Great Sioux War

The Great Sioux War, also known as the Black Hills War, was a series of military campaigns and diplomatic efforts between 1876 and 1877 involving the United States and the Lakota (Sioux)and Cheyenne. Under the terms of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, the Sioux were granted exclusive rights to the Black Hills and 26 million acres of land for the Great Sioux Reservation, as well as unlimited use of territory in the Powder River Country. Sioux territory was also to be protected from military or settler incursions.

The Fort Laramie Treaty had four key parts. The first pledged peace between both sides. The second part reserved territory west of the Missouri River and east of the Rockies for the Sioux, indefinitely and with unrestricted use. This land became the Great Sioux Reservation and included the Black Hills. The treaty also recognized the area around the Bozeman Trail as “unceded Indian territory,” upon which no U.S. military posts or white settlements would be permitted to exist. The third component was the U.S. government's agreement to support the Sioux by establishing schools and providing basic necessities for farmers on the reservation. Reservation agencies were set up to distribute government aid. The final part, and perhaps the most important to this date, was that the treaty stipulated its terms could not be changed by the U.S. government without the approval of three-quarters of the adult male Sioux population.

In 1874 George Custer led a U.S. military expedition investigating the mineral resources in the Black Hills while gold prospectors flooded the area. The United States did little to stop the incursions, offering instead to buy the Black Hills. The United States also wanted to relocate the Sioux to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). The Black Hills contained important hunting grounds and, because they held them sacred, the Sioux refused to sell. After the U.S. government failed to negotiate agreeable terms for the sale of Sioux land, it embarked upon a military campaign against the Sioux and Cheyenne. In 1877 U.S. Congress changed the terms of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, which had guaranteed the Sioux possession of the Black Hills forever, and with it secured that land.

At the center of the Great Sioux War were the Black Hills, but also the issue of treaty rights and tribal sovereignty.