JULY 30:

1701 Montreal Quebec French sign peace treaty with 38 Iroquois chiefs.

1684 Montreal Quebec Governor Joseph-Antoine de La Barre 1622-1688 leaves Montreal with 1,200 soldiers to battle the Iroquois; disastrous campaign leads to his recall in 1685; had replaced Frontenac in 1682.

1609 Ticonderoga, New York Samuel de Champlain c1570-1635 joins skirmish with Iroquois at Crown Point; kills two chiefs with his arquebus; first French military action in America; Champlain the first European to use firearms against the North American natives; beginning of the First Iroquois War, to 1624.

July 30, 1868:  Yesterday the army abandoned Fort C F Smith in southern Montana.  Today Red Cloud enters the fort in triumph.  Red Cloud and his followers will burn every building to the ground.

1990 Montreal Quebec John Gomery Quebec Superior Court Judge denies Mohawks a temporary injunction to remove police roadblocks; rules roadblocks justified because Mohawks breaking the law.
 

BACKGROUND:
 

Words Spoken:  Red Cloud

"Look at me. I was a warrior on this land where the sun rises, now I come from where the sun sets. Whose voice was first surrounded on this land - the red people with bows and arrows. The Great Father says he is good and kind to us. I can't see it..."

*****

In the spring of 1868 the Great Warrior Sherman and the (same) peace commission returned to Fort Laramie.  This time they had firm orders from an impatient government to abandon the forts on the Powder River road and obtain a peace treaty with Red Cloud.  This time they sent a special agent from the Indian Bureau to personally invite the Oglala leader to a peace signing.  Red Cloud told the agent he would need about ten days to consult with his allies, and would probably come to Laramie during May, the Moon When the Ponies Shed.

Only a few days after the agent returned to Laramie, however, a message arrived from Red Cloud:  "We are on the mountains looking down on the soldiers and the forts.  When we see the soldiers moving away and the forts abandoned, then I will come down and talk."

This was all very humiliating and embarrassing to the Great Warrior Sherman and the commissioners.  They managed to obtain the signatures of a few minor chiefs who came in for presents, but as the days passed, the frustrated commissioners quietly departed one by one for the East.  By late spring only Black Whiskers Sanborn and White Whiskers Harney were left to negotiate, but Red Cloud and his allies remained on the Powder through the summer, keeping a close watch on the forts and the road to Montana.

At last the reluctant War Department issues orders for abandonment of the Powder River country.  Only July 29 the troops at Fort C.F. Smith packed their gear and started marching southward.  Early the next morning Red Cloud led a band of celebrating warriors into the post, and they set fire to every building.
 

>From "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee", by Dee Brown, Vintage Books, ISBN 0 09952640 9