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Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings
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FORT ROBINSON and RED CLOUD AGENCY
Nebraska
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Location: Dawes and Sioux Counties. Fort Robinson
is on U.S. 20, about 4 miles west of Crawford. The site of Red Cloud
Agency is on an unimproved road, about 1-1/2 miles east of the
fort.
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These two installations along the White River in
northwestern Nebraska were the scene of many exciting events during the
final two decades of Sioux and Cheyenne resistance on the northern
Plains. The fort was founded in 1874 to protect the Red Cloud Agency,
which had been moved the year before from its first location (1871-73),
on the Oregon-California Trail and the North Platte River about 25 miles
southeast of Fort Laramie, Wyo. The agency's mission was to control and
issue food and annuities to the Sioux and Cheyennes. Among them was the
recalcitrant Oglala Chief Red Cloud, who had refused to move onto the
Great Sioux Reservation of western South Dakota, created by the Fort
Laramie Treaty (1868), and insisted on residing in the unceded territory
north of the North Platte.
Life at the agency was hectic. At times 13,000
Indians, many hostile, were camped nearby awaiting supplies. Aggravating
the situation were their nonreservation kin and Arapahos, residents of
the surrounding unceded hunting territory who wintered near the agency
to procure food. De facto rulers of the agency, the Indians kept the
inexperienced, and often dishonest, agents and their staff in a virtual
state of siege. The braves went on a rampage in February 1874 and killed
the acting agent. The next month, to restore peace, the Army founded
Fort Robinson adjacent to the agency and Camp Sheridan near the newly
established Spotted Tail Agency, 40 miles to the northeast, which
administered mainly the Upper Brules. Realizing the troops' daily
presence generated friction, in May the commander relocated the fort
about 1-1/2 miles west of the agency.
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Fort Robinson officers' quarters
in the late 1870's. (Denver Public Library, Western
Collection) |
But the Army could not prevent corruption in agency
management, which infuriated the Indians. In 1875 a special Government
commission conducting hearings at various locations throughout the
Nation, including the Red Cloud and Spotted Tail Agencies, confirmed
reports that agents, other Government employees contractors, and
freighters were profiting from traffic in Indian food and annuities,
many of them inferior. The nation wide publicity aroused the ire of
eastern humanitarians.
A far stronger reason for Indian hostility was the
violation of the Fort Laramie Treaty represented by the 1874-75 mining
invasion of the Black Hills, for which the fort was a way station on the
main route to the goldfields. In September 1875, first at the fort and
then at a site 8 miles to the east, Government representatives tried to
buy the hills from the reservation Sioux, but they refused. The fort
supported campaigns in Wyoming and Montana the next year against the
nonreservation and reservation Sioux and Cheyennes who united under
Sitting Bull and other leaders and overwhelmed Custer in June at the
Battle of the Little Bighorn.
Following this campaign and a victory over the Sioux
in September in the Battle of Slim Buttes, S. Dak., Brig. Gen. George
Crook returned via the Black Hills to Fort Laramie, Wyo. He then marched
to the Red Cloud and Spotted Tail Agencies and put down a threatened
uprising by disarming and dismounting Red Cloud's Oglalas and Red Leaf's
Brules. Crook and the other generals triumphed in their retaliatory
winter campaigns. Some 4,500 Sioux and Cheyennes, including the Cheyenne
Dull Knife and the Oglala Sioux Crazy Horse, surrendered in the winter
and spring at Fort Robinson and Camp Sheridan. As a result of a
misunderstanding, in September 1877 the Fort Robinson commander
attempted to arrest Crazy Horse. Resisting, in the guardhouse Crazy
Horse pulled a knife, a soldier bayoneted him, and he died a short time
later in the adjutant's office next door. An Indian rebellion was
averted. The next month, however, the Red Cloud and Spotted Tail
Agencies and their residents, in accordance with the Black Hills Treaty
of 1876, moved to the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Reservations in South
Dakota.
In September 1878 the Cheyenne Dull Knife and his
band, who had been assigned from Fort Robinson to Darlington Agency, in
Indian Territory, escaped and headed for their homeland. They were
captured in the sandhills near Fort Robinson, where they were confined.
They again tried to gain their freedom in January 1879, but troops
killed some of them and captured the rest. In 1890, during the Ghost
Dance rebellion, elements of the black 9th Cavalry and the white 8th
Infantry from Fort Robinson were among the first troops on the scene at
the Pine Ridge Agency, S. Dak.
During the late 1870's, ranchers had begun to move
into the area around Fort Robinson and once the railroad arrived, in
1886, homesteaders followed. The presence of the post mitigated
conflicts between the two groups. In 1890 the fort's importance
increased as a result of the inactivation of Fort Laramie Remaining
active through World War II, in its final years Fort Robinson served as
a cavalry base, remount depot, war-dog training center, and
prisoner-of-war camp. Since 1949, or 2 years after the Army departed, it
has been occupied by the Fort Robinson Beef Cattle Research Station, a
joint enterprise of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the
University of Nebraska.
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The Fort Robinson headquarters
building (1905) serves as a museum today. (National Park
Service) |
Fort Robinson State Park consists of the principal
historic buildings: six sets of frame-covered adobe officers' quarters,
built in 1874-75; and six sets of brick officers' quarters, constructed
in 1887. Several miscellaneous structuresstorehouses, shops, and
officesdate from the period 1886-1910, but the rest of the
buildings are later additions. The Nebraska State Historical Society has
placed interpretive markers around the fort area and maintains a museum
in the frame headquarters building (1905). The society has reconstructed
the guardhouse where Crazy Horse was mortally wounded and the adjutant's
office, both built in 1874.
At the Red Cloud Agency site, to the east of the
fort, no remains are extant but a monument commemorates it and the State
has conducted some archeological investigation. The historic scene is
unimpaired by modern intrusions. During the summer months the State
historical society conducts tours to the site from the Fort Robinson
museum. The fort and agency sites are on lands owned by the U.S.
Government and the State of Nebraska.
NHL Designation: 12/19/60
http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/soldier-brave/siteb16.htm
Last Updated: 19-Aug-2005
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