but met with an absolute refusal. After much guerrilla warfare, an
important military campaign against the Sioux was set on foot in
1876, ending in Custer's signal defeat upon the Little Big Horn.

In this notable battle, Red Cloud did not participate in
person, nor in the earlier one with Crook upon the Little Rosebud,
but he had a son in both fights. He was now a councilor rather
than a warrior, but his young men were constantly in the field,
while Spotted Tail had definitely surrendered and was in close
touch with representatives of the government.

But the inevitable end was near. One morning in the fall of
1876 Red Cloud was surrounded by United States troops under the
command of Colonel McKenzie, who disarmed his people and brought
them into Fort Robinson, Nebraska. Thence they were removed to the
Pine Ridge agency, where he lived for more than thirty years as a
"reservation Indian." In order to humiliate him further,
government authorities proclaimed the more tractable Spotted Tail
head chief of the Sioux. Of course, Red Cloud's own people never
recognized any other chief.

In 1880 he appealed to Professor Marsh, of Yale, head of a
scientific expedition to the Bad Lands, charging certain frauds at
the agency and apparently proving his case; at any rate the matter
was considered worthy of official investigation. In 1890-1891,
during the "Ghost Dance craze" and the difficulties that followed,
he was suspected of collusion with the hostiles, but he did not
join them openly, and nothing could be proved against him. He was
already an old man, and became almost entirely blind before his
death in 1909 in his ninetieth year.