Red Cloud's Shirt

The shirt featured in our museum is a replica crafted by Oglala artists at the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. The original is at the Buffalo Bill Museum in Cody, Wyoming.

Red Cloud's shirt is not only a piece of clothing, but also a very beautiful and skillfully made work of art. It was constructed of two traditionally tanned deer hides and painted with natural pigments. There’s detailed beadwork along the shoulders and on the chest and back. The beads are stitched with sinew from deer, elk, or buffalo. The purple bands around the tassels are dyed and woven porcupine quills. But perhaps the most striking component of this shirt is the over 200 locks of human and horse hair hanging from the shoulders. Hundreds of hours of labor went into both the original shirt and this exact replica. Only men who were greatly esteemed among their people were allowed to wear such a decorated shirt, so let's learn about the man who the original was designed for.

Red Cloud was born in 1822 into a traditional Oglala Lakota culture that would change greatly by the time of his death nearly a century later. Red Cloud is most well-known for opposing United States’ occupation of his land in the 1860s. When the government built a road through buffalo habitat to lead an influx of prospectors to the rich gold fields of Montana, Red Cloud refused to agree to any non-aggression treaties. After two years of conflict, the US Government withdrew its soldiers from their forts along the road and signed the Fort Laramie treaty in 1868. This treaty acknowledged that Black Hills belong to the Lakota. Red Cloud wore this shirt to meet with United States president Ulysses S. Grant just two years after that treaty.

 

The purple at the top of the hair pieces is made of dyed and wrapped porcupine quills.

The human and horse hair adornments on Red Cloud’s original shirt might be interpreted two ways. The locks may be the hair of his enemies and their horses, placed there to showcase his past successes in battle and intimidate future opponents. On the other hand, they may be locks of hair willingly given to him by his supporters to show their support for his leadership.

Both interpretations would fit with what we know about Red Cloud. He was a powerful and respected warrior, greatly esteemed for his skill at fighting and hunting. As a war general, he united warriors from different groups into a cooperative force. On the other hand, Red Cloud was also an eloquent and thoughtful politician who later in his life worked for peace through negotiation rather than warfare. In his final decades, he advocated for his people and encouraged his fellow Sioux to seek peace rather than violence. He passed away at the Pine Ridge reservation in 1909.

Having this shirt in our museum allows all our visitors to appreciate its beauty and learn a little bit about Red Cloud and his role in United States history.