Wild West – June 2019

JUNE 2019 WILD WEST 71

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n 1851 at a council meeting on Horse Creek, down the

North Platte River from the U.S. Army garrison at

Fort Laramie, the influential Minneconjou Lakota Chief

Lone Horn and other tribal leaders accepted in concept a peace

between all peoples in the region encompassing present-day

western South Dakota, eastern Montana and parts of Wyoming.

For six years the signatories respected the Horse Creek Treaty

(aka 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie), proving largely able to keep

Plains Indians from killing other Plains Indians, even during

times of conflict between the Sioux and the Army.

But a wanton, never explained murder shattered Lone Horn’s

dream of Indian chiefs working together to maintain the peace

between the Sioux, their Cheyenne and Arapaho friends, their

formidable Crow enemies, the Assiniboines, the Gros Ventres,

the remnants of the Mandan, Arikara and Hidatsa farmers,

and elements of other tribes who sometimes traded but more

often clashed with one another. When the intertribal armistice

collapsed, the stage was set for the 1866 Fetterman Fight and

other clashes of Red Cloud’s War, the Little Bighorn and other

battles of the Great Sioux War of 1876, and also the

sad Indian wars finale at Wounded Knee in 1890.

Born circa 1814, Lone Horn was the son of

Chief Red Fish, a Minneconjou elder who in 1848

had occasion to change his mind about his Crow

enemies. That year after Crows kidnapped his daughter, Red

Fish had appealed to roving Jesuit missionary Father Pierre-Jean

De Smet for prayers. Among some tribes horse-stealing and girl-

stealing was a rite of manhood. Indians dreaded incest, and kid-

napping a bride from a different tribe was a sure way to prevent

inbreeding as well as to demonstrate one’s courage and skill.

Soon after the “Black Robe” joined Red Fish in prayer, the chief’s

daughter returned home unharmed. Thus in 1851, when Father

De Smet approached Red Fish and son Lone Horn with a peace

proposal, they listened respectfully. (According to some histo-

rians, by 1840 Lone Horn had already worked out a peace agree-

ment between the Lakotas and the Cheyennes—an alliance that

remained intact.)

The electrifying word of the California Gold Rush had brought

a tidal wave of badly prepared pioneers trundling in covered

wagons along the Platte River past Fort Laramie, where Oglala

and Brulé Lakotas bartered with French traders. Around 50,000

whites had passed though in 1849 and 1850, leaving behind some

700 corpses in shallow graves, a dearth of buffalo and other wild