Red Cloud

Red Cloud, who lived from around 1822 to 10 December 1909, was a leader of the Oglala Lakota from 1865 to 1909 and one of the most capable Native American opponents the United States Army faced in the western territories. He led the Lakota to victory over the United States in Red Cloud's War, whose largest action, the 1866 Fetterman Fight, killed eighty one United States soldiers and stood as the worst defeat suffered by the Army on the Great Plains until the Battle of the Little Bighorn a decade later, making the Lakota the only nation to defeat the United States on American soil. After signing the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868, Red Cloud led his people through the transition to reservation life; some of his opponents mistakenly regarded him as the overall leader of the Sioux, but the large and highly decentralized Sioux nation, comprising the Dakota, Lakota and Nakota, was organized into several major divisions whose individual bands, including those among the Oglala, largely operated independently even as leaders such as Red Cloud were widely renowned and respected.