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Sioux for Peace
Joining peacemaker Lone Horn (far left) at Fort
Laramie in 1868 are (from left) fellow Lakota
leaders Pipe, John Grass and Young Elk.It comprised the largest gathering of Plains Indians to date,
drawing an estimated 10,000 people, including women and chil-
dren. Mitchell produced a 3-foot-long ceremonial pipe with
a Catlinite bowl, inviting any who wanted peace and
would speak truth to draw smoke and pass the pipe
to his neighbors. In a further gesture of goodwill,
a white officer’s wife came out and sat in view
of the Indians. Translated through numerous
interpreters, Mitchell spoke first:The ears of your Great Father [in Washing-
ton] are always open to the complaints of his
Red Children. He has heard and is aware
that your buffalo and game are driven off,
and your grass and timber consumed by the
opening of roads and the passing of emigrants
through your countries. For these losses he
desires to compensate you....
In times past you had plenty of buffalo and
game to subsist upon, and your Great Father well
knows that war has always been your favorite amuse-
ment and pursuit....Diseases, famine and the vices of
bad white men are carrying your people off fast enough
without the aid of war.Mitchell told the Indians he had obtained $50,000 per year
for the next half-century to help them adapt to their new lives—
as long as they accepted fixed and permanent reservations,
where they themselves would enforce their laws. They could
drive out any whites who entered without permission. But if the
people of any tribe were to “war on another nation, take scalps,
steal horses, carry off women or do any other bad act,” they
would lose their annuity until the wrong was righted. Protection
would also be extended to “any white person lawfully passing
through [their] countries.”
For the next couple of days the once-hostile Indians visited
back and forth, feasting with one another and assuaging tribal
blood feuds with ritual adoptions and gifts. “They seemed allto form but a single nation,” Father De Smet recalled. “Polite
and kindly to each other, they spent their leisure hours in visits,
banquets and dances; spoke of their once interminable wars
and divisions as past things, to be absolute forgotten,
or ‘buried,’ to use their expression.”
When the Crows arrived in council on Sep-
tember 11, the circle was complete. They were
a splendid-looking tribe of big, bold men in
gorgeous finery. Longtime fur trader Charles
Larpenteur noted they lived far from the
trading posts and had not yet begun to
trade their horses, best robes and finest
beadwork, the latter embroidered on red
velvet cloth. The young but formidable
Crow Chief Big Robber smoked the pipe.
He then upstaged rival tribal leaders with
his eloquence, telling Mitchell:Father, we are a small nation, and these that are
with me here have been selected to come and see
you and do whatever is good for the Children of the
Long-Beaked Bird. We live a great way off, many days
travel from here, and we have but little to do with the whites,
but we are willing to be at peace with them. We believe it would be
for the good of all to be at peace and have no more war....The sun,
the moon and the earth are witnesses of the truth, and all that
I have promised here will be fulfilled.On September 12 those gathered began the complicated pro-
cess of carving out separate fiefdoms for each tribe, with Father
De Smet, Fitzpatrick and Bridger advising Mitchell. Crow histo-
rians suggest Big Robber’s noble and generous example helped
placate even those tribes that regarded them as enemies. The
Sioux accepted their tribal boundaries, while retaining hunting
rights outside, but they balked at appointing a sole represen-
tative chief. Negotiators finally talked Conquering Bear into
accepting what he himself said was a dangerous job. The signa-
tories ratified the treaty on September 17. When the wagon trainChief Washakie