were a small fighting band, but he was a noted brave. His count
showed more coups, or strike-the-enemy feats, than the count of any
other warrior of the Oglalas. Before he retired from war, his coups
numbered eighty.

He was born in 1822. His Sioux name was Makh-pia-sha, meaning Red
Cloud. In the beginning it probably referred to a cloud at sunrise or
sunset; later it referred to his army of warriors whose red blankets
covered the hills.

When he was forty years old, there was much excitement among the white
men to the west of the Sioux range. From the mines of Idaho the
gold-seekers had crossed to the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains in
western Montana. Mining camps such as Helena, Bozeman and Virginia
City sprang up.

The Oregon Trail of the emigrants already passed through the Sioux
country, and the Sioux had agreed to let it alone. Now the United
States asked permission to make a new road, which from Fort Laramie of
southern Wyoming would leave the Oregon Trail, and branch off
northwest, through the Powder River and the Big Horn country of
Wyoming, and on west across Montana, as a short-cut to the gold-fields.

This part of Wyoming really was Crow Indian country; but the Sioux had
driven the Crows out, and with the Northern Cheyennes were using the
region for a hunting ground. The white man's trails to the south had
frightened the buffalo and reduced the herds; the Powder River valleys
were the only ranges left to the Sioux, where they might hunt and
always find plenty of meat.

Some of the Sioux chiefs did sign a treaty for the new road. The only
Oglalas who signed were subchiefs. Red Cloud did not sign. The United
States went ahead, anyway. Troops were sent forward, to begin the work
of building the road. Red Cloud, with his Oglalas and some Cheyennes,
surrounded them and captured them; held them prisoners for two weeks,
until his young men threatened to kill them. Then he released them,
with a warning.

"I shall stand in the trail," he said. Those were the words of
Pontiac, to Major Rogers, one hundred years before.

United States officials were ordered to Fort Laramie, to talk with the
angry Red Cloud. He declined to meet them.

But already a number of white gold-seekers had entered by this Bozeman
Trail, as it was known. In June, of the next year, 1866, the United
States tried again to get Red Cloud's name on the paper. A council was
called at Fort Laramie.

During the last yea