10/14/99 Losing the Black Hills In the early 1860s the Oglala Sioux leader Chief Red Cloud fought to keep the U. S. Army from opening the Bozeman Trail, which led to the Montana gold fields through Sioux hunting areas in the Dakota Territory. Between 1866 and 1868 Red Cloud and his allies besieged forts along the trail until in 1868 the U.S. government agreed to abandon it. Red Cloud signed the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie Wyoming on April 29, 1869. …showed first 75 words of 398 total…

…showed last 75 words of 398 total…Little Bighorn River in what is now Montana. Red Cloud did not support the radical leader Crazy Horse, but he was not willing to sacrifice the Black Hills. Because of superior resources and weapons, the U.S. Army defeated the Sioux and forced them onto the reservations. Red Cloud was removed as Oglala chief after a dispute with a government agent in 1881, and he spent his last years at Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.