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Rh them near the Black Hills and protested against their entering the buffalo country. They paid no attention to his protest and went forward. Red Cloud then gathered a large body of the Oglalas and Cheyennes and, overtaking Sawyer's party at the Powder River, surrounded them and held them in siege for a period of fifteen days.

Red Cloud used no force, his intention being, by a show of strength, to bluff the roadmakers out of his country. At the end of two weeks the young Indians were becoming so unruly and threatening that Red Cloud did not longer dare continue the siege, fearing that his young men would get beyond his control and massacre the white men. He therefore withdrew his Indians, and the expedition moved on to the Tongue River. By this time Red Cloud had his young men again well in hand, and he again surrounded Sawyer and held him for three days, and then withdrew. He had failed in his attempt to stop the road building. Sawyer went on to the Yellowstone and then returned without molestation, but Red Cloud had resolved that the road should not be built.

That fall (1865) commissioners undertook to treat with the Oglalas for the opening of the road, but Red Cloud would not permit a treaty to be made,—in fact did not attend the council. A new attempt was made to secure the consent of the Indians to the opening of the road, and at Fort Laramie on June 30, 1866, Red Cloud addressed the commissioners in a council held under an improvised arbor near the fort. Mildly but firmly he told them that the Oglalas' last hope of subsistence lay in preserving the buffalo pastures of the Powder River country,