Perhaps no Indian leader of the mid-nineteenth century was as well known in his time as the great Lakota Sioux Red Cloud.
Larson is a valuable contribution to Sioux history and to our understanding of Indian-white relationships in the nineteenth century as well as political aspects of the Indian-white dialogue..
Imbued with the new social and environmental historiography, this modern biography by Robert W.
Red Cloud\'s passionate belief in the values of his culture prevented him from acting as a culture broker; nevertheless, he remained an important figure of the Gilded Age.
Although his motives at times were questioned, he steadfastly resisted encroachments on Sioux land during the reservation period, and he consistently protested the pressure by market oriented whites to impose an agrarian economy on a people who had never farmed. government.
In his later years, Red Cloud was an intermediary for his people in their dealings with the U.
S.
Army in the Powder River country, his forcing the closure of the Bozeman Trail, and his strong pressure to negotiate the favorable outcome of the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868 made him the preeminent chief among the Sioux.
And in his middle years, his leadership against the U.
S.
In his early years he gained a reputation for fierceness as a warrior and as a tactician against both whites and other Indian tribes.
He earned it.
Red Cloud was not born to leadership. government, survived the demise of the other leaders by many years.
Although his fame later was eclipsed by that of the legendary heroes who crushed Custer\'s Seventh Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn-Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse-Red Cloud\'s active leadership of his people, and his representation of the Sioux in vital negotiations with the U.
S.
Perhaps no Indian leader of the mid-nineteenth century was as well known in his time as the great Lakota Sioux Red Cloud
