Editing Sioux (section)

===Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851===
{{Main|Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851|Indian Peace Commission|Red Cloud's War}}
[[File:Sioux-treaty-lands.png|thumb|The Lands of the 1851 Ft. Laramie Treaty]]

The [[Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851]] was signed on September 17, 1851, between U.S. treaty commissioners and representatives of the [[Cheyenne]], Sioux, [[Arapaho]], [[Crow people|Crow]], [[Assiniboine people|Assiniboine]], [[Mandan]], [[Hidatsa]], and [[Arikara]] Nations. The treaty was an agreement between nine more or less independent parties. The treaty set forth traditional territorial claims of the tribes as among themselves.<ref>Paragraph 69, [http://facweb.furman.edu/~benson/docs/peace.htm Report to The President By The Indian Peace Commission] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190913000503/http://facweb.furman.edu/~benson/docs/peace.htm |date=September 13, 2019 }}, January 7, 1868</ref> The United States acknowledged that all the land covered by the treaty was Indian territory and did not claim any part of it. The boundaries agreed to in the Fort Laramie treaty of 1851 were used to settle a number of claims cases in the 20th century.<ref>See Meyer, Roy W.: The Village Indians of the Upper Missouri. The Mandans, Hidatsas, and Arikaras. Lincoln and London, 1977, p. 186. Sutton, Imre (Ed.): Irredeemable America. The Indians Estate and Land Claims. Albuquerque, 1985.</ref> The tribes guaranteed safe passage for [[settler]]s on the [[Oregon Trail]] and allowed roads and forts to be built in their territories in return for promises of an annuity in the amount of fifty thousand dollars for fifty years. The treaty should also "make an effective and lasting peace" among the eight tribes, each of them often at odds with a number of the others.<ref name="digital.library.okstate.edu">Kappler, Charles J.: Indian Affairs. Laws and Treaties. Washington, 1904. Vol. 2, p. 594. http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/Vol2/treaties/sio0594.htm {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140812163225/http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/Vol2/treaties/sio0594.htm |date=2014-08-12 }}</ref>

The treaty was broken almost immediately after its inception by the Lakota and Cheyenne attacking the Crow over the next two years.<ref name=Michno>{{cite web|last=Michno|first=Gregory|title=The Indian Trail of Broken Treaties|year=2006|publisher=Wild West|page=40|quote=With the treaty duly agreed to and signed, the Lakotas promptly went north, and over the next two years, attacked the Crows, invaded their lands in what became Wyoming and Montana, moved in, and drove them out. The Cheyenne joined in the attacks in 1853.|url=http://studythepast.com/378_spring11/materials/broken_treaties.pdf|access-date=August 29, 2019|archive-date=September 20, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200920052035/http://studythepast.com/378_spring11/materials/broken_treaties.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref> In 1858, the failure of the United States to prevent the mass immigration of miners and settlers into Colorado during the [[Pike's Peak Gold Rush]], also did not help matters. They took over Indian lands in order to mine them, "against the protests of the Indians,"<ref name="par 35"/> and founded towns, started farms, and improved roads. Such immigrants competed with the tribes for game and water, straining limited resources and resulting in conflicts with the emigrants. The U.S. government did not enforce the treaty to keep out the immigrants.<ref name="par 35">Paragraph 35 [http://facweb.furman.edu/~benson/docs/peace.htm Report to the President by the Indian Peace Commission, January 7, 1878] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190913000503/http://facweb.furman.edu/~benson/docs/peace.htm |date=September 13, 2019 }}</ref>

The situation escalated with the [[Grattan massacre|Grattan affair]] in 1854 when a detachment of U.S. soldiers illegally entered a Sioux encampment to arrest those accused of stealing a cow, and in the process sparked a battle in which Chief Conquering Bear was killed.<ref>See e.g. Bettelyoun, Susan Bordeaux and Josephine Waggoner: With My Own Eyes. A Lakota Woman Tells Her People's History. Lincoln and London, 1998, pp. 53–54. Fowler, Loretta: Arapaho and Cheyenne Perspectives. From the 1851 Treaty to the Sand Creek Massacre. ''American Indian Quarterly'', Fall 2015, Vol. 39, No. 4, pp. 364–390, p. 367.</ref>

Though intertribal fighting had existed before the arrival of white settlers, some of the post-treaty intertribal fighting can be attributed to mass killings of bison by white settlers and government agents. The U.S. Army did not enforce treaty regulations and allowed hunters onto Native land to slaughter buffalo, providing protection and sometimes ammunition.<ref>Andrew C. Isenberg, The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750–1920 Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 127</ref> One hundred thousand buffalo were killed each year until they were on the verge of extinction, which threatened the tribes' subsistence. These mass killings affected all tribes thus the tribes were forced onto each other's hunting grounds, where fighting broke out.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2016/05/the-buffalo-killers/482349 |title=J. Weston Phippen, 'Kill Every Buffalo You Can! Every Buffalo Dead Is an Indian Gone', ''The Atlantic'', May 13, 2016 |website=[[The Atlantic]] |date=May 13, 2016 |access-date=August 29, 2019 |archive-date=August 29, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190829091517/https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2016/05/the-buffalo-killers/482349/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>Carolyn Merchant, American Environmental History: An Introduction, Columbia University Press, 2007, p.20</ref><ref>John C. Ewers, Intertribal Warfare as the Precursor of Indian-White Warfare on the Northern Great Plains, The Western Historical Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 4 (Oct., 1975), pp. 397–410</ref>

On July 20, 1867, an [[act of Congress]] created the [[Indian Peace Commission]] "to establish peace with certain hostile Indian tribes".<ref name="report">{{cite web |author1=Indian Peace Commission |title=Report to the President by the Indian Peace Commission |url=http://eweb.furman.edu/~benson/docs/peace.htm |website=[[Furman University]] |date=January 7, 1868 |access-date=August 29, 2019 |archive-date=August 7, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200807072929/http://eweb.furman.edu/~benson/docs/peace.htm |url-status=live }}</ref> The Indian Peace Commission was generally seen as a failure, and violence had reignited even before it was disbanded in October 1868. Two official reports were submitted to the federal government, ultimately recommending that the U.S. cease recognizing tribes as sovereign nations, refrain from making treaties with them, employ military force against those who refused to relocate to reservations, and move the [[Bureau of Indian Affairs]] from the [[United States Department of the Interior|Department of the Interior]] to the [[United States Department of War|Department of War]]. The system of treaties eventually deteriorated to the point of collapse, and a decade of war followed the commission's work. It was the last major commission of its kind.

From 1866 to 1868, the Lakota fought the [[United States Army]] in the [[Wyoming Territory]] and the [[Montana Territory]] in what is known as [[Red Cloud's War]] (also referred to as the Bozeman War). The war is named after [[Red Cloud]], a prominent Lakota chief who led the war against the United States following encroachment into the area by the [[United States Army|U.S. military]]. The Sioux victory in the war led to their temporarily preserving their control of the Powder River country.<ref name=bury>*{{cite book |last=Brown |first=Dee |title=Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, ch. 6 |publisher=Bantam Books |year=1970 |isbn=0-553-11979-6 |author-link=Dee Brown (writer)|title-link=Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee }}</ref> The war ended with the [[Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868)|Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1868]].