On Sept. 17, 1851, 21 leaders, representing the Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Crow, Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, and Assiniboine, and representatives of the U.S. government, signed the Treaty of Fort Laramie. The treaty was designed to secure safe passage for settlers moving west through Native American lands and assign boundaries for each nation’s “respective territories.” By 1854, the “effective and lasting peace” formulated by the treaty had devolved into the Plains War.
After years of intermittent fighting, a peace conference, held in 1867 at Medicine Lodge, Kansas, led to the Kiowa, Comanche, Arapaho, and Cheyenne agreeing to relocate to western Oklahoma. A year later, another peace conference was held at Fort Laramie.
