Soon, word was coming into the agencies that Washington was talking of starving the Sioux in order to force them into moving on to specified areas of land. Congress were regarding the fact that the Sioux were refusing to give up the Black Hills as 'evil'. The agency Indians were considered, by the government, to be supplying arms and ammunition to the wild bands of Sioux.
After the Custer defeat at Little Bighorn, the Interior Department ordered that the four big Sioux agencies - Red Cloud, Spotted Tail, Cheyenne River, and Standing Rock - be turned over to the military on 26 July 1876.
Another commission arrived in Sioux Country and received a cold response at Red Cloud Agency. However, as soon as it became clear to the agency Sioux that they would be starved if they resisted, they were quickly induced to sign away their beloved Black Hills and their freedom. Spotted Tail also signed once he realised that resistance was futile, as did the Missouri River Sioux chiefs.
None of the chiefs, it seems, remembered the stipulation in the 1868 treaty that three-fourths of all adult Sioux males had to consent to such a binding land cession. The agreement was being forced through with only a few leaders' names. The US military also appealed to these Sioux to give it some of their young men to enlist in the fighting of the wild Sioux. The agency Sioux resolutely resisted this request.
The military embarked upon their winter campaign by destroying a northern Cheyenne band who had run away from Red Cloud Agency in June through fear of forced removal to Indian Territory, and who had been camping around the head of Powder River. These Cheyenne fled to join Crazy Horse and his camp. The US drove Crazy Horse's camp of around 600 lodges out of its winter encampment. Crazy Horse moved east. But by the early summer of 1877, most of the hostiles, including the young Oglala warrior, had arrived at Camp Robinson, near the agency, to surrender to the military.
© 2002 by Bornali HalderSite, Page and Article © Copyright 2002 by Bornali Halder