We were told that they wished merely to pass through our country…to seek for gold in the far west…Yet before the ashes of the council are cold, the Great Father is building his forts among us…His presence here is…an insult to the spirits of our ancestors. Are we then to give up their sacred graves to be plowed for corn? Dakotas, I am for war.

– Red Cloud

Speech to fellow Indians before attack on Fort Phil Kearny, 1866.