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The Frontier · Treaties, Amended

Army Sent to Force Sioux Onto Reservation Locates Sioux, Regrets It Immediately

The government guaranteed the Black Hills to the Lakota 'forever,' found gold there, changed its mind, and sent Custer to enforce the revision. The revision did not go as drafted.

By the Fuxed Desk • 5 min read • Severity ★★★★★ Severe
What wasn’t broken
The Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1868 had settled it: the Black Hills of Dakota belonged to the Lakota — sacred ground, guaranteed in writing by the United States. 'Settled,' of course, is a relative term where treaties and gold are concerned.
The "fix"
In 1874 an Army expedition under George Armstrong Custer confirmed gold in the Black Hills. Prospectors flooded in, the government decided the treaty had been a clerical inconvenience, and in late 1875 ordered every Lakota and Cheyenne band onto the reservations by January 31, 1876 — those who declined to be deemed 'hostile' and handled accordingly.
The result
On June 25, 1876, Custer found an enormous encampment on the Little Bighorn and, declining to wait for the columns behind him, attacked it. He and five companies of the Seventh Cavalry — some 268 men — were wiped out by warriors under Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. The nation, mid-Centennial, was scandalized; Congress promptly seized the Black Hills anyway. Fuxed

The Treaty of Fort Laramie, signed in 1868, was about as unambiguous as treaties get: the Black Hills and the country around them were the property of the Lakota Sioux, set aside in perpetuity, closed to white settlement.1 The arrangement held up tolerably well for six years — which is to say, until somebody found something under it worth breaking it for.

That somebody was, fittingly, Custer. In 1874 he led a military expedition into the Black Hills and reported gold 'from the grass roots down.' Prospectors did not wait to be asked twice. Confronted with a binding treaty and a gold rush, the government resolved the contradiction in the customary direction: it offered to buy the Hills, was refused, and then in late 1875 ordered every Lakota and Cheyenne band onto the reservations by the last day of January 1876.2

The deadline was both impossible and the entire point. Winter on the northern plains is no season for moving villages, and many bands either never received the order or declined to honor it. Those still off the reservation were declared 'hostile,' which converted a real-estate dispute into a military campaign, and the Army marched.2

On the afternoon of June 25, 1876, Lieutenant Colonel Custer located a vast encampment along the Little Bighorn River in Montana Territory. Rather than await the converging columns, he split his regiment and charged. He had misjudged the size of the village by something like an order of magnitude. He and five companies — roughly 268 officers and men — were killed to the last by Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho fighters led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.3

The dispatch reached the East just as the country was toasting its first hundred years, and the shock was considerable. The response was not reflection but escalation: in 1877 Congress passed an act seizing the Black Hills outright, in plain breach of the 1868 treaty.1 More than a century later, in 1980, the Supreme Court agreed the taking had been illegal and ordered compensation, the Court of Claims having found 'a more ripe and rank case of dishonorable dealings will never, in all probability, be found in our history.' The Lakota have declined the money, the land never having been for sale.4

A more ripe and rank case of dishonorable dealings will never, in all probability, be found in our history.— U.S. Supreme Court, United States v. Sioux Nation (1980), quoting the Court of Claims

References & Citations

  1. HISTORY — "Battle of the Little Bighorn," history.com, accessed 2026.
  2. World History Encyclopedia — "Battle of the Little Bighorn," worldhistory.org, accessed 2026.
  3. Smithsonian Magazine — "How the Battle of Little Bighorn Was Won," smithsonianmag.com, accessed 2026.
  4. Justia — "United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, 448 U.S. 371 (1980)," supreme.justia.com, 1980.

As Covered Elsewhere

HISTORY Battle of the Little Bighorn Read → Smithsonian How the Battle of Little Bighorn Was Won Read → Justia United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians (1980) Read →