Tutor HuntResources History Resources

American West - Why Did The Second Fort Laramie Treaty Break Down

GCSE - The American West - a learning trouble spot.This breakdown leads to the Great Sioux War and the Battle of the Little Bighorn so its quite important but hard to remember

Date : 11/01/2016

Author Information

Paul

Uploaded by : Paul
Uploaded on : 11/01/2016
Subject : History

Why did the 1868 Fort Laramie treaty break down?

Aim – to take the story of the Indian Wars from Red Clouds victory in 1867 to the War for the Black Hills in 1876.

Q1 –Why did Red Clouds victory bring no end to the conflict? Cut the statements up and stick them in your book in the order you think they should go in. Then explain what you see as the main reason for a new war in 1876.

· The ambush of Captain Fetterman was portrayed as a massacre and the US army were determined to get revenge.

· Resistance to the whites was increasingly based around the religious leader Sitting Bull of the Hunkpapa Sioux and a much respected warrior Crazy Horse of the Oglala Sioux.

· In December 1875 President Grant ordered that food supplies to the Indians be stopped when they refused to sell the sacred lands. He then ordered the Sioux to return to the reservation within 60 days. Many Indians disobeyed and more Indians actually left the reservations to join Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull.

· In 1874 gold was discovered in the Black Hills of Dakota and the US government tried to buy the land back for $6 million dollars. Crazy Horse was one of many who refused to discuss this offer.

· By December 1875 approximately 7,000 Indian Warriors had joined Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull in the Powder River country. There were not only Sioux there were also Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors.

· In 1871 the Northern Pacific Railroad Company began building a new railroad through the sacred lands of the Sioux. They were protected by the army.

· Some of the younger Indian chiefs like Crazy Horse of the Oglala Sioux would not accept the treaty signed by Red Cloud.

· Red Cloud’s victory in 1866 left the army generals humiliated, they could not believe that they had been defeated by an ‘ignorant savage’

· General Phillip Sheridan said ‘the only good Indian I ever saw was dead’ this gets shortened to ‘the only good Indian is a dead Indian’

· A commission set up in 1874 recommended that the purchase of the sacred lands be forced through whether the Indians accepted the off of $6 million or not

· The Indians burnt down the forts on the Bozeman trail when the trail was closed to the whites

· In 1868 a Second Fort Laramie Treaty was signed, this created the Great Sioux Reservation which included the sacred lands of the Bighorn Mountains and the Black Hills of Dakota. However the treaty said that this land was granted to the Sioux for as long as the White Americans (and US government) did not need it. This was legal ‘trickery’ which the Indians did not understand. Red Cloud only understood this when he met US President Grant in 1870. Even so Red Cloud kept to the treaty.

The government agent who was to help the Indians was corrupt and robbed

This resource was uploaded by: Paul

Other articles by this author