The “Coffee Coolers” or “Ration Indians” were Indians who had signed a peace treaty and consented to living on a reservation or agency. To the “Hostiles” these fellow tribesman had given up the warrior life in exchange for the white man’s handout. Sitting Bull expressed this contempt, “You are fools to make yourself slaves to a piece of fat bacon, some hardtack, and a little coffee and sugar.”

Yet, the animosity between the Hostiles and the Coffee Coolers was, in the end, misspent energy. Once the great westward expansion began in earnest, the Plains way of life, even for those who continued to hunt and fight, was doomed. - HT