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Pine Ridge Reservation: The Indian Wars In 1865, shortly after the United States passed the Homestead Act encouraging settlements in the West, the Lakota and Cheyenne peoples began attacking white settlements and transportation that invaded their land in Indian Territory. The Native tribes recognized that encroaching white men were killing their buffalo and transforming their homeland into sprawling settlements. At War with the U.S. In summer 1865, the U.S. military invaded the Powder River Basin, which ran from the Black Hills near Pine Ridge into what is now Montana, under order to "attack and kill every male Indian over twelve years of age." The Indians responded by attacking army outposts, killing as many soldiers as possible. The battles continued throughout the fall and into winter, when Chief Red Cloud succeeded in surrounding two companies of the U.S. military, cutting off their supplies all winter long and precipitating the deaths of many soldiers from disease and malnutrition. In spring 1866, war chiefs including Red Cloud met with U.S. officials at Fort Laramie to negotiate access to the Powder River Basin. During the talks, U.S. troops continued moving into the area, and the war chiefs suspended their negotiations and began Red Cloud's War, which lasted through the brutal winter of 1866 and into the following summer. Ultimately, the U.S. admitted defeat and signed the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, which defined the Great Sioux Reservation as Indian land and guaranteed the Sioux the right to hunt in unceded lands in what is now Montana and Wyoming. The army agreed to withdraw from the Black Hills, a region sacred to the Lakota tribes. Gold in the Black Hills In the years that followed the Treaty of 1868, U.S. attacks on Native people in Indian Territory continued unabated. General Armstrong Custer killed over 100 Cheyenne, mostly women and children, at the Washita River, in what is now Oklahoma; and nearly 200 Blackfeet men, women and children were massacred on the Marias River, in what is now Montana. Railroad survey teams encountered more and more hostile Indians, and the attacks prompted the U.S. to protect the railroad rather than honor its treaties with the Native peoples. In 1874, the discovery of gold in the Black Hills by an expedition led by Custer sparked a massive invasion of prospectors onto Sioux lands. At first, the U.S. ordered the miners not to trespass, but this policy was soon overturned in favor of the gold-seekers. By the beginning of 1876, the U.S. had ordered all Sioux to remain on reservation lands, prohibiting their access to hunting grounds guaranteed by the Fort Laramie Treaty. Those venturing off the reservation were considered "hostile" by the U.S. military, and an all-out war ensued.
During the raging war of 1876, Chief Red Cloud kept his Oglala people on reservation land, largely out of the conflict. In June, the combined Cheyenne, Arapaho and Sioux warriors defeated the U.S. in the Battle of Rosebud, and, led by Sitting Bull, they killed General Custer and his men in the famous Battle of the Little Big Horn. But their victory was short lived. In September, U.S. troops advancing into the Black Hills ultimately defeated Crazy Horse and his Oglala warriors in the Slim Buttes Battle, which the Indians call "the Fight Where We Lost the Black Hills." The U.S. coerced the surrender of Red Cloud, despite the fact that he had withheld from battle, and he and other chiefs were forced to the sign the 1876 Treaty, which ceded Sioux rights to the sacred Black Hills and reduced the size of the Sioux reservation. The Pine Ridge Agency was created two years later as a home for the Oglala Lakota tribe. Pine Ridge became a reservation in 1889. For further information, see the Timeline. |
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