"During the Great Sioux War of 1876-1877, Touch The Clouds took his band of Minneconjou Teton followers to the Spotted Tail Agency in northwestern Nebraska. When they arrived on April 14, 1877, the chief rode forward and said, "I lay down this gun, as a token of submission to Gen. Crook, to whom I wish to surrender."
The ferociously strong and brave warrior carried an 1873 Colt Cavalry revolver, as well as a Remington Rolling Block rifle, at the time of his surrender. He may have captured the rifle from a buffalo hide hunter, as rifles of this ilk were generally too expensive for Indians to purchase, and its ammunition could be difficult and costly to obtain.
His story was common among warriors during the Indian Wars. Indians fought white adversaries with guns provided by them, through federally-sanctioned trades, government annuities or as spoils of war. One of the earliest accounts of firearms possession by Indians out West dates to the 1750s, in New Mexico, where French traders cited a brisk exchange of flintlocks to the Wichitas and Comanches for their horses. By the 1804-06 Lewis and Clark expedition, the firearms trade with many Western tribes was already firmly established along the Missouri River…."
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