Why did sioux indians fight

True, there was a leader with a plan; true, the main body divided instead of attacking as one; true, it was a surprise attack on an unsuspecting village; and true, a lodge was torched. But no soldiers were involved. The Indians in the village were members of the Omaha tribe, who usually lived in earth lodges in eastern Nebraska near the Missouri River, but who used skin tepees whenever they ventured west to hunt buffalo. They were Oglalas, a subdivision of the western Teton Sioux, or Lakotas.

On this occasion, the Lakotas and Omahas were of equal strength, and though the fight lasted much longer than most Indian vs. Indian engagements, it did not prove deadly. The battle is remembered today only because the Lakota leader who tried to capture the Omaha flag went on to greater military successes—against the U.

Army in the s—and then, in , reminisced about his early years during visits with an old friend at the Pine Ridge Reservation of South Dakota. Eli Paul. Even people with only a passing interest in frontier history recognize the distinctive names of those two remarkable Oglalas. Yet, Red Cloud and Crazy Horse still must take a back seat in the grand Teton tepee to Sitting Bull, the militant spiritual leader from the Hunkpapa subdivision.

Together, those three Lakotas must be the most recognizable Indian trio of the 19th-century West, perhaps rivaled only by the Big Three of the Apaches—Geronimo, Cochise and Mangas Coloradas.

No question, though, that when it came to history-making large-scale confrontations with the U. Army in the West, the Sioux were war bonnets above the Apaches. As for the indefatigable Battle of the Little Bighorn, well, it never really leaves the mind—just stays lodged there like a spent 7th Cavalry bullet or a Lakota arrowhead. What sometimes does slip the mind is the fact that the Sioux were a warlike people even before they began to seriously resist Euro-American expansion into western Minnesota and the northern Plains in the middle of the 19th century.

The Omaha hunters attacked by a young Red Cloud were just one of many native peoples who, over the many moons, did not see eye to eye with the Sioux.

In the early 17th century, the Sioux mainly occupied what would become Minnesota and parts of Wisconsin, but Lakota bands began to migrate from the upper Mississippi River valley onto the Great Plains because of costly warfare with the Cree Indians, who were armed with French rifles, and pressure from the Ojibwas to the east.

The lure of the great buffalo herds also encouraged the westward expansion and, after horses were acquired around , the moving became a whole lot easier…and so did the fighting.

The Lakotas warred against settled agricultural people such as the Pawnees and Arikaras and also against other mounted nomads such as the Cheyennes, Kiowas, Arapahos and Crows.

Defeating the Arikaras in allowed the Lakotas to expand into the middle Missouri Valley and what would become western South Dakota. In the Lakotas made peace with the Kiowas, who now formally recognized that their former enemies controlled the Black Hills. In the early s, the Lakotas joined forces with another former enemy, the Cheyennes, to drive the Crows out of what would become eastern Wyoming. With the Black Hills as their spiritual and geopolitical center, they ranged west to the Continental Divide, east to the Missouri basin, south to the South Platte and Smoky Hill Rivers, and north to the lands of two powerful rivals, the Crows and the Blackfeet.

By the s the Lakotas had made peace with the Cheyennes and Arapahos, but there was no peace with those tribes to the east that ranged westward for bison Pawnees, Osages, Omahas, Potawatomies, etc. Encounters with non-Indians, which had occurred infrequently in the past, now increased as Oregon-bound settlers and California-bound gold seekers began crossing the Plains. The buffalo herds were disrupted, and the Plains Indians, in turn, tried to disrupt some of the wagon trains.

Even the young Crazy Horse may have already displayed bravery, generosity, wisdom and fortitude—the four great virtues of the Lakota male—by that time, and certainly Red Cloud had already made a name for himself among his Lakota peers. But the trio was unknown to the white world and would have held no interest for the white man in any case. That would only change when they became threats to that white world…or at least to that small part of the white world that passed through Teton territory.

In an attempt to head off trouble at the pass in , representatives of the U. The treaty was designed to buy off the natives so that there would be peace on the emigrant road the Indians were not to attack the white people just passing through and on the Plains the Indians were not to attack each other.

It was a pipe dream. For one thing, the Indian signees did not represent all of their tribesmen. Her strangled body was recovered two weeks later. Although the perpetrator had attacked and raped many women since , this was his first murder. The Railway Rapist had a distinctive method On December 29, , British Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell and his force of between 2, and 3, troops, which included the 71st Highland regiment, New York Loyalists, and Hessian mercenaries, launch a surprise attack on American forces defending Savannah, Georgia.

Live TV. This Day In History. This was one style of Sioux fighting. Another was the brave run. Typically the change from one to the other was preceded by no long discussion; a warrior simply perceived that the moment was right. All the soldiers were shooting at him but he was never hit.

After firing their rifles at Crazy Horse, the soldiers had to reload. It was then that the Indians rose up and charged. Among the soldiers, panic ensued; those gathered around Calhoun Hill were suddenly cut off from those stretching along the backbone toward Custer Hill, leaving each bunch vulnerable to the Indians charging them on foot and horseback. The instinct of Sioux fighters was the opposite—to charge in and engage the enemy with a quirt, bow or naked hand.

There is no terror in battle to equal physical contact—shouting, hot breath, the grip of a hand from a man close enough to smell. The charge of Crazy Horse brought the Indians in among the soldiers, whom they clubbed and stabbed to death.

The skirmish lines were gone. Men crowded in on each other for safety. Iron Hawk said the Indians followed close behind the fleeing soldiers. The boom of the Springfield carbines was coming from Indian and white fighters alike. But the killing was mostly one-sided. In the rush of the Calhoun Hill survivors to rejoin the rest of the command, the soldiers fell in no more pattern than scattered corn. In the depression in which the body of Capt.

Myles Keogh was found lay the bodies of some 20 men crowded tight around him. But the Indians describe no real fight there, just a rush without letup along the backbone, killing all the way; the line of bodies continued along the backbone. Another group of the dead, ten or more, was left on the slope rising up to Custer Hill.

Between this group and the hill, a distance of about yards, no bodies were found. The mounted soldiers had dashed ahead, leaving the men on foot to fend for themselves. Perhaps the ten who died on the slope were all that remained of the foot soldiers; perhaps no bodies were found on that stretch of ground because organized firing from Custer Hill held the Indians at bay while soldiers ran up the slope.

Whatever the cause, Indian accounts mostly agree that there was a pause in the fighting—a moment of positioning, closing in, creeping up. The pause was brief; it offered no time for the soldiers to count survivors. There was nowhere to hide. Back and forth in front of Custer we passed, firing all of the time.

Kill Eagle, a Blackfeet Sioux, said the firing came in waves. Exactly when custer died is unknown; his body was found in a pile of soldiers near the top of Custer Hill surrounded by others within a circle of dead horses.

In their terror some soldiers threw down their guns, put their hands in the air and begged to be taken prisoner. But the Sioux took only women as prisoners. The last 40 or more of the soldiers on foot, with only a few on horseback, dashed downhill toward the river. One of the mounted men wore buckskins; Indians said he fought with a big knife. These soldiers were met by Indians coming up from the river, including Black Elk. He noted that the soldiers were moving oddly.

The Indians hunted them all down. The Oglala Brings Plenty and Iron Hawk killed two soldiers running up a creek bed and figured they were the last white men to die. Others said the last man dashed away on a fast horse upriver toward Reno Hill, and then inexplicably shot himself in the head with his own revolver. Still another last man, it was reported, was killed by the sons of the noted Santee warrior chief Red Top. Two Moons said no, the last man alive had braids on his shirt i.

He eluded his pursuers by rounding a hill and making his way back upriver. But just as Two Moons thought this man might escape, a Sioux shot and killed him.

That distinction went to an unknown soldier lying wounded on the field. Soon the hill was swarming with Indians—warriors putting a final bullet into enemies, and women and boys who had climbed the long slopes from the village. They joined the warriors who had dismounted to empty the pockets of the dead soldiers and strip them of their clothes.

It was a scene of horror. Many of the bodies were mutilated, but in later years Indians did not like to talk about that. Some said they had seen it but did not know who had done it. But soldiers going over the field in the days following the battle recorded detailed descriptions of the mutilations, and drawings made by Red Horse leave no room for doubt that they took place.

Red Horse provided one of the earliest Indian accounts of the battle and, a few years later, made an extraordinary series of more than 40 large drawings of the fighting and of the dead on the field.

Many pages were devoted to fallen Indians, each lying in his distinctive dress and headgear. Additional pages showed the dead soldiers, some naked, some half-stripped. Each page depicting the white dead showed severed arms, hands, legs, heads. The Cheyenne White Necklace, then in her middle 50s and wife of Wolf Chief, had carried in her heart bitter memories of the death of a niece killed in a massacre whites committed at Sand Creek in Coming up the hill just after the fighting had ended, White Necklace came upon the naked body of a dead soldier.

More soldiers were sent, this time with breech loading rifles, a new type of weapon that was much easier and faster to load and shoot than the old type of rifle. While the warriors chased both parties back into their forts, they suffered many casualties. Finally, with the transcontinental railroad south of the Platte River near completion, the government relented. The Ft. The Sioux burned down the forts once they were abandoned.

With the arrival of the railroad, the source of the Plains Indians life style, the buffalo, was disappearing. Not only was the new railroad frightening these once numerous animals, the soldiers and settlers were hunting them by the thousands.

Additionally, by the s, both sides had violated the Ft. Laramie Treaty. Now surveys for another railroad, the Northern Pacific, would make matters even worse by bringing in more settlers to homestead on the surveyed land. Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse led the Native warriors. General William T. Sherman and General Philip H. Sheridan led the federal troops. War broke out when the military ordered Indian hunting bands to come into the agencies or be declared hostile.

Then in the late spring, a three-pronged campaign was started with General George Crook coming from the south, Col. George A. Custer advancing from the east. The total encampment contained 7, Natives with approximately 1, of them warriors.

Sitting Bull and the Hunkpapa Sioux fled to Canada. Crazy Horse surrendered in only to be bayoneted to death while resisting orders for his imprisonment. Sitting Bull returned in and surrendered at Ft. He was moved to Standing Rock Agency and was killed in while resisting arrest.