Congress Seizes Black Hills With Only 10% Sioux Consent, Violating Fort Laramie Treaty Requirement for 75% Approval

Congress passes the Act of February 28, 1877, implementing an “agreement” signed by only 10 percent of adult male Sioux—far below the three-fourths (75%) threshold explicitly required by the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty for any cession of reservation lands. The Act strips over 7 million acres from the Great Sioux Reservation, including the entire Black Hills (Paha Sapa), which the 1868 treaty guaranteed to the Sioux Nation for their “absolute and undisturbed use and occupation.” In negotiating the 1877 “agreement,” a special federal commission deliberately ignores the Fort Laramie Treaty’s three-fourths requirement and instead presents the treaty only to Sioux chiefs and leading men rather than conducting a democratic vote of the adult male population. The commission obtains signatures from approximately 10 percent of adult Sioux males, then Congress simply enacts this fraudulent agreement into law—effectively using legislative power to legitimize what the Supreme Court would later acknowledge as an illegal taking of property. The 1877 Act also terminates Sioux rights to hunt in unceded territories in exchange for subsistence rations “for as long as they would be needed,” converting a sovereign nation with treaty-protected territorial rights into dependent wards reliant on federal handouts.

The congressional seizure of the Black Hills follows directly from the 1874 gold discovery during Custer’s illegal military expedition into treaty-protected Sioux territory and the U.S. defeat at Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876. After the Sioux refuse to sell their sacred Black Hills despite intense federal pressure, and after Lakota and Cheyenne forces defeat Custer’s 7th Cavalry, Congress decides to simply take the Black Hills by legislative fiat rather than honor treaty obligations. The 1877 Act represents naked institutional capture serving mining interests, land speculators, and white settlers seeking access to gold deposits and valuable agricultural land. The legislation demonstrates how Congress can weaponize its lawmaking power to override both treaty obligations and constitutional protections when Indigenous rights conflict with white economic interests—manufacturing legal cover for theft through procedural violations (obtaining insufficient consent) that would never be tolerated if applied to state governments or white property owners.

The Sioux Nation maintains for over a century that the 1877 seizure is illegal under the terms of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, refusing to accept monetary compensation as a substitute for returning sacred lands. On June 30, 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court rules in United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians that the 1877 Act constituted an illegal “taking” of property under the Fifth Amendment, violating the government’s fiduciary duty to the Sioux and requiring just compensation. The Court affirms an award of $17.1 million for the 1877 market value of the Black Hills plus 103 years of interest at 5 percent—totaling approximately $105 million in 1980 (growing to over $1 billion by 2011 and exceeding $1.3 billion by 2023 as the funds remain in trust). However, the Sioux tribes refuse to accept the money, with former special trustee Ross Swimmer explaining: “They didn’t want the money. They wanted the Black Hills.” Tribal leaders consistently maintain that accepting monetary compensation would be “tantamount to a sales transaction” for land that was never for sale, and that only the return of their ancestral sacred lands would constitute meaningful justice. The 1877 Act exemplifies institutional corruption operating through legislative theft: Congress manufactures fraudulent consent through procedural violations, uses lawmaking power to legitimize treaty violations and property seizure, and even a Supreme Court ruling 103 years later acknowledging the illegal taking cannot restore stolen lands—demonstrating how monetary damages for Indigenous dispossession serve primarily to retroactively legalize theft rather than provide actual restitution, with the Sioux’s century-long refusal to accept payment representing an enduring challenge to the legitimacy of legislative power used to facilitate genocide and land theft.