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Rh Early in the spring of 1868 the commissioners returned to Fort Laramie and met there some leading Indians whom Red Cloud had sent to them, but he did not himself come down. On the 29th of April a treaty was signed, which provided that the troops should be withdrawn from Forts Phil Kearney, C. F. Smith, and Reno, and that all attempts to open the Montana road should be abandoned. A great reservation was made for the use of the Indians, extending from the mouth of the Niobrara River west to the Big Horn Mountains, thence north to the Yellowstone River, then east by the Cannonball to the Missouri and down the Missouri to the Niobrara. All of the Sioux tribes joined in giving up to the government all of the lands they possessed outside of this great reservation. The government agreed that no white men or soldiers should at any time enter this reservation without the consent of the Indians.

It was particularly important that Red Cloud should sign this treaty, but he failed to come in for the purpose. Messengers were sent to him, but he sent back word that he thought he should wait until the forts were abandoned, and the roads closed up, before he signed; and so matters dragged along month after month. Finally, at the end of August, upon the advice of the peace commissioners, the government determined to take the chief at his word, and on the 27th of that month all of the troops were withdrawn.

Red Cloud at the time was watching operations from his buffalo camp on the Powder River, and when a messenger was sent to him to tell him that the troops had been