge Trail Ridge
is within range of the cannons.
It's also the last thing
the army can see from
the fort looking north.
Once you lose sight of your forces,
you've lost command
ability for the battlefield.
And so, the ton-car ring is worried that
if any of their forces go beyond this point,
they won't be able
to send help in time.
After two weeks of waiting,
red cloud finally
decides it's time to attack.
On the morning of December 21st,
December 21st, a storm was brewing.
They had to get another load of firewood,
and very soon pickets were on Pilot Hill,
give a signal saying,
Indians were attacking the lumber train.
Fetterman volunteers
to lead a relief force,
and the car's bell reminds him
of his orders.
Carrington says,
whatever you do, don't
go beyond the Ridge Line.
You must not go beyond
the Ridge Line, three times.
You can see that these attackers
who are attacking the
wooden train are retreating.
And it plays into the army's belief,
that they are being driven away.
At Fort Kearny,
Grummond comes running
up to Colonel Carrington
and Grummond says, let me
bring out the cavalry,
the man who was clearly so aggressive
and fired up to go into battle.
And he allowed Grummond
to take about 25 cavalrymen
to accompany the men on foot.
The crazy horse pretends his horse is lame,
and rides to the top of the Ridge.
He tries to lure
Fetterman and Grummond
to follow him
and Grummond
immediately begins the chase.
At that point, Fetterman
faces this dilemma:
Do I let them go on their own?
Or do I try to rally our forces and keep them together?
Captain Fetterman has no choice,
but to follow and support him.
And so, the 81 of these soldiers and men
end up in the valley,
on the other side of the Lodge Ridge Trail.
This huge trap that
Red Cloud has set in motion.
Carrington is in the fort.
and suddenly they start hearing
gunfire on the hill.
They don't see anything,
but they know something's happening.
From where Fort Phil Kearny is,
it's impossible to see
more than a mile to the north.
This is what Red Cloud
used to his advantage.
It was easy to hide in
that hilly landscape.
Now!
Once Fetterman and his infantry
are far enough down
to that valley,
look back toward the Ridge Trail,
and see that the tribes
have already closed
their escape route to the fort.
The tribes are approaching from three sides.
Once they're in the
middle of the trap, it's over.
And the 81 men who rode
outside Fort Phil Kearny that day
are killed in that battle.
Everyone is horribly desecrated.
Scalped, stomachs ripped open,
entrails removed,
limbs severed.
The mutilation of enemies
you have killed in battle
for the Lakota,
had meanings
in a spiritual context.
Because once you killed an enemy,
you would kill their body here,
but that didn't necessarily mean
you would have killed them in the afterlife.
So, maybe to do that,
you would gouge out their eyes
so they couldn't see,
or cut off their hands
so they couldn't fight.
But one body is saved,
the bugler, who used his instrument
as a weapon in a
desperate fight for his life.
And his bravery was such that the Lakota,
decided he deserved
not to be mutilated.
And so, he was honorably
laid on the ground
and a buffalo blanket
placed over him.
The Lakota and their allies lost 65 men.
One estimate puts the number
of arrows fired at 40,000,
1,000 for every minute of battle.
Back at the fork,
a ton-car ring sends a rider,
John "Portuguese" Phillips,
in a gathering storm toward
Fort Laramie, 250 miles south.
Before the day is out,
he makes one last request.
Colonel Car Ring Ton
is absolutely terrified
that the fort is going to be attacked next.
His best fighters are dead,
his best officers are dead.
He orders all men
to emergency posts.
Order the women and children
to the ammunition storage area,
so they can be blown up
instead of being captured.
This is the end.
The night of Red Cloud's ambush,
A blizzard is crossing
the northern plains,
toward Fort Phil Kearny.
Red Cloud just delivered
which would prove to be a
shocking blow to the U.S. Army.
and its objective was to deliver
a political signal to the US,
about the advisability of
maintaining the Bozeman Trail.
The storm covers
the Powder River region
in deep snow.
But on December 25, 1866,
John "Portuguese" Phillips emerges,
and enters Fort Laramie.
His journey is almost 250 miles.
Completed in four days
of sub-zero temperatures,
kills his horse upon arrival.
And enters a Christmas ball
being held at Fort Laramie,
with the news that
there has been a massive defeat
at Fort Phil Kearny and
Captain Fetterman is dead.
As reinforcements rush to Carrington's aid,
The War Department in
Washington receives a telegram.
It's the worst defeat in the history of our army.
up to that point in the West.
Never before had such a large force
destroyed man.
It was a shock to the American psyche.
People simply couldn't wrap their minds around the fact
that Fetterman's troops
had been sent in this manner.
The idea that this pre-industrial,
I quote "savages," could
defeat the United States Army,
and not just defeat a
United States Army,
but defeat it where the entire
regiment was eradicated,
really clashes with the idea
of the United States
emerging as this great power.
Three weeks after the battle,
ton of car ring is relieved of his duties.
Army commanders in
Washington open an investigation.
Carrington, as you can imagine,
receives enormous criticism,
and the biggest thing she does
as part of her defense,
is create someone else
to blame for what happened,
and she settles on Fetterman.
Carrington counters with
this narrative that, you know,
Fetterman wasn't following orders.
And Fetterman has
been written as a
respectless glory hound,
became the basis for all future historians
to write the narrative
of the Shackles fight,
and it couldn't be more false.
One of the things that
this speculation and debate
about who is wrong and who is to blame
ignores is the fact that
there was a remarkable
brilliant plan executed by Red Cloud
that worked almost beyond anything they could have imagined.
Fetterman's struggle communicates
a level of indigenous capability
that few American politicians believe possible.
It's always seen how the American military failed,
how did Native Americans win?
While the fight against the
sparks outrage in the East,
Red Cloud takes his war
beyond the Powder River Country.
Their target is the most visible symbol
of American power in the West,
and a grave threat to Lakota lands,
the transcontinental railroad.
One of the things that
Red Cloud is very aware of,
is that the railroad has already arrived
in what is now Kansas, Nebraska,
and through tribes like
the Southern Cheyenne.
They are aware of the
impact this can have
on their entire culture and economy.
On August 7, 1867,
Cheyenne and Lakota allies
attack a Union Pacific train
in Nebraska,
500 miles east of the
Powder River Country.
This attack underscores the fact
that Native tribes
remain formidable forces,
and that this idea that modern machinery
will somehow facilitate
an easy end to the Native conflict is a fantasy.
Many in Washington
believe it's easier
to deal diplomatically with Native peoples
than to fight them,
especially after the
carnage and destruction
of five years of civil war.
With its thousand-mile route
cutting through the northern plains,
the railroad is very vulnerable
to Red Cloud's hit-and-run attacks,
and the only way to keep it
is to make peace.
Red Cloud arrives at the negotiations
with the United States in
1868 from a position of strength.
Red Cloud insists that the
Bozeman be abandoned.
The US military agrees to all of this.
They abandon the Bozeman Trail,
They abandon the forts.
In the spring of 1868,
General Sherman returns to Fort Laramie
with a peace commission,
appointed by President Johnson,
and offers the Lakota a new treaty.
Close the Bozeman Road
to miners and settlers,
and seal the three
forts built by Carrington.
But for five months, Red Cloud
will withhold his signature,
until he sees the forts
burn to the ground.
It's one of the most decisive victories
for Native peoples in the history of the United States.
This makes the red cloud the most important
Native American of the Northern Plains,
and perhaps the most visible
Native American in the country,
and demonstrates the level
of Lakota resilience.
The same treaty creates
the Great Sioux Reservation,
giving the Lakota exclusive control
over 48,000 square miles of land,
an area five times
the size of Connecticut.
The Fort Laramie Treaty
of 1868 is unprecedented.
The federal government
commits
to a new vision of Indian affairs,
in which it recognizes the
autonomy and jurisdiction
of Indian nations across vast portions
of their ancient homelands.
The treaty demonstrates the
power of the Lakota nation,
and Red Cloud becomes the
only Native American leader in history
to win a war against the U.S.
After Red Cloud's War in 1868,
after signing the
Treaty of Fort Laramie,
he promised never to take up arms
against the United States again.
And as a man of his word, he never did.
And so, he's often seen
as a peacemaker after this,
and never gets his due
like the military genius he was.
Red Cloud remains true to his word,
but the disaster at Fort Phil Kearny
a change in U.S. policy
toward the Plains Nations.
For some, any Indian
outside the reservation
will be considered hostile and at war.
It's after the Fetterman fight
that William Tecumseh Sherman
using the term extermination,
to talk about the deal with the Lakota,
and other supposedly problematic tribes.
The fight against the Fetterman is the moment
when the power of the Lakota Nation
is clearly communicated
to the federal government.
Very few Native nations
would ever obtain that
level of federal recognition
and supposed protection.
And sadly, very few
nations would suffer
such betrayals of those
commitments.
Today, the red cloud is celebrated
as the leader who
outwitted the American military
while fighting to preserve
his people's way of life.
Over time, however, the
treaty he won falls apart.
The Lakota will continue
fighting us without him,
most famously when Sitting Bull defeats
General George Custer
at the Little Bighorn.
But in time, their resistance
will be suppressed,
and the vast grasslands that
the Lakota once roamed freely
are now taken
by ranchers,
sparking a new conflict,
over who retains control
of these last open spaces.