Seizure of the Black Hills
The United States government illegally seized the Black Hills – a mountain range in the US states of South Dakota and Wyoming – from the Sioux Nation in 1876. The land was pledged to the Sioux Nation in the Treaty of Fort Laramie, but a few years later the United States illegally seized the land and nullified the treaty with the Indian Appropriations Bill of 1876, without the tribe's consent. That bill "denied the Sioux all further appropriation and treaty-guaranteed annuities" until they gave up the Black Hills. A Supreme Court case was ruled in favor of the Sioux in 1980. As of 2011, the court's award was worth over $1 billion, but the Sioux have outstanding issues with the ruling and have not collected the funds.
The Black Hills, South Dakota, United States image from space.
Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868)
The Treaty of Fort Laramie is an agreement between the United States and the Oglala, Miniconjou, and Brulé bands of Lakota people, Yanktonai Dakota, and Arapaho Nation, following the failure of the first Fort Laramie treaty, signed in 1851.
General William T. Sherman (third from left) and Commissioners in council with chiefs and headmen, Fort Laramie, 1868
Front page of 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, from the US National Archives
One of the signature pages from the treaty, including X marks for the tribal leaders, as a substitute for signed names
Fort Laramie Treaty (1851). Definition of Crow territory west of Powder River enlarged
