The Council Tree

For many of the thousands who came here, Paha Sapa was not for sale. On September 17, 1875, the Lakota refused to meet in the agency council room, saying they would sign nothing under duress, so the commissioners moved their canvas shelter to the lone cottonwood. As Red Cloud began to speak, Little Big Man, armed, threatened to shoot the first man who spoke for giving up the Black Hills. Young Man Afraid of His Horses had placed his camp police behind the angry warriors, and Spotted Tail sent the commissioners back to Camp Robinson.

What the plaque says

The Council Tree In September 1875 a lone cottonwood provided a landmark where the Allison Commission met with thousands of Lakota Sioux in a futile effort to buy the Black Hills. Based on the recollections of elderly Lakotas, Captain Christopher Robinson Chapter, D. A. R., of Crawford, marked what was believed to be the historic tree in May 1932. The cottonwood, sometimes called "the treaty tree," died in the 1970s. It stood a few hundred feet south of this marker, looking toward Crow Butte. Crawford Historical Society, 2003 Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Robinson State Park — 8.0 mi
  The army post beside the Red Cloud Agency where Crazy Horse was bayoneted in 1877 and Morning Star's Northern Cheyenne broke out into the January cold of 1879.
• Toadstool Geologic Park — 15 mi
  A pocket of badlands in the Oglala National Grassland where sandstone caps balance on clay stems, ancient tracks cross the rock, and a trail leads on to a 10,000-year-old bison bone bed.
• Museum of the Fur Trade — 22 mi
  A museum of what traders and Native nations exchanged, from the oldest known point blanket to a Lakota leader's silver cross, beside the rebuilt Bordeaux trading post east of Chadron.
• Agate Fossil Beds National Monument — 29 mi
  A fossil quarry on the Niobrara that also keeps the gifts Red Cloud and other Lakota and Cheyenne visitors gave the ranching family who were their friends for thirty-five years.

More markers nearby

• Butte Country — 1.2 mi
• The Death of Baptiste Garnier — 5.1 mi
• Crawford 1891 School Bell — 5.2 mi
• Crawford — 5.2 mi