The Medicine Lodge treaties were the chief result of the summer's negotiations. The Peace Commission returned to Fort Laramie in the following spring to meet the reluctant northern tribes. The Sioux, the Crows, and the Arapaho and Cheyenne who were allied with them, made peace after the Commissioners had assented to the terms laid down by Red Cloud in 1867. They had convinced themselves that the occupation of the Powder River Valley was both illegal and unjust, and accordingly the garrisons had been drawn out of the new forts. Much to the anger of Montana was this yielding. "With characteristic pusillanimity," wrote one of the pioneers, years later, denouncing the act, "the government ordered all the forts abandoned and the road closed to travel." In the new Fort Laramie treaty of April 29, 1868, it was specifically agreed that the country east of the Big Horn Mountains was to be considered as unceded Indian territory; while the Sioux bound themselves to occupy as their permanent home the lands west of the Missouri, between the parallels of 43° and 46°, and east of the 104th meridian--an area coinciding to-day with the western end of South Dakota. Thus was begun the actual compression of the Sioux of the plains.
The treaties made by the Peace Commissioners were the most important, but were not the only treaties of 1867 and 1868, looking towards the relinquishment by the Indians of lands along the railroad's right of way. It had been found that rights of transit through the Indian Country, such as those secured at Laramie in 1851, were insufficient. The Indian must leave even the vicinity of the route of travel, for peace and his own good.
Most important of the other tribes shoved away from the route were the Ute, Shoshoni, and Bannock, whose country lay across the great trail just west of the Rockies. The Ute, having given their name to the territory of Utah, were to be found south of the trail, between it and the lower waters of the Colorado. Their western bands were earliest in negotiation and were settled on reserves, the most important being on the Uintah River in northeast Utah, after 1861. The Colorado Ute began to treat in 1863, but did not make definite cessions until 1868, when the southwestern third of Colorado was set apart for them. Active life in Colorado territory was at the start confined to the mountains in the vicinity of Denver City, while the Indians were pushed down the slopes of the range on both sides. But as the eastern Sand Creek reserve soon had to be abolished, so Colorado began to growl at the western Ute reserve and to complain that indolent savages were given better treatment than white citizens. The Shoshoni and Bannock ranged from Fort Hall to the north and were visited by General Augur at Fort Bridger in the summer of 1868. As the results of his gifts and diplomacy the former were pushed up to the Wind River reserve in Wyoming territory, while the latter were granted a home around Fort Hall.