The Fight Where the Girl Saved Her Brother, part 1

The country clamored and shouted for President Grant and his administration to do something—anything to save civilized America. And they did. They had a grand idea, one that shimmered, one that could save America. It was also a grand idea that would break the promise the United States Government had made to some other Americans, the Sioux.

The idea was to buy, take, steal, the Black Hills were there was strong evidence of gold. But first this gold would have to be officially discovered. The difficulty was that the United States, by virtue of the Treaty of 1868, had given the Sioux the Black Hills. It now lay within the confines of the Great Sioux Reservation. No non-Indian could invade the Hills other than government employed persons. This was not a problem for the government.

In the spring of 1874 General Phil Sheridan, with full military and political backing, decided to “send a column of troops into the Black Hills in order to establish a fort there, and, although this reason was unacknowledged, to find gold. This was a direct, open, unilateral violation of the treaty of 1868.”

July 2, 1874 became the departure date for an expedition into the Black Hills. Led by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, the expedition would leave Fort Abraham Lincoln, located just east of present-day Bismarck, North Dakota.

As privately planned, gold was discovered by this expedition, in the Black Hills. Custer insured, by courier, that the discovery was announced even before his troop returned to the fort.

And, as privately planned, a gold rush was immediately begun. Now all that was needed was for the Sioux to give up the Black Hills that was sacred to them. This they would not do. Grant and his administration had an instant solution for this also.

In 1875 President Grant held a high-level Cabinet meeting. It was decided on December 6, by order of the President of the United States, that all Indians in the unceded territory must move onto the agencies by January 31, 1876. Those Indians who did not comply with this order and were not present on the reservations by that date would be considered hostile. They would be subject to attack, capture, or be killed by the United States Army.

(The unceded area was that vast expanse of western territory outside the Great Sioux Reservation. Any Indian who wished, per the Treaty of