Fort Laramie Treaty Guarantees Black Hills to Sioux in Perpetuity - Later Violated for Gold Rush

The United States Government and the Sioux Nation sign the Fort Laramie Treaty, establishing the Great Sioux Reservation and guaranteeing the Sioux “absolute and undisturbed use and occupancy” of all present-day South Dakota west of the Missouri River, including the sacred Black Hills (Paha Sapa). Article 2 of the treaty explicitly sets aside this vast territory—approximately 60 million acres—for exclusive Sioux use, recognizing their sovereignty over these lands. The treaty represents the culmination of negotiations following Red Cloud’s War (1866-1868), in which Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho forces successfully resisted U.S. military expansion along the Bozeman Trail. The treaty acknowledges Sioux military strength and establishes legal protections for their territory, including provisions that no changes to the treaty terms can be made without the agreement of three-fourths of adult male Sioux—a democratic safeguard intended to prevent future land seizures. The Fort Laramie Treaty stands as one of the most significant formal recognitions of Indigenous sovereignty and territorial rights in American history.

The treaty’s protections collapse within six years when gold is discovered in the Black Hills, triggering a systematic campaign of treaty violation driven by mining interests and settler expansion. In July 1874, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer leads a 1,000-man military expedition into the Black Hills in direct violation of the 1868 treaty, ostensibly to find a location for a military post but accompanied by miners and prospectors. On August 2, 1874, prospector Horatio Ross discovers placer gold on French Creek near present-day Custer, South Dakota. News of the discovery ignites the Black Hills Gold Rush, with approximately 800 miners illegally flooding into treaty-protected Sioux territory by 1875, growing to thousands more in subsequent years. The U.S. government makes no effort to enforce the treaty by removing illegal white settlers and miners from Sioux land; instead, military forces that should be protecting Sioux treaty rights facilitate white encroachment, demonstrating how federal institutions prioritize white economic interests over legal obligations to Indigenous nations.

The U.S. government responds to its own treaty violation by unilaterally seizing the Black Hills through the Agreement of 1877, which flagrantly violates the 1868 treaty’s requirement that three-fourths of adult male Sioux approve any land cession. The 1877 Act obtains signatures from only approximately 10 percent of adult Sioux males—far below the three-fourths threshold the 1868 treaty mandates—yet Congress treats this as legally binding and confiscates the Black Hills. The Lakota Nation argues for over a century that the taking was illegal under the terms of the original Fort Laramie Treaty. On June 30, 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court rules in United States v. Sioux Nation that the government illegally took the Black Hills in violation of the Fifth Amendment, awarding $15.5 million for the 1877 market value plus 103 years of interest at 5 percent—totaling approximately $105 million. The Sioux Nation refuses the monetary settlement, which grows to over $1 billion by 2011 and continues accruing interest, insisting that the sacred Black Hills were never for sale and demanding return of the land itself. The Fort Laramie Treaty violation illustrates institutional corruption operating through a familiar pattern: a treaty establishes Indigenous rights when those rights serve U.S. interests (ending a costly war), but when economic opportunities arise (gold), the same government violates its treaty obligations, manufactures fraudulent legal processes (the 1877 Agreement with insufficient consent), and even a Supreme Court ruling 103 years later acknowledging the illegal taking cannot restore stolen land—demonstrating that monetary damages for Indigenous dispossession serve as retroactive legalization of theft rather than meaningful justice.