A fatherless warrior grows up to be one of the greatest Native American chiefs and the only one to defeat the United States government in war.

Now that Should Be A Movie.  

It is called Red Cloud

It is a war epic

In the vein of Braveheart

It is like Hostiles meets Wind River

It follows ambitious chief Red Cloud

And young warrior Crazy Horse

As they battle to defend their territory from encroachment from other Native American tribes and the western expansion of white settlement.

Problems arise when the US Army builds forts in their territory and tribal politics cause a rift between the two warriors.

Together they will set aside their differences to defeat the US Army in the only war the Native Americans won against the US Government.

The idea came to me when I visited Fort Phil Kearny Historic Site, learned about the Fetterman Massacre, and saw a panoramic painting of the victorious Native Americans burning the fort, and wondered why I had never seen a movie about those events when there are almost a hundred such depictions of Custer’s Last Stand.

My unique approach would be the story of a great leader set against the background of the American Indian Wars in the Wild West.

A set piece would be when Red Cloud holds a council fire to discuss the situation with the US Cavalry in Fort Phil Kearny. Crazy Horse speaks up and says that they should attack the whites. Red Cloud agrees with him. He consults the spiritual advice of a Half-Man. The Half-Man takes him to the ridges near the fort and begins running back and forth. In his convulsions, he opens and closes his hands four times. He tells Red Cloud that he is scooping up the lives of the blue soldiers and that in the chief’s next battle, a hundred enemies will fall into his hands. Red Cloud makes his battle plans to lure the cavalry over the ridge that the Half-Man ran up and down. He gives the honor of being the bait to Crazy Horse. When the battle comes, 80 blue soldiers follow Crazy Horse over the ridge.

Target audiences would be fans of Western movies, books, music, and art, fans of Yellowstone and Taylor Sheridan drama series, First Nation communities, history buffs, players of Red Dead Redemption, fans of cowboy culture, and residents of the Great Plains States.

Audiences would want to see it for its themes of honor, sacrifice, leadership, the inspiring story of overcoming and achieving a victory against great odds, and the epic scale of history set against the beauty of the American West.

Intro

Today’s historical figure I believe Should Be A Movie is the Oglala Sioux chief Red Cloud. Books I consulted for this project are Autobiography of Red Cloud: War Leader of the Oglala by R. Eli Paul, Montana Historical Society Press, Red Cloud: Oglala Legend (South Dakota Biography) by John D. McDermott, from South Dakota Historical Society Press, Red Cloud: Warrior-Statesman of the Lakota Sioux (Oklahoma Western Biographies) by Robert W. Larson, University of Oklahoma Press, Crazy Horse And Chief Red Cloud: Warrior Chiefs- Teton Oglalas by Ed McGaa, from Four Directions Publishing, American Legends: The Life of Red Cloud, The Fetterman Massacre: The History and Legacy of the U.S. Army’s Worst Defeat during Red Cloud’s War and The Bozeman Trail: The History and Legacy of the Exploration Route that Led to Red Cloud’s War, from Charles River Editors, and The Heart of Everything That Is: The Untold Story of Red Cloud, An American Legend by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin, from Simon & Schuster. (Note: historians and members of the Sioux Nation have criticized Drury and Clavin’s book)

Red Cloud lived one of those American lives from which many movies could be made. He is one of those Forrest Gump archetypes who saw firsthand several important historical events and many changes in society and technology throughout his lifetime. His autobiography is filled with the exploits of his youth and ends before he goes to war with the US government. His older years dealing with reservation politics could be a miniseries. However, the events leading up to and of the war that bears his name are what I would like to focus on in this post. Those events should be a movie since Red Cloud is the only American Indian leader to force the US government to back down.

Despite this accomplishment, his name is not as famous as Tecumseh, Geronimo, Sitting Bull, and Crazy Horse. One reason is that white historians have painted him as an example of reconciliation and resignation. Some Native American activists have seen him as a pushover and turncoat. The truth of Red Cloud is much more nuanced and therefore much more interesting.

ACT I

Beginnings (Page 1-10)

A film could open with a meteor streaking across the sky over the Great Plains in 1822, the year of Red Cloud’s birth to a brave of the Oglala Lakota of the same name. When his father died from alcohol, giving him a lifelong enmity against whiskey and its traders, his mother took him and his siblings to be raised by an uncle, Old Smoke. This put him at a disadvantage in a society in which heredity meant everything. His younger cousin, Man Afraid of His Horses, would be a challenge to his leadership throughout his life.

Despite the “Noble Savage” caricature that was resurrected in the latter part of the 20^th Century,  American Indians were not simple, peace-loving hippies living in harmony with nature and each other, but more like the Lannisters and Starks from Game of Thrones. Red Cloud’s autobiography is filled with intertribal conflicts, shifting and uneasy alliances, conspiracies, and tribes raiding, warring on, and enslaving each other. They cut off body parts like noses, eyes, ears, and so forth because they believed that would deny the soul those sensory pleasures once the body was reincarnated in the afterlife. While at times they massacre their enemies, including the Crow and Pawnee, Red Cloud and his fellow warriors preferred to count coups, touching another combat in battle without killing or being killed. The more coups counted, the more honor. Red Cloud reportedly counted 80 coups. At 12 years old he killed his first buffalo and broke his first horse. At fourteen he joined his first war party. At sixteen he took his first scalp. As a young warrior, he learned that it was better to die on a battlefield than in old age. He was taught that when his village was attacked, he should cover the retreat of the women and children. He became cunning, bold, shrewd, daring in battle, and ambitious to the point that other warriors considered him prideful and arrogant.

A set piece would be when a war party returns from a retaliatory raid against the Pawnees. Red Cloud is nowhere in sight. Suddenly the women and children begin to say, “He is coming! He is coming!” The warriors ask, “Who is coming?” “Red Cloud! Red Cloud is coming!” The young warrior appears on a painted horse with feathers reserved for a warrior’s mount. This was the first time in his life that he had been called Red Cloud.

Inciting Incident (Pages 10-20)

The Sioux rarely fought among themselves. Whiskey changed that. A confrontation between Old Smoke’s band and that of Bull Bear involving a stolen woman and a slain horse was exasperated due to Bull Bear’s drinking. His band raided the camp of Old Smoke’s followers, killing the father of the man who stole the woman. Red Cloud shot him in the leg. “You are the cause of this,” he said before shooting Bull Bear in the head.

The killing of Bull Bear had a threefold effect. First, Old Smoke’s band and other Sioux would not unite against the western expansion of the US. Second, Red Cloud would find himself throughout his life in enmity with other Sioux, including Bull Bear’s son Little Wound. Third, Red Cloud was now the de facto leader of this uncle’s band.

Red Cloud’s ambition is tempered after he chooses power over love. He was attracted to a young woman named Pine Leaf, but he chose another, Pretty Owl. Her family’s importance could boost his standing in the tribe. A Sioux man could take as many wives as he pleased, so he planned to marry Pine Leaf later. He didn’t think to tell her.

It took him several horses to convince Pretty Owl’s family to let him take her hand in marriage. During the marriage days’ long marriage feast, Pretty Owl was escorted by other young women with torches to a honeymoon lodge beyond the camp. Red Cloud pulled the ramrod out of his Hawken rifle and placed it upon her shoulder, claiming yet another coup.

The next morning Red Cloud stepped out of his lodge to round up more horses. He saw something hanging from a lone tree overlooking the lodge. It was Pine Leaf. She had hung herself out of despair, the tightened noose causing her eyes to look at him accusingly. To appease her angry family cost Red Cloud even more horses.

Out of guilt and grief, he would never take another wife. This tragedy tampered with his cunning and gave him the wisdom and reserve to become the warrior his people would need.

And they would need it.

Second Thoughts (Pages 20-25)

There are two myths about the Western Expansion of the United States popularized by the entertainment industry. First, there is the trope from Hollywood’s Golden Era of pioneers meandering their way through the wilderness when suddenly Indians materialize, complete with an orchestral piece that includes beating drums, and attack a circle wagon train unprovoked. The second is the US Cavalry coming in guns akimbo, blowing up teepees, and killing men, women, and children left and right while “Flight of the Valkyries” plays. The truth, which falls in between, is more complicated and therefore much more interesting. 

During the decades following Lewis and Clark’s Voyage of Discovery the tribes of the Great Plains lived in peace with the whites. They traded skins and furs to the mountain men, who were fair in their prices, for guns to hunt buffalo and fight other tribes. The first treaty between Oglalas and the US  in 1825 involved fur trading. The fort that would eventually become known as Fort Laramie, the Ellis Island of the West, was established by civilian fur trappers in 1834. The Oglalas allowed wagon trains heading to California, Utah, and Oregon to pass through their territory for a toll of supplies. Red Cloud became friends with whites at Fort Laramie during this time.

But by the 1850s the fort had been taken over by the military. The number of travelers had caused the game to be hunted out and prairie grass to be eaten down to the roots by herds. The pioneers unintentionally brought cholera, measles, and smallpox, from which Red Cloud’s people had no immunity. Some intentionally stole from the indigenous population.

This led to the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie. It set boundaries for the tribes, including the Sioux and their allies the Cheyenne and Arapaho, and gave much of northern present-day Wyoming to the Crow. The tribes were to allow other tribes to hunt in their territories and let emigrants to pass through their territory for one hundred thousand dollars in annuities for fifty years. None of Red Cloud’s Oglalas “Touched the Pen,” a scornful phrase for signing a treaty. They were too busy fighting with the Crow. The Sioux leader who did sign was named Conquering Bear. He was possibly plied with whiskey.

Climax of Act I

ACT II

First Obstacle / Ascending Action (Pages 25-30)

In 1854 a cow wandered away from a Mormon wagon train. Sioux from the band of Conquering Bear found the cow. Since they believed free-ranging meant free for the taking, they butchered it. The garrison at Fort Laramie sent Lieutenant John Grattan, a fresh West Point graduate, with 29 soldiers to arrest the culprit and receive restitution, breaking the treaty of Fort Laramie, which said such actions could only be taken by Indian agents. Due to the arrogance of Lt. Grattan, who had brought two pieces of artillery, and the drunkenness of his interpreter, negotiations broke down. Then a nervous soldier shot Conquering Bear, mortally wounding him. In the ensuing fight, Grattan and all his men were killed. Young warriors tied the interpreter to a tree, cut off his body parts, stuffed them in his mouth, and then raised their breechcloths to show him that they were still men.

One of them is named Crazy Horse.

There is debate about where Red Cloud was at the time. Some accounts say that he tried to intervene, but after shots were fired, he led a force that cut off the retreat of Grattan’s men. This would have been his first time to kill a white man. Another account says that he was camped near Fort Laramie, but did not interfere because it was a Brule, not Oglala, matter.

Even though the carnage was a result of Grattan’s actions, when Sioux led by Spotted Tail attacked a mail train, it gave the army the fuel to begin a campaign against the indigenous population. Brigadier General William S. Harney attacked a Brule Camp in the Battle/Massacre of Ash Hallow, Nebraska. In May 1856 Harney met with several Indian leaders and convinced them to move their tribes away from the Oregon Trail. Red Cloud was not at the meeting, but he moved his Oglalas away from Fort Laramie.

He had reached a major milestone in his life: he was now officially chief. The ceremony, involving shamans using water from a gourd to wash his hands, face, and feet, then painting his face and sticking an eagle feather to his head, is one of the proudest moments of his life.

In 1857, seven Lakota tribes met at Bear Butte, South Dakota, to discuss the whites’ invasion. It was decided that each tribe would choose its own hunting ground to develop and protect. They would also exclude white men from the Powder River area. Then the Sioux went to war with the Crows again.

This is when Red Cloud becomes de facto leader of the Sioux.

Rising Obstacles / Ascending Action (Pages 30-40)

Events far away began affecting Red Cloud’s Oglalas. In 1862 Santee Sioux refugees from the US-Dakota War in Minnesota, a result of the government’s failure to live up to its treaty terms of providing the Dakota with food annuities, and US retaliatory campaigns in present-day North Dakota, made their way to his band. [Note: The “Great Sioux Uprising” should also be a movie.]

Then in 1864, fighting broke out between settlers and the Cheyenne and Arapaho in Colorado. After a white family was killed, their bodies in coffins displayed in Denver, militia under John Chivington massacred hundreds of innocent Cheyenne and Arapaho men, women, and children at Sand Creek despite the American flag waving over their camp. The unruly militiamen mutilated the dead, committed crimes of a sexual nature against the bodies of the women, and then paraded their “trophies” in Denver to cheering crowds. Despite the action being mostly condemned by the military and the citizenry in the eastern states and Chivington resigning before he could be court-martialed, the Sand Creek Massacre set off two decades of war between the whites and Plains Indian tribes. Cheyenne, Arapaho, and southern Sioux under Spotted Tail made an epic march of four hundred miles to take refuge with Red Cloud’s band of Oglalas. Along the way, they killed two whites for every Indian killed at Sand Creek.

Red Cloud declared all-out war on the whites. No longer would his warriors count coups while battling the blue soldiers. His warriors would be free to torture and mutilate any that fell into their hands. He leads an expedition against the Army forts along the Platte River. Religious ceremonies were held to sanction the expedition. One of the ceremonies would be the last Sun Dance on the Great Plains.  

Major fighting occurred on July 26^th, 1865, at the Platte River Station. A decoy party, led by Crazy Horse, tried to lure the blue soldiers into a trap. This first attempt failed. The Cheyenne attacked a wagon train. A command of cavalry under Lieutenant Caspar Collins galloped across a bridge to rescue the besieged train. After killing most of the wagon train, the Cheyenne turned on Collins’ column while the Sioux came out of the hills and cut the blue soldiers off from behind. With 40 casualties, the Battle of Platte River Bridge was the US Army’s worst defeat at the hands of Indians during the Civil War. By the end of 1865, Sioux were flocking to Red Cloud’s command.  

During this time, a rift occurs between Crazy Horse and Red Cloud. Crazy Horse believed that the chief had promised him his niece Back Buffalo Woman. One day he led a raiding party out from camp. One young warrior turned back, claiming to have a toothache. When Crazy Horse returned, he found that Red Cloud had married Black Buffalo Woman off to the young warrior.

Midpoint (Pages 40-50)

In response to the raids, Brigadier General Patrick E. Connor led the Powder River Expedition into Sioux territory. It was a bumbling affair. Conner could not find large groups of Sioux to attack. Like ghosts, they would appear and then disappear. His Pawnee Scouts massacred about 25 Cheyenne on the Power River. He managed to reach the Tongue River in Montana Territory before his men, who had enlisted for the duration of the Civil War, mutinied and insisted that they could go home because the war back east was over. Without enough troops to continue, Conner had no choice but to turn back.

However, the expedition convinced the US Military that there needed to be forts along a route known as The Bozeman Trail. “The yellow metal that drives white men crazy”  – gold – had been found in western Montana. The US government, in debt and under financial strains after the destruction of the Civil War, needed gold to back its currency. A new trail was blazed in 1863 by John Bozeman. The three forts guarding the trail were Fort Reno at the southern end in Wyoming, Fort C. F. Smith at the northern end in Montana, and Fort Phil Kearny between them.

Since most of the trail passed through Crow territory it was not a violation of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851. However, the Sioux had driven most of the Crow out of the area over the previous 15 years and saw it as their land by right of conquest. Red Cloud and his allies warned travelers not to pass through the area. Bozeman himself would be killed by a war party while traveling the trail in 1867. Red Cloud allowed some travelers to pass through as long as they did not disturb the buffalo and paid the Oglalas with provisions.

On May 30, 1866, Red Cloud, over the objections of Crazy Horse, agreed to a piece talk. The bad winter of 1865-66 had left his people with little provisions. The peace commissioners from Washington said they did not want the land, just a road to pass through the country. During the talks, Red Cloud learned that troops under Colonel Henry B. Carrington had been patrolling the disputed area. “[Soldiers come] to steal the road before the Indian says yes or no,” Red Cloud said, pointing out the duplicity of the whites. The peace commission was treating the chiefs like little children, he said. “Pretending to negotiate for a country which they had already taken by conquest.” He pointed to his rifle. “In this and the Great Spirit I trust for the right.”

The following conflict would be known as Red Clouds War.

Obstacles / Rising Action (Pages 50-70)

His war includes many incidents that have become tropes of the Western movie genre. There are lone riders outracing bands of warriors, wagon trains circling to fight off attacks, cavalry patrols arriving in the nick of time to relieve whites just about to be massacred, and men preparing to mercy kill women and children before they fall into the hands of “savages.” At one point the garrison at Fort Phil Kearny placed the children in a powder magazine intending to blow it up if Red Cloud’s warriors seized the fort. One man rides seventy miles through a blizzard for reinforcements. His horse falls dead upon arriving at Fort Laramie.

By now Red Cloud was in his forties, too old to lead risky war parties or decoy movements. He becomes a strategist. He lets younger warriors like Crazy Horse do most of the frontline fighting. There is some strain on the relationship between Red Cloud and Crazy Horse when the former is passed over for shirt wearers, a rare privilege to wear a colorful shirt, which is given to the latter.  

Red Cloud waged a guerrilla war on the three forts along the Bozeman. Every time blue soldiers or civilians came out of the forts to collect wood for fires or building materials, they were set upon by Red Cloud’s warriors. There were fifty-one attacks upon the whites. The Oglala and their allies would coordinate simultaneous attacks on and besiegements of forts Phil Kearny and C. F. Smith. It was a winter campaign, unusual for the Plains Indians who would usually hold up and try to survive on their fall buffalo kill while the prairie was covered with heavy snowfall and blizzards.

Stuck inside their forts, the bluecoats became restless. Inside Fort Phil Kearny there was disagreement with Colonel Henry B. Carrington, who favored defensive measures, and Captain William T. Fetterman, who favored offensive movements. The legend has been printed that Fetterman said, “Give me 80 men and I can ride through the whole Sioux nation.” If he said anything, it was probably, “Give me 80 men and I can ride to the Tongue River.” Fetterman has been compared to George Armstrong Custer, an insubordinate raring for a fight. However, on December 6^th, a column under Fetterman was sent out to rescue a party of woodcutters under attack is cut off and surrounded by the Oglala and their allies after Fetterman had fallen for an Indian trick and pursued a lone warrior. After the column was almost annihilated before being rescued by a column under Carrington, Fetterman admitted he had learned his lesson about the fighting abilities of the Sioux. Less attention has been paid to Lieutenant George W. Grummond, a bigamist who had asked for the Bozeman Trail assignment to fight Indians.

The soldiers in the forts were not the only ones getting restless. At a campfire meeting, Crazy Horse said they should attack the whites. Even though Red Cloud preferred to starve the garrisons, he listened to the young man. The warriors, not used to fighting in winter, were getting restless.

While planning his next move, Red Cloud visited a spiritual advisor called a Half-Man who had been born a hermaphrodite. The half-man took Red Cloud to Lodge Trail Ridge overlooking Fort Phil Kearny. There, while having a convulsion, he opened his hands four times. He told Red Cloud that he was scooping up the lives of the blue soldiers in his hands and that in his next battle, a hundred enemies would fall into the chief’s hand.

Red Cloud plans accordingly. He gives Crazy Horse the honor of leading the bait. On December 19^th Red Cloud has his warriors do a dry run of his battle plans. The blue soldiers do not fall for the trap.

On December 21^st the Oglala and their allies fell upon a woodcutting party. Reinforcements under Captain Fetterman and Lieutenant Grummond are sent to rescue the woodcutters. Fetterman and his command are harassed and distracted by a group of warriors led by Crazy Horse called Strong Hearts. They and Crazy Horse mocked and ridiculed the cavalrymen. Then Crazy Horse bent over and mooned the soldiers before charging out of sight of Fort Phil Kearny. This was too much for the pride and pent-up frustrations of the blue soldiers. Fetterman and Grummond led exactly 80 soldiers over Lodge Trail Ridge.

Waiting on the other side of the ridge were over 1,000 concealed Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho. The cavalry rode into a trap and were assaulted by over 40,000 arrows. The formation broke apart as some soldiers tried to retreat to higher ground, slipping and sliding in the snow. Fetterman and forty men found refuge in rocks and crevices. So many horses were killed that the cavalrymen soon had a natural barricade. But Crazy Horse and his Strong Hearts switched to foot attacks and kept on coming. Some officers shot themselves rather than be taken alive by the warriors.

Soon eighty-one soldiers and civilians lay dead in the snow. Crazy Horse and his Strong Hearts stripped them of their clothing and weapons. The warriors cut off their heads, arms, and legs. Noses, eyes, ears, and other parts were removed and placed on nearby rocks.

The Strong Hearts made an exception for the body of teenage bugler Adolph Metzger. After running out of ammunition, the German immigrant had used his bugle as a weapon until it was nothing but bent brass. In respect of his bravery, the only mutilation given him was a craved cross in his chest. The warriors then covered his body with a buffalo robe.

Red Cloud watched all this from high above on a ridge. His victory would be known to the whites as The Fetterman Massacre and to the Oglala and their allies as The Battle of the Hundred-in-the-Hands.

The battle was the worst military disaster the U. S. Army had suffered so far on the western plains, but the U. S. government was also not expecting this show of force and resistance from the Sioux and their allies. General William T. Sherman declared, “We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women, and children.” However, the US government, weary from the Civil War and the Reconstruction of the South, had no desire to embroil itself in another costly war. In February 1867, the Sanborn-Sully Peace Commission met with Man-Afraid-Of-His Horses. The Commission called for an end to the aggressive war against the Indians and a Federal tribunal to deal with wrongs inflicted against the Indians. Red Cloud still refused to meet with the Commission, preferring to persuade his former enemy the Crows to oppose the Bozeman Trail.

In August 1867, Crazy Horse and his Strong Hearts attacked the blue coats and their civilian contractors in The Hayfield Fight and The Wagon Box Fight. The odds were in favor of the Sioux as they descended upon the whites who had circled their wagons. However, the soldiers had new Springfield Model 1866 and lever-action Henry rifles, which Red Cloud would call “the much-talk guns.” Realizing they could not attack the enemy in horseback charges, the Oglala and their allies dismounted and inched their way through the high grass on foot. They were forced to retreat both times when reinforcements from Phil Kearny arrived at the last minute. The whites thought they had won the battle because the attackers retreated. The Sioux saw their ability to go buffalo hunting safely after the fights with horses and mules they had captured as a sign of their victory.

Red Cloud had a good reading on the situation. The Army had a hard time finding contractors to supply the forts. The Continental Railroad had been completed and soon the whites would find different ways to reach the goldfields. The US government was concluding that it was “cheaper to feed [the Indians] than to fight them.”

Clixmat of Act II (Pages 70-80)

He would not attend the Indian Peace Commission that arrived at Fort Laramie in April 1868. The government agents provided the chiefs who came in with food for their people. The first chiefs signed the new treaty on April 29. Chief Spotted Tail tried to convince Red Cloud to listen to federal overtures. Red Cloud refused to come in until the forts along the Bozeman were evacuated.  

Even with more chiefs signing the treaty, the government decided to sell the forts at public auction. There were no takers. On July 29^th Fort C. F. Smith was abandoned. Red Cloud and his warriors watched from the hills. They soon swept down and set the abandoned fort ablaze. Forts Reno Kearny abandoned in August. Crazy Horse and his Strong Hearts looted and burned them as well.

Still, Red Cloud would not appear at Fort Laramie until there was enough meat for his people to last through the winter. He sends messages through intermediates. After killing enough buffalo Red Cloud concludes there is plenty of meat stored up for his people to last the winter.

Red Cloud finally rode into Fort Laramie on November 4^th. Three days of negotiation began. Like the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, the chief determined that war and politics were part of the same process. While the other chiefs stand to extend their hands in friendship, he remains seated and extends his fingers, the Sioux way of saying that they are not holding weapons. He demanded powder and lead from the government since they had supplied it to the Crows. When told he would have to go and ask General Harney, he refuses. On November 6, 1868, Red Cloud washed his hands with dirt and signed the1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie in which the Sioux could keep the Black Hills, the Bozeman Trail was closed, and rations for thirty years.

He stood his ground and the government had blinked.

Act III

Descending Action (Pages 80-85)

In the Spring of 1869, the garrison of Fort Laramie awoke to find that Red Cloud had formed hundreds of warriors on the parade ground. For a moment it looks as though there will be a fight. The garrison commander finds out what Red Cloud wants. “We’re here to eat,” he said, referring to the rations promised in the treaty. The garrison commander would later note that Red Cloud could have easily attacked the fort but instead came in peacefully.

Resolution (Pages 85-90)

Red Cloud visited Washington, D. C., and New York City as part of a Great Peace Party in 1870. He delivered a speech to a supportive white audience at the Cooper Union and saw the towering buildings of New York. He witnessed the power of the US military’s weapons at the Navy Yard and Arsenal in DC. In a film poetic license could be taken here, and Red Cloud would be shown having a vision of a forest filled with his Oglala hanging like Pine Leaf, their eyes condemning him like her eyes once did. He realizes that there is no glory in leading his people to death. To save the women and children his rearguard action has to be his sacrifice of any glory he might receive by going on the warpath. After failing to find a peaceful solution to keeping The Black Hills, he kept his end of the treaty that the US had just broken and did not participate in the Great Sioux War of 1876-77. “Do not go to war anymore,” he tells Crazy Horse and his warriors, including his son Jack Red Cloud. “You must go to war yourself. I’m down.” He misses out on the glory that Crazy Horse received for the victory at the Battle of the Little Bighorn because he has found that there was indeed glory in growing old and dying of old age if that meant he could continue to serve his people.

While Crazy Horse would become famous for refusing to be photographed, Red Cloud embraced the technology because he knew it had a powerful effect on the white mind and would cause sympathy for his people. He used passive-resistant tactics to protest injustices like the Carlisle Indian Industrial School and the Dawes Act. Instead of “going out in a blaze of glory” like Crazy Horse, who was killed trying to escape a guardhouse in 1877, he lived out his last days on Pine Ridge Reservation with his wife Pretty Owl at his side until he died in 1909.

He never stopped fighting for his people.

Final Thoughts

I first learned about Red Cloud during a family trip to Wyoming and visited Fort Phil Kearny State Historic Site. I immediately thought that Red Cloud’s War would make a great Western movie or miniseries. When I first saw the above picture at the museum, I knew that it should have been captured in Technicolor with a sweeping pan right in CinemaScope, VisionVista or Cinerama. While most of the movie could be shot with the aspect ratio of 1.85: 1 as a homage to the directors of classic Westerns like John Ford and Howard Hawks, moments like the burning of the forts in victory should be captured with anamorphic lenses between 2.20: 1 and 2.75: 1 as a reference to the Golden Era of Historical Epics that did not always properly respect and portray the Native American position.

I will lay my cards on the table and say I hold a triumphant view of Western Expansion. The world is better off because of colonization. Many millions, perhaps billions, are alive today because “the great untamed wilderness” of the North American continent was turned into a giant breadbasket. I am glad that an agrarian-industrial society replaced a nomadic society with its problems of constant warfare and want. I believe the phrase “No One Is Illegal On Stolen Land” is not only illogical but also a simplistic understanding of history. I think it is immature to use injustice from 200 years ago to disparage our Constitution, republican form of government, patriotism, and modern foreign policy, especially considering the military service of Native Americans for the past century and a half. While the American Indians were not savages, the word “savage” is an accurate term for some of their actions. Depending upon the tribe, they practiced slavery, ritualist torture, human sacrifices, cannibalism, and mutilation of dead bodies. I see the pioneers as heroic and believe there is much about their character that we today would do well to emulate.

However, I will freely and readily admit that many injustices were inflicted upon the Native Americans by my country. I am ashamed that my government broke every treaty it made with the First Nations. I hope my government repents of their sins and rights the wrongs they committed during Western Expansion. The poverty, dependence, epidemics, and despair they have created with the reservation system should be addressed. While many pioneers went west searching for a better life for their families, believing land ownership would help cause a more equal and democratic society and create “An Empire of Liberty,” the Indian warriors who attacked them were defending their families from disease and starvation either due to losing their game and hunting grounds or the government failing to deliver promised rations.

Any man willing to fight and die for his family should be honored.

As Red Cloud said, “I have the same feelings as all the white men have for their families; they love their children, as I do mine, and I would like to raise my children well.”

I can empathize with the position of the First Nations during Western expansion. One side of my family was forced to move when health inspectors told them they could not have animals within the city limits. A reservoir displaced the other side. When asked if he wanted to go to the 50^th anniversary of the building of the dam, a male relative asked if he could bring dynamite. Even in my own lifetime, my family faced the prospect of being in the path of Interstate construction. I have seen statues of my ancestors and their chieftains removed and torn down because they are seen as boogeymen keeping society from progressing. I have seen young people reject their families, beliefs, faiths, and heritage because they were “enlightened” at college. The debates between parents and “their betters” in the education establishment over teaching sexuality and Critical Race Theory in the classroom is the spirit of the mission schools repacked.

In the end, I reckon we’re all Indians standing in the way of someone’s idea of progress.

That’s why I can see a movie about Red Cloud moving beyond the various stereotypes and caricatures of Native Americans that have plagued Hollywood productions for the past century.  Red Cloud belongs to the pantheon of great leaders and freedom fighters throughout human history: Moses, Ceasar, Spartacus, Charles Martel, Joan of Arc, Willaim Wallace, George Washinton, Grant, Churchill, Patton. He reminds me of Robert E. Lee, who declined the glory of leading his nation’s army because he could not raise his sword against his people. His exemplary leadership transcends cultural, social, racial, and national barriers. That’s why I think a biopic of Red Cloud should not be a Western, but a Historical Epic about a great leader set in the West. It could join the ranks of epic biopics like Lawrence of Araba, Patton, Cromwell, Gandhi, and The Last Emperor.

A biopic of Red Cloud could be the chance to portray a well-balanced history of the West. It would strip away romantic images of the past and show the Indian wars for what they were, war. It could help demythologize the Wild West by showing the sheer brutality. A true depiction of the disemboweled corpses littering the site of the Fetterman Massacre and mutilated bodies at Sand Creek would earn the movie a hard R. It would take a good director to portray this violent period realistically but still respect and honor the noble characters like Red Cloud. I could see Steven Spielberg or Mel Gibson behind the wheel in such a biopic. They have proven with their films like Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, Braveheart, and Hacksaw Ridge that they can portray violent historical events while capturing the humanity of those who lived during that time. They could direct this piece of Western history not as a Western but as a war epic. Instead of a fancy logline like “Galloping Out Of The Annuals Of The American West Thunders The Legend of Red Cloud, Whose Lust For Power Was Only Outmatched By His Love For His People,” it could simply be, “This Isn’t A Western. It’s A War.”

Finally, I believe that Red Cloud’s story should be a movie because it could raise public awareness of November 6^th, the date Red Cloud signed the Third Fort Laramie Treaty, ending the only war the American Indians won against the U. S. Government. Such a date is better to celebrate Indigenous People than in October on Columbus Day or the day after Thanksgiving, Native American Heritage Day. I believe we should keep Columbus Day to celebrate both his daring and innovation and the heritage and experience of Italian Americans who have faced their own trials and tribulations. Replacing it seems like throwing a bone and sends the message that there is nothing worth celebrating about First Nations except for the beginning of their conquest and subjection. Native American activists have criticized placing Native American Heritage Day on the same day as Black Friday, a day dedicated to commercialism. November 6^th, a day of victory for American Indians, would be a better date for celebrating Native American achievement and success, instilling pride instead of inflicting perpetual victimhood.

Because it is an epic, sweeping saga that honors Native Americans and helps bring healing by spotlighting success, I believe that the leadership of Red Cloud Should Be A Movie.