Lesson 2: Treaties, Black Hills, and Disasters
Lesson two, “Treaties, Black Hills, and Disasters” will give an in-depth look at the Laramie Treat of 1868 and how it brought about contentions concerning the Black Hills and other situations between the whites and the Indians. Also included in this lesson is the panic of 1873 and the grasshopper plague that devastated the west and mid-west that same years. This lesson will show how all of these things were factors leading up to the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
The Treaty of 1868, part 2
(continued from Lesson 1, section 8)
The Treaty of 1868 also provided for any Indian wishing to homestead to receive title to a certain amount of land “as long as he continues his residence and improvements, [on the land] and no longer.” The land could not be "mineral land, nor reserved by the United States for special purposes other than Indian occupation, and who shall have made improvements thereon of the value of two hundred dollars or more, and continuously occupied the same as a homestead for the term of three years.”
This sounds great until you consider that if gold, or other desirable minerals, are discovered on an Indian’s land, by treaty he is going to lose his land. If the government decides that a certain parcel of land should be used for another purpose, again the Indian is going to lose. And finally, the chance of an Indian being able to make two hundred dollars in improvements on his land was just about impossible considering that most of what was needed to make improvements had to come from the government via the agent. In most instances the Indians never received near what annuities had been promised.
Article Eleven of The Treaty of 1868 got right to the heart of the matter when it stipulated that “the tribes who are parties to this agreement” would relinquish their right to occupy permanently the territory outside their reservation, but they could hunt in the unceded area beyond the reservation bounds. In other words, they had to call the reservation home.
There was one small obstacle though. The bands that did not sign this treaty, those considered ‘hostile’ such as Sitting Bull’s people and Crazy Horse’s followers, did not consider themselves bound by this treaty. And legally, they weren’t bound by it. They did not give up their right to their land. This also held true for discontinuing opposition to the building of the railroad across the plains.
This treaty contained numerous conditions and rights but paramount among them were other articles that would have a lasting effect and numerous repercussions.
Article Twelve stated that “No treaty for the cession of any portion or part of the reservation herein described which may be held in common shall be of any validity or force as against the said Indians, unless executed and signed by at least three-fourths of all the adult male Indians, occupying or interested in the same. This means that if the government decided they wanted to take a portion of the promised reservation away from the Indians, they couldn’t, legally, unless an agreement was signed by three-fourths of the adult male Indians that lived on the land or held an interest in it. The key words and terms here are ‘three-fourths, adult males, held an interest in’. These brief words, put down by white hands and signed to by both Indian and whites, would come back to haunt both peoples.
Another complaint the Sioux had about this time were the new forts that were being built along the Bozeman Trail. Here’s a link that tell about that situation.
The source for this section is:
Lazarus, Edward. Black Hills White Justice: The Sioux Nation Versus the United States, 1775 to the Present. Harper Collins Publishers, 1991.
