Famous Indian Chiefs

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Sioux  Red Cloud  Gall ( Pizi )  Two Strike  Big Foot  Crow Dog  Struck By The Ree  Big Eagle

 Red Cloud
Makhpiya-Luta
(1822-1909)

Red Cloud's early life was spent at war, first and most often against the neighboring Pawnee and Crow, at times against other Oglala. In 1841 he killed one of his uncle's primary rivals, an event which divided the Oglala for the next fifty years. He gained enormous prominence within the Lakota nation for his leadership in territorial wars against the Pawnees, Crows, Utes and Shoshones

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 Gall ( Pizi )
( Tribe : Hunkpapa ( Lakota/Sioux)
A Hunkpapa chief who played a leading part in the Lakota's long war against the United States, Gall encouraged his people to accept assimilation once they were confined on reservations. Gall eventually became Sitting Bull's military chief, and led attacks on army troops along the Yellowstone River in 1872 and 1873. At the battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, he led the Hunkpapa warriors who first drove Major Reno from the Lakota's encampment and then swept north to join Crazy Horse and his forces in the attack on Custer. Following the Custer fight, Gall fled with Sitting Bull into Canada, but a quarrel between them caused Gall to bring his band back across the border late in 1880. He finally surrendered on January 3, 1881. In 1889 he even became a judge on the reservation's Court of Indian Offenses. Gall died on December 5, 1894 at his home on Oak Creek in South Dakota.

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Two Strike

 Two Strike (Nomkahpa)
( Tribe : Brule Sioux )
1831-c.1915. Also called Two Strikes, this war chief's Brule Sioux name, Nomkahpa, meant "Knocks Two Off". The name was earned in a battle after Two Strike knocked two Utes off their horses with a single blow of his war club. Two Strike figured prominently in the history of the Brules late in the 19th century up to and including the closing of the frontier at Wounded Kneein 1890. Born near the Republican River in what would become Nebraska, Two Strike played an important role in raids on the Union Pacific Railroad during RED CLOUD's War (1866-1868). During the 1870s, Two Strike allied with SPOTTED TAIL and tried to insulate his people from the Euro-American invasion. In the 1880s, Two Srike became an advokate of the Ghost Dance. A month before the massacre at Wounded Knee, however, Two Strike heeded whites' advice togive up the dance and its promised delivery from Euro-American domination.
After the slaughter of Native people under BIG FOOT at Wounded Knee in late December 1890, Two Strike led his people on an angry rampage with other Sioux. He desisted again after General Nelson Miles promised fair treatment for his people. Two Strike's people surrendered for a second time on January 15, 1891. General Miles was generally regarded as credible by the Sioux because he rarely broke his promises. Two Strike was a member of a Sioux delegation to Washington, D.C., a month after the Wounded Knee massacre. The Sioux asked that Miles be allowed to negotiate for them with the Interior Department and Bureau of Indian Affairs, but the general was excluded by white officials who thought of him as too pro-Indian. After the turn of the century, Two Strike lived quietly at Pine Ridge, where he was buried after his death, about 1915.

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Big Foot

 Big Foot (Spotted Elk)
( Tribe : Miniconjou (Sioux) )
On the morning of December 29, 1890, the Sioux chief Big Foot and some 350 of his followers camped on the banks of Wounded Knee creek. Surrounding their camp was a force of U.S. troops charged with the responsibility of arresting Big Foot and disarming his warriors. The scene was tense. Trouble had been brewing for months.

more info @ Wounded Knee Creek

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Criw Dog

 Crow Dog (Kangi Sunka)( Tribe : Brule Sioux )
1833-1910. Crow Dog was present when CRAZY HORSE was killed at Fort Robinson, Nebraska, in 1877, he helped prevent a retaliatory attack on U.S. Army soldiers at the fort. He was police chief at the Rosebud Reservation in 1879-1880, during which time he assassinated SPOTTED TAIL. Crow Dog was born at Horse Stealing Creek, Montana Terretory, into a family of esteemed warriors. Before submitting to reservation life, he made his reputation in battle. As the Sioux were confined on reservations following the CUSTER battle at the Little Bighorn, dissension arose among some of their leaders. On one occasion, Spotted Tail was accused by RED CLOUD of pocketing the proceeds from a sale of tribal land. Crow Dog heard rumors that Spotted Tail was selling Lakota land to the railroads, building himself an enormous white-styled mansion with proceeds. In mid-July 1880, Spoted Tail was called before the general council by Crow Dog's White Horse Group, where he denied the charges.
 The council voted to retain him as head chief, but Crow Dog continued to assert the chief's complicity in various crimes against the people.Crow Dog carried out his own death sentence on Spotted Tail on August 5, 1881. Blood money was paid in traditional BRULE fashin for the crime. Crow Dog was also convicted of murder in a Dakota Territory court; he was later freed on order of the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that the territorial government had no jurisdiction over the crime. Later, Crow Dog was one of the leaders in popularizing WOVOKA's Ghost Dance among the Lakota. Crow Dog adopted the religion from SHORT BULL. Crow Dog vociferously opposed U.S. Army occupation of South Dakota Indian reservations and was one of the last holdouts after the massacre of BIG FOOT's people at the Wounded Knee during December 1890. Crow Dog spent the last years of his life in relative peace on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota.

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Struck By The Ree

 Struck By The Ree( Tribe : Yankton (Sioux) )

1804-1888. Struck by the Ree, who would become a principal chief of the Yankton Sioux, was born in August 1804, the same week that Lewis and Clark passed through his village. It is said that Lewis swaddled the young man in a U.S. flag and baptized him as an American. Later, he earned his adult name in combat with the Arikas, who were also called "Rees". In 1837, Struck by the Ree visited Washington, D.C., on behalf of his people. During the 1862 Great Sioux Uprising in Minnesota, Struck by the Ree positioned his warriors to protect innocent white settlers from raiding Indians. Regardless of their aid, his people were run out of Minnesota with other Native peoples after the uprising. In 1865, Struck by the Ree testified at hearings of the Doolittle Commission, which was looking into fraud among Indian agents.

He told the hearing commissioners that Indian agents routinely siphoned goods from stockpiles purchased with Indian annuity money and that Native people were often forced to pay for meals prepared with their treaty money, while agents ate for free. Agents routinely paid themselves out of money meant to buy supplies for Indians under treaty agreements. He said that is was also common for frontier soldiers to routinely force sexual favors from Indian woman. "Before the soldiers came along, we had good health, but...the soldiers go to my squaws, and they want to sleep with them, and the squaws being hungry will sleep with them in order to get something to eat, and will get a bad disease, and then the squaws to their husbands and give them the bad disease

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Big Eagle

 Big Eagle
( Tribe : Santee or Mdewakanton (Sioux)

1827-1906. In 1875, Big Eagle who would become a leader in the 1862 Great Sioux Uprising in Minnesota, succeded his father, Mazarota (Gray Iron), as a leader of a Mdewakanton Sioux band of about two hundred people at Crow Creek in Macleod Country, Minnesota. In 1858, he traveled to Washington D.C., to negotiate grievances with federal officials. Unhappy with the result, Big Eagle and his people joined Little Crow and others in the general Sioux uprising in Minnesota during 1862 and 1863. Big Eagle fought with Mankato and probably witnessed his death at the hands of soldiers under the command of Henry Hastings Sibley at Wood Lake in September 1862. Big Eagle's band surrendered on September 26, 1862, after which he was imprisoned. Later in life, Big Eagle lived at Granite Falls, Minnesota.

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