Okay, here’s a rewritten version of the article, aiming for a more relaxed and conversational tone, and approximately 1200 words.
The Peace Commission & the Struggle of the Great Plains
Alright, picture this: it’s the mid-1860s, and things are getting seriously tense out on the Great Plains. We’re talking about a full-blown crisis, a real clash of cultures, and it feels like everything’s about to explode. You could say the Fetterman Massacre up at Fort Phil Kearny in Wyoming back in ’66 was a major tipping point.
But how did we even get here? Well, for about 15 years leading up to that, things had been brewing. Think about it: settlers were blazing new trails across the land, miners were swarming into newly opened territories, and everyone was yakking about building a transcontinental railroad.
And speaking of railroads, that’s where things really kicked into high gear. Congress was all in on this railroad idea, practically throwing money at the Union Pacific and Central Pacific to get those tracks laid down. It was a land grab bonanza, a race to see who could claim the most territory. These railroads were pushed with insane intensity!
So, what’s that mean for the Indigenous folks who already called the Plains home? Not much good. By the fall of ’66, even old Ben Holladay, who was making a killing off overland freighting, saw the writing on the wall and cashed out. The overland mail route? Moved west to Fort Kearney, Nebraska, because that’s where the Union Pacific was chugging along. The situation was rapidly coming to a head.
Clashing Views, Clashing Cultures
Now, here’s where it gets even more complicated. You had all these bigwigs in Washington, D.C., arguing about what to do with the "Indian problem." Should the Army be in charge? Or the Interior Department? Total disagreement all around.
Senator John Sherman, for example, had a pretty straightforward (and, let’s be honest, pretty harsh) view. He figured the only way to stop the wars was to basically absorb all the tribes into the general population. Forget treaties, forget reservations – just turn them into regular citizens controlled by "constables instead of soldiers."
Then you had guys like Francis A. Walker, who took a "survival of the fittest" kind of approach. He thought it was ridiculous to worry about "national dignity" when dealing with "savages." His idea was simple: do whatever works – fight, trick, run – whatever keeps you alive.
But here’s the kicker: even some of the white guys on the frontier admitted that the U.S. government wasn’t exactly playing fair. Colonel Henry Inman, who’d spent decades out West, said he’d never seen an Indian war that wasn’t caused by the U.S. breaking its promises. Even Kit Carson, the famous Indian fighter, swore that most of the trouble started because the whites were the aggressors.
Congress was stuck. They knew they needed to do something, but they couldn’t agree on what. The War Department and Interior Department were always bickering, Western politicians wanted the Indians gone, and Eastern politicians were all about being humanitarian. It was a mess!
Enter the Peace Commission
So, in 1865, Congress came up with a plan: a special committee to investigate the whole situation. They split up into groups and fanned out across the West, talking to everyone they could find.
What they found wasn’t pretty. General John Pope said the Indians were dying off fast because of wars, mistreatment, bad policies, and the constant stream of white settlers taking their land and killing their game. General James Carleton, in a truly shocking statement, claimed the Indians were simply destined to disappear, like the mammoths and mastodons before them!
The committee decided that the wars were mostly the fault of white settlers encroaching on Indian lands. They didn’t think the Army should be in charge, but they couldn’t come up with any real solutions. Still, their report added fuel to the fire, making it clear that something had to give.
Trying to Make Peace (Sort Of)
Meanwhile, the fighting kept going. The Cheyenne and Sioux were still battling it out, especially up in the Powder River country. In the spring of ’67, General Hancock torched a Cheyenne village, which didn’t exactly help the peace process.
Easterners were demanding an end to the violence, while Westerners wanted the Indians gone, and the Army probably just wanted to make money. It was a stalemate. So, Congress passed a bill to establish a "Peace Commission." The idea was to find out what was causing all the trouble, protect the railroads and trails, and figure out how to "civilize" the Indians without stopping the U.S. from expanding. They were supposed to find permanent homes for the tribes, far away from the railroad lines.
This Peace Commission was a who’s who of big shots: generals, politicians, Indian commissioners. They met for over a year, and while they did manage to get some tribes to sign treaties and move to new reservations, they also ended up fighting among themselves. The divide between the military and the civilians just got wider and wider.
Talks and Treaties
The Commission started out in St. Louis, Missouri, in August of 1867, trying to figure out how to even talk to these "hostile" tribes. The Indians were scattered all over the place, and it was too dangerous to go out there without soldiers, but going with soldiers would scare them off.
General William Sherman and Commissioner Taylor sent messages through the military posts and Indian agencies, inviting the tribes to meet near Fort Laramie, Wyoming, and Fort Larned, Kansas.
The Fort Laramie conference didn’t go so well in the summer of ’67. Red Cloud, the big cheese of the Oglala and Brule Sioux, refused to even meet with them. He sent word that he was fighting to protect the Powder River Valley and that he’d only stop if the Army pulled out of Fort Phil Kearny and Fort C. F. Smith. The Commissioners packed up and left, promising to come back the next summer.
The southern tribes were a little more cooperative. They met at Medicine Lodge Creek in Kansas, but even then, the Cheyenne were suspicious and stayed away for a while. Eventually, the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache agreed to give up their claims to a huge chunk of land and move to a new reservation in Indian Territory.
The Arapaho and Cheyenne were understandably reluctant, considering they’d been massacred at Sand Creek just a few years earlier. They felt betrayed, and the Indian Office agreed. After a lot of back and forth, they finally signed a treaty at Medicine Lodge, but the new reservation was a pretty terrible place, barren and dry.
The Aftermath
The Medicine Lodge treaties were the biggest accomplishment of the Peace Commission. The next spring, they went back to Fort Laramie and met with the northern tribes. Red Cloud finally agreed to peace after the Commissioners promised to pull the troops out of the Powder River Valley. This made the folks in Montana furious, but the government ordered the forts abandoned and the road closed.
In the new Fort Laramie treaty of 1868, the U.S. agreed that the land east of the Big Horn Mountains would be unceded Indian territory, and the Sioux promised to stay west of the Missouri River. It was the beginning of the end for the Sioux way of life.
Besides the big treaties, there were other agreements made to push the Indians away from the railroad lines. The Ute, Shoshone, and Bannock tribes were also forced onto reservations.
The End of an Era
By 1868, the Peace Commission had done its job. The railroads were free to expand, and the Indians were being pushed onto smaller and smaller pieces of land. The humanitarians in the East thought they were doing the right thing, but the truth was, they were just paving the way for the destruction of the Plains Indians’ way of life.
The report of the Peace Commissioners admitted that the removal policy had been a disaster, but their only solution was to create two big Indian territories, north and south of the railroads. They couldn’t even agree on whether the Army or the Interior Department should be in charge.
General Sherman summed it up pretty bluntly: "All who cling to their old hunting grounds are hostile and will remain so till killed off." It was a grim outlook, but it was also a pretty accurate prediction of what was to come.