Red Cloud’s warfare and determination finally won his main point. Tired of the expense of the war and convinced they could not protect both the Union Pacific and the Bozeman Trail, government officials reluctantly agreed to abandon the troublesome forts—Reno, Phil Kearny, and C. F. Smith—and to permit those Indians unwilling to live on a reservation to continue to live untrammeled, following the buffalo so long as they should last.
