The Black Hills Land Claim::

Background to the Claim

By the late 1700s, the Sioux were radiating out from the Black Hills to cover a vast area of the Plains that spanned from the Mississippi to the Rockies. By 1851, a treaty was signed between the US government and various Indian nations that diminished Sioux territory to a tract of land that still centered around the Black Hills, but which now included virtually all of the present states of Nebraska and South Dakota, much of Kansas, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming, and a small portion of Colorado. The Sioux land base was further diminished when the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty re-drew Sioux boundaries to include all of present-day South Dakota, west of the east bank of the Missouri River, including the Black Hills (just). Then, in response to the discovery of gold in there, the US government unilaterally annexed the Black Hills from Sioux territory, despite a stipulation in the 1868 treaty that 75 percent of adult male Sioux must comply to any changes of territory. What came to be known as the 1877 Act also further reduced Sioux land-holdings and led to a succession of acts which have culminated in the current Sioux reservations.

Angry, bitter, and exhausted from their physical and emotional battles with the US, the Sioux retreated to their diminished reservations and began to think and confer what steps they could take next. They had to wait a few years, however.

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