Hostilities on the Plains came to a climax when Colonel Carrington built Fort Reno, Fort Phil Kearny, and Fort C. F. Smith on the Bozeman Trail. This trail extended from Fort Laramie northwestward to Virginia City, Mont., scene of a new gold rush. Capt. William J. Fetterman and 80 men were slain in an ambush in December 1866 at Fort Phil Kearny (near present Buffalo, Wyo.). In 1867 Red Cloud’s warriors were repulsed at the Wagon Box and Hayfield Fights; but the Government decreed that this trail to the Montana mines must be abandoned. By the second treaty of Fort Laramie, in 1868, the Sioux were granted an extensive hunting domain between the North Platte and Missouri Rivers.
The treaty of 1868 marked the end of major Indian hostilities in the North Platte Valley. In 1870 Red Cloud was induced to visit the Great White Father (President Grant) in Washington; he was also taken to New York City, where he gave an impressive oration in his native tongue to the assembled palefaces. Red Cloud wanted an agency and trading post set up near Fort Laramie, long the traditional camp of the Oglala Sioux. The Government wanted to set up the agency far north of the Platte, on the White River. To humor the Indians, still in a resentful mood, the first Red Cloud Agency was established on the north bank of the Platte, half way between Fort Laramie and Scotts Bluff, at present Henry, Nebr., on the Wyoming boundary. This became the temporary home of more than 6,000 Dakota Sioux (mainly Oglala and Brule), 1,500 Cheyenne, and 1,300 Arapaho.
Chief Red Cloud. Original sketch in Oregon Trail Museum.
Under the prevailing peace policy the Episcopal Church took over the Sioux Agency. Their first agent was J. W. Wham. Unable to control Red Cloud and his excitable warriors, Wham was soon replaced by another churchman, J. W. Daniels. It was not easy for the victors of the Bozeman Trail war to mend their ways. The Sioux ambushed Pawnee buffalo-hunters in 1873 at Massacre Canyon on the Republican River; others joined hostiles on the Powder River in an attack on the Crow Indians and on the Northern Pacific survey parties on the Lower Yellowstone River. In 1873, Daniels finally managed to persuade these “peaceful” Indians to move the agency to White River, where Fort Robinson was established the next year.
The discovery of gold in the Black Hills in 1874, the attempt to reduce further the Sioux reservation, the swift events which culminated in the disastrous Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, and the subsequent rounding up of the scattered Sioux to be placed on Dakota reservations, the killing of Crazy Horse at Fort Robinson—all these events occurred far to the north of Scotts Bluff. The only “wild Indians” to appear again in this area were Dull Knife’s Cheyennes, who passed here in 1878 in a spectacular northward flight from their hated reservation in Oklahoma.
Hunters, Miners, Cowboys, and Homesteaders
The ruthless hide-hunters were effective allies of the U. S. Army in ending resistance of the Plains Indian to the white man’s advance. The American bison, or buffalo, had been the staff of life and the major source of food, clothing, and shelter for the Indians. Once vast buffalo herds, blackening the landscape, crossed and recrossed the North Platte River. The many expeditions and the emigrants on the California Road killed the huge shaggy beast wholesale. As a result, most of the herds withdrew to the southern Plains.
Construction of transcontinental railroads and the addition of new military posts along their route created a huge demand for fresh meat; in the East there was a good market for buffalo robes. The result was an intensive campaign of slaughter by professional hunters, armed with heavy Sharps and Ballard buffalo rifles. The stupid creatures were easy game for the hunter, who ran after them Indian fashion or calmly mowed them down from a prone position, as they grazed. In the mid-seventies the Kansas Pacific Railroad alone hauled out the carcasses of 3 million buffalo. It is estimated that more than 30 million buffalo were destroyed during the two decades, 1860-80. Descendants of the few creatures that survived this slaughter are now to be found only in zoos and in Government preserves, such as Yellowstone National Park.
The Black Hills Gold Rush of 1876 by-passed Scotts Bluff. Hopeful prospectors rode the Union Pacific Railroad to Sidney or Cheyenne, then followed trails northward to the diggings. The Sidney-Black Hills route crossed the North Platte over a private toll bridge at Camp Clarke, near modern Bridgeport. The Cheyenne-Deadwood Trail crossed a new Army-built iron truss bridge over the North Platte at Fort Laramie.