Fort Laramie Treaty | Indians, Insanity, and American History Blog

General George Custer

Colonel George Armstrong Custer brought hundreds of soldiers to help him search for a good spot to put the army’s new fort. (See last post.) For some reason, he also brought along two miners—who found gold. It wasn’t a big strike by any means, but it fed the rumors about gold in the sacred Black Hills. Soon other prospectors did find gold—a huge amount—and treaties didn’t mean much after that. Miners poured into the region, with more and more settlers following.

The Sioux defended their land, but nothing would stop the onslaught of miners. Finally the Commissioner of Indian Affairs decreed that if the Lakota didn’t settle on reservations by January 31, 1878, they would be considered hostile enemies. The Lakota refused to go to the reservations.

A respected leader, Sitting Bull, gathered warriors from the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes to his camp in Montana Territory. He had a vision that showed the white soldiers falling in the Lakota camp like grasshoppers falling from the sky. That vision inspired another war chief, Crazy Horse, to lead the first of several battles against the military forces sent to defeat Native Americans’ resistance .

Sitting Bull

The U.S. soldiers did fall like grasshoppers. However, after Custer’s defeat at Little Big Horn, the Fort Laramie Treaty boundary lines were redrawn so that the Black Hills fell outside protected territory.

General Custer and Scouts

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Returning War Party, courtesy Library of Congress

Dakota Territory, where the city of Canton was eventually established, embraced the Mandan, Arikara, Kidatsa, Assiniboin, Crow, Cheyenne, Cree, and Dakota (Santee Sioux) tribes. The Lakota Sioux were openly hostile to white newcomers, and even the early trappers avoided their sacred land in the Black Hills. Things changed when pioneer families came in and railroads began to snake through the countryside. Railroad workers arrived in hordes to cut through previously untouched land. People who had heard rumors about gold sometimes sneaked into the Black Hills.

The Lakota Nations were important to peace in the region, and in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, the U.S. government granted them a huge parcel of land west of the Missouri River. The government forbade settlers or miners to enter the Black Hills without permission, and the Sioux agreed to stop fighting with the newcomers.

Some people inevitably broke the treaty, and inevitably there were clashes. One Sioux retaliation tactic was to raid settlements and then retreat to the Black Hills where they were protected from pursuit by their treaty. The military wanted a fort in the area to better their chances of cutting off the Sioux before they could get to the Black Hills. That desire for a fort changed everything.

My next post will discuss what happened when the government pursued building a fort in the area.

Sioux Indians From Pine Ridge Reservation, S.D., courtesy Library of Congress

Sioux Delegation, 1891, courtesy Library of Congress

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