in November, after his warriors had burned them, and
all the soldiers were gone out of the country, he put his name to the
treaty.

Thus he won out. He had said that he would close the road, and he had
done it.

Through the following years he remained quiet. He had had his fill of
fighting. His name was great. He was head chief of the Red Cloud
agency, later called Pine Ridge. Spotted Tail of the Brules controlled
the other agency, later called Rosebud.

Red Cloud always closely watched the whites. He was at peace, but
suspicious. When the Black Hills were finally demanded by the United
States, he sent out men to count the buffalo. The number in sight was
too small. Some day, soon, the Indians would have no meat on their
hunting grounds. Therefore Red Cloud decided that the red men must
begin to live by aid of the white man; and he favored the
reservations--even the sale of the Black Hills so that his people would
be made rich enough to settle down.

He was looked up to as a warrior and a councillor, but the United
States did not trust him; and after a time, put Spotted Tail over him,
in charge of the two agencies. This made bad feeling, and Red Cloud
and Spotted Tail did not speak to each other. However, his own people,
who rose under Sitting Bull, urged him to join with them, in vain.

Red Cloud lived to be a very old man. He became almost blind, and
partly paralyzed. He stuck to his one wife. They were together for
many years.

He died in December, 1909, in a two-story house built for him by the
Government on the Pine Ridge agency in South Dakota. He was aged
eighty-seven. Five years before he had given his chief-ship over to
his son, young Red Cloud, who carried the name. It is a name that will
never be forgotten.

CHAPTER XXIII

STANDING BEAR SEEKS A HOME (1877-1880)

THE INDIAN WHO WON THE WHITE MAN'S VERDICT

The Ponca Indians were members of the large Siouan family. They had
not always been a separate tribe. In the old days they and the Omahas
and the Kansas and the Osages had lived together as Omahas, near the
mouth of the Osage River in eastern Nebraska.

Soon they divided, and held their clan names of Poncas, Omahas, Kansas
and Osages.

The Poncas and Omahas clung as allies. Finally the Poncas remained by
themselves, low down on the Niobrara River in northern Nebraska.

When the captains, Lewis and Clark, met some of them, the tribe had
been cut by the small-pox to