Indian Wars: Little Crow, Sand Creek and Red Cloud
Three Wars in Six Years
Between 1862 and 1868 the Plains shifted from uneasy treaty-making into open war. The first Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 had promised annuities in return for safe passage across Indigenous land. Within a decade those promises had collapsed under settler pressure, gold rushes and broken supply lines. Three conflicts — Little Crow’s War in Minnesota (1862), the Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado (1864) and Red Cloud’s War in Powder River country (1866–68) — tell the story of why. Each one ended differently, but together they set the pattern for every later confrontation between the US Army and the Indigenous peoples of the Plains.
Three Plains wars between 1862 and 1868: Little Crow’s War (1862, Minnesota) ended in the largest mass execution in US history; the Sand Creek Massacre (November 1864) killed about 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho under a US flag; Red Cloud’s War (1866–68) ended in a rare Indigenous victory written into the second Fort Laramie Treaty.
Little Crow’s War, 1862
In the summer of 1862 the Santee Sioux of Minnesota were starving. Their Indian agent had withheld the annuities promised by treaty, and traders refused credit until federal money arrived. When Santee leaders begged the agent Andrew Myrick for food, he reportedly replied that they could ‘eat grass or their own dung’. Within weeks the chief Little Crow led an uprising that killed about 500 settlers across the Minnesota River valley. Myrick himself was found dead with his mouth stuffed with grass.
The US response was overwhelming. Federal troops crushed the rising within five weeks. A military commission tried 392 Dakota men in trials that often lasted only minutes; 303 were sentenced to death. President Lincoln, reviewing the cases personally, reduced the list to 38. On 26 December 1862 those 38 men were hanged together at Mankato — the largest mass execution in US history. The remaining Dakota were stripped of their Minnesota reservation and pushed west to Dakota Territory. Little Crow himself was shot the following summer while picking berries in Minnesota; his scalp was displayed for years afterwards.
The Sand Creek Massacre, November 1864
In Colorado, gold strikes around Pikes Peak had pulled tens of thousands of miners onto Cheyenne and Arapaho hunting land guaranteed by the 1851 treaty. By 1864 the territorial governor John Evans was pressing for war, and Indigenous raiding had hardened settler opinion. The Cheyenne peace chief Black Kettle brought his people to camp near Sand Creek in eastern Colorado, having been told by Fort Lyon’s commander that they were under US protection. He flew both an American flag and a white flag of truce above his lodge.
Just before dawn on 29 November 1864, Colonel John Chivington led around 700 Colorado Volunteers in a surprise attack on the camp. Roughly 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho were killed, the great majority of them women, children and elderly people. The bodies were mutilated; soldiers paraded scalps and severed body parts through Denver theatres in the days that followed. Black Kettle survived, dragging his wounded wife from the creek bed. He would be killed four years later at the Washita River, again under a US flag.
Weak answers refer to ‘the Plains Indians’ or ‘the Sioux’ as if every Indigenous Plains people had the same languages, leaders and aims. They did not. The Lakota Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, Crow and Pawnee had distinct languages and separate political histories. Some allied with each other; others fought each other. The Crow and Pawnee, for example, often scouted for the US Army against their Lakota and Cheyenne rivals — including at the Little Bighorn in 1876. When you write about the 1862–68 wars, name the specific nation involved (Santee Sioux at Mankato, Cheyenne and Arapaho at Sand Creek, Oglala Lakota under Red Cloud) rather than ‘the Indians’.
Reaction to Sand Creek
Sand Creek divided opinion sharply. A federal investigation in 1865 condemned Chivington’s attack as ‘a foul and dastardly massacre’, but he had already left the army and was never prosecuted. Eastern newspapers and Quaker reformers were appalled; Western newspapers more often praised the Volunteers as having delivered ‘just punishment’. The Cheyenne, Arapaho and allied Lakota launched a wave of raids across the central Plains throughout 1865. The most lasting consequence was political: Sand Creek made it clear that ‘peaceful’ treaty arrangements offered no real protection, and it pushed many younger Indigenous leaders — including the Oglala Lakota war leader Red Cloud — towards organised armed resistance.
Red Cloud’s War, 1866–68
In 1862 Congress had passed the Pacific Railroad Act and prospectors had struck gold in Montana. The fastest route to the new diggings ran north from the Oregon Trail along the Bozeman Trail, straight through the Powder River country — prime Lakota hunting ground guaranteed by the 1851 treaty. The US Army began building three forts (Reno, Phil Kearny, C.F. Smith) to protect the trail in 1866. Red Cloud, an Oglala Lakota war leader, walked out of the negotiations and declared war.
For two years a coalition of Oglala, Hunkpapa, Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors blockaded the trail. The decisive moment came on 21 December 1866 outside Fort Phil Kearny, when Captain William Fetterman led a relief column of 80 men out of the fort against orders. He had reportedly boasted that with eighty soldiers he could ride through the entire Sioux nation. Crazy Horse and a small decoy party drew Fetterman’s column over a ridge and into a waiting ambush of about 1,000 warriors. Every man in the column was killed inside half an hour — the worst US Army defeat on the Plains until Little Bighorn ten years later.
This confusion is one of the most common errors on questions about the early Plains wars. The first Fort Laramie Treaty (1851) was a multi-nation council organised by the Indian agent Thomas Fitzpatrick: the US recognised tribal territories, promised annual annuities, and guaranteed safe passage on the Oregon Trail. The second Fort Laramie Treaty (1868) was the peace settlement that ended Red Cloud’s War: the US closed the Bozeman Trail, abandoned the three forts, and recognised Lakota ownership of the Black Hills and the ‘unceded’ Powder River country. Pin the dates: 1851 = annuities and safe passage; 1868 = forts abandoned and Black Hills granted.
The Second Fort Laramie Treaty, 1868
Faced with mounting army losses, public pressure and the cost of garrisoning forts that could not be safely supplied, Washington opened peace negotiations in 1868. The terms were extraordinary. The US Army would close the Bozeman Trail and abandon Forts Reno, Phil Kearny and C.F. Smith. The Great Sioux Reservation was set aside for the Lakota, including the sacred Black Hills. The Powder River country was recognised as ‘unceded Indian territory’ into which no white person could pass without Lakota consent. Red Cloud refused to sign until the forts were physically burned. The Lakota set fire to Fort Phil Kearny themselves as the soldiers withdrew.
The 1868 treaty was a rare Indigenous victory written into US law. But it was fragile. When gold was struck in the Black Hills in 1874, Washington moved within two years to force the Lakota off the very land it had just guaranteed them — the path that led directly to the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876. Red Cloud’s War WON the treaty; the Black Hills strike unwound it.
Red Cloud’s War (1866–68) ended with the US Army closing the Bozeman Trail, abandoning three forts and recognising Lakota ownership of the Black Hills under the second Fort Laramie Treaty — a rare Indigenous strategic victory. Captain William Fetterman’s loss of all 80 men in December 1866 was the worst US Army defeat on the Plains until Little Bighorn (1876).