7 2 WILD WEST JUNE 2019
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MINNESOTA
TERRITORY
OREGON
TERRITORY
UTAH
TERRITORY
UNORGANIZED
TERRITORY
INDIAN
TERRITORY
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Fort Union
Fort Laramie
HSept. 17, 1851orse Creek Treaty
Fort Clark
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John Richard’s
Trading Post
Sioux Treaty Lands in 1851
game, and a region stripped of graze. Gold seekers headed for
California sometimes debauched Indian girls, using liquor for
seduction. The Cheyennes, who placed a high value on female
chastity, began stealing white men’s horses and stock in retribu-
tion. Younger Sioux war-
riors often joined them.
Among the would-be
peacemakers was Thom-
as “Broken Hand” Fitz-
patrick, the Indian agent
at Fort Laramie and a for-
mer mountain man who’d
lost three fingers to an ex-
ploding firearm. In that
era Indian agents were
more diplomats than des-
pots. Fitzpatrick was of
this thoughtful set and de-
cided that improving re-
lations by, for example,
paying Indians for lost buffalo in food and trade goods and
coaxing them to accept protected areas, tribe by tribe, was
a better approach than allowing mutual hostility to simmer and
spark outright war, as Pontiac and Tecumseh had waged farther
east. In 1849 Fitzpatrick floated the idea to Colonel David Daw-
son Mitchell, the superintendent of Indian Affairs at St. Louis,
who was a Mexican War veteran and former fellow fur trader.
Washington’s Bureau of Indian Affairs had just moved from the
War Department to the newly formed Interior Department,
and Mitchell and other senior officials liked the idea of broker-
ing peace. In the spring of 1850 the Senate passed a bill provid-
ing for the anticipated costs of negotiating a general treaty with
the Plains tribes, but the House rejected it. Fitzpatrick report-
edly protested, was fired, then
reinstated, and on Feb. 27,
1851, both houses approved
$100,000 for gifts to the Indi-
ans and other expenses. That
summer Mitchell headed up-
river from St. Louis to join
Fitzpatrick at Fort Laramie
for the “Big Talk.”
Father De Smet, French fur traders and tribal agents
sent out word to the Indians—who were at peace with the Ameri-
cans, if not always with one another—and in late August tribal
leaders from the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains headed
for Laramie. The Comanches, Kiowas and Apaches declined to
enter Sioux territory, but the Sioux were well represented, as were
the Cheyennes, Arapahos and Missouri River farming tribes.
Major John H. Holeman, newly appointed Indian agent to
Utah Territory (then encompassing much of present-day Nevada
and Utah and parts of Colorado and Wyoming), made a minor
blunder when he insisted on inviting the Shoshone tribe. The
Shoshones—referred to as “Snakes” by Plains Indian nemeses—
arrived just after most of the Sioux bands. Famed mountain
man Jim Bridger accompanied the tribe as their interpreter.
As Washakie, the Shoshone chief, rode up at the head of his
people, a young Lakota warrior charged out on horseback, scream-
ing his war cry. An alert French trader leapt on a horse, caught up
with the Lakota hothead and managed
to wrest his weapons from him. Word
soon spread the young Lakota had
recognized Washakie as the man who
had killed his father. Washakie was
impressed. Instead of breaking off
the negotiations, the Sioux and the
Shoshones actually feasted and danced
together. White soldiers kept a wary
eye on the festivities.
Unfortunately, the promised wag-
onloads of trade goods had yet to
arrive. As the Indians waited, their
horses ate up much of the grass, and
the people and dogs caused malodorous sanitary problems in
the Laramie Valley. Mitchell urged the Indians to break camp
and travel some 36 miles downriver to the mouth of Horse Creek
(just east of the present-day Wyoming-Nebraska border), where
clear water and fresh grass was readily available. A lack of
game led the Indians to hold “dog feasts,” in which they ate
the namesake animals that pulled small travois for them. Some
diplomatic U.S. officials later noted fresh-boiled dog tasted
something like pork.
At 9 a.m. on September 8 Colonel Mitchell ran up the flag
and fired off a cannon, summoning the Indians to deliver and
listen to speeches. The Sioux sat at the opening of a great circle,
one side left bare for the Crows, who had not yet arrived. The
Cheyennes, Assiniboines, Shoshones, Gros Ventres, Mandans,
Arikaras, Hidatsas and Arapahos completed the circle in turn.
David Mitchell
Father De Smet
Tom Fitzpatrick