The government was not only promising to stop building more forts.
It agreed to remove the ones already standing.
Article XI reveals the other side of the compromise
The treaty also required important concessions from Native signers.
Article XI stated that the tribes would relinquish permanent occupation outside the reservation defined in Article II, while retaining hunting rights on specified lands as long as buffalo remained in sufficient numbers.
The same article required an end to opposition against railroad construction outside reservation boundaries and restricted attacks on travelers and property. (National Archives)
Article XV described the reservation as a permanent home.
Other articles promoted farming and individual landholding.
The federal government therefore saw the agreement as more than the end of Red Cloud's War.
Officials hoped it would support a much larger transformation of Native life.
This is why calling the treaty either a complete Native triumph or a simple American victory misses its structure.
Militarily, the United States conceded the Bozeman Trail.
Politically, it continued trying to place Native nations inside a federal reservation system.
Both were true.
Red Cloud still refused to sign in April
Red Cloud was not among the first signers on April 29.
That absence was deliberate.
Smithsonian historians describe the treaty process as lasting until November 6, 1868 because different Native delegations signed at different times. Red Cloud was among the last. (Bảo tàng Smithsonian)
His position remained tied to the forts.
The paper alone was not enough.
The withdrawal had to happen.
The sequence that followed is one of the most remarkable episodes in the history of the nineteenth-century U.S. Army.
Buildings that soldiers had spent two years constructing were prepared for abandonment while the people who had opposed them remained in the surrounding country.
Fort C.F. Smith went first
Fort C.F. Smith stood farthest north and was among the most isolated posts.
Its garrison had spent two difficult years dealing with distance, weather, shortages, and Native attacks.
By early 1868, soldiers had actually been improving the post.
Buildings were being reconstructed.
Living conditions were becoming better.
Then the peace decision made that work meaningless.
Preparation shifted from construction to departure.
Property that could not be carried away was offered at auction.
Two companies left in June.
The rest of the garrison prepared through July.
On July 29, 1868, Fort C.F. Smith was abandoned. (Dịch vụ Công viên Quốc gia Hoa Kỳ)
The withdrawal was not merely symbolic.
Men, families, equipment, and supplies physically moved south down the road the Army had spent two years trying to protect.
They reached Fort Phil Kearny on August 2.
Within roughly thirty-six hours, the combined force abandoned that post as well. (Dịch vụ Công viên Quốc gia Hoa Kỳ)
The fort associated with the worst Army disaster of the war was empty.
Fort Phil Kearny had existed for only two years
The speed of the reversal is striking.
Carrington had begun building Fort Phil Kearny in the summer of 1866.
By the summer of 1868, American troops were leaving it.
Two winters.
One major disaster.
Dozens of smaller fights.
Thousands of wagonloads of supplies.
Hundreds of soldiers.
Then abandonment.
Lakota and allied warriors burned the empty post after the Army left. Later National Park Service preservation studies describe the disappearance of the fort itself as part of the site's historical meaning. (Dịch vụ Công viên Quốc gia Hoa Kỳ)
The burning was not necessary to defeat the garrison.
The garrison was already gone.
Destroying the structures ensured that the military occupation could not simply resume from the same buildings.
The landscape was being reclaimed physically as well as politically.
Fort Reno followed
Farther south, Fort Reno had begun as Fort Connor in 1865 and was later expanded and renamed.
It too was abandoned in August 1868.
A Wyoming historical monument gives August 18, 1868 as the abandonment date. The fort was subsequently destroyed by fire. (Wikimedia Commons)
The chain was now broken completely.
Fort C.F. Smith was gone.
Fort Phil Kearny was gone.
Fort Reno was gone.
The Bozeman Trail no longer had its military shield.
That was the condition Red Cloud had demanded before he placed his mark on the treaty.
The withdrawal changed the meaning of the document
A promise to abandon the forts while soldiers remained inside them could still be broken easily.