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Before the United States expanded from the 13 original colonies to include the vast regions west of the Mississippi River, the Lakota people inhabited the hilly grasslands of the Great Plains. They lived on the land in harmony with nature and hunted the buffalo that roamed the plains in great herds.
When the white man came to build roads and railways through Lakota land, buffalo populations began to dwindle. The Lakota, seeing their livelihood threatened, began to question their acceptance of the white man's invasion. This began more than a century of struggle between the Native peoples and the U.S. government, which continues to this day.
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Buffalo at Wind Cave National Park, Black Hills, South Dakota, 1948
(Fred Hultstrand History in Pictures Collection, Institute of Regional Studies, NDSU, Fargo, N.D.)
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Learn about the major events that took place in the 19th century on or near what is now the Pine Ridge Reservation: The Early Years from the Louisiana Purchase to the 1862 Homestead Act; the Indian Wars from the 1865 Plains War through the Treaty of 1876; and the Postwar Years from the Dawes Act of 1887 to the Massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890.
Discover how the struggles between the Lakota and the U.S. government continued into the late 20th century, from the foundation of the American Indian Movement (AIM) to the conviction of Leonard Peltier for the death of two FBI agents, and beyond.
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