Chief Red Cloud

Red Cloud was one of the most important leaders of the Oglala Lakota from 1868 to 1909. He was one of the most capable American Indian opponents that the United States Army faced in its mission to settle the western territories, leading a successful campaign in 1866-68 known as Red Cloud's War over control of the Powder River Country in northeastern Wyoming and southern Montana. The largest action of the war was the Fetterman Fight, with 81 Army soldiers killed, and was the worst military defeat suffered by the Army on the Great Plains until the Battle of the Little Bighorn ten years later.