The second Treaty of Fort Laramie ended Red Cloud's War and established the Great Sioux Reservation, including the sacred Black Hills, as land 'set apart for the absolute and undisturbed use' of the Lakota Sioux. The U.S. government violated the treaty within eight years after gold was discovered in the Black Hills, triggering an influx of miners and renewed war, a betrayal still litigated in American courts today.
Red Cloud's War had been a rare Native military success against the U.S. Army, forcing the abandonment of forts along the Bozeman Trail. The resulting treaty, signed at Fort Laramie in present-day Wyoming, was similarly favorable on paper: it recognized Lakota ownership of the Black Hills and vast surrounding territory, promised the land would remain undisturbed by white settlement, and required a three-fourths vote of adult male Lakota to cede any further territory.
The promise lasted less than a decade. In 1874, an expedition led by George Custer confirmed gold in the Black Hills, and prospectors poured in despite the treaty's protections. The U.S. government, unable or unwilling to stop the influx, instead pressured the Lakota to sell, eventually seizing the land outright in 1877 after the Great Sioux War, without the required tribal consent.
The injustice reverberates in American law to this day. In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court in United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians acknowledged the seizure was illegal and awarded over $100 million in compensation, but the Sioux have refused the money, insisting on the return of the land itself rather than a cash settlement. The Black Hills dispute remains unresolved, a live wound from a treaty signed on this day in 1868.
Key people: Red Cloud, William Tecumseh Sherman