- Great Sioux Reservation
The Great Sioux Reservation was established in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, and includes all of modern Western
South Dakota (commonly known as "West River" South Dakota) and modernBoyd County, Nebraska . This area was established as a reservation for theTeton Sioux , also known as the Lakota: the seven western bands of the "Seven Council Fires" (the Great Sioux Nation). In addition to the reservation dedicated to the Lakota, they also reserved the right to hunt and travel in "unceded" territory in much ofWyoming and the Sandhills and Panhandle of modernNebraska . Because each band had its own preferred area, a series of agencies were established for theBureau of Indian Affairs to regulate the Lakota in this vast area. TheMissouri River formed the eastern boundary of the Reservation, which included some land already allocated to other tribes, such as the Ponca. This land was, however, the center of the Lakota Nation and had been since their discovery of theBlack Hills (Lakota name: Paha Sapa) in 1765 and their conquest of the Black Hills from theCheyenne Indians in 1776.Following the public announcement of the discovery of gold after the Custer Expedition from Fort Abraham Lincoln (near Bismarck,
Dakota Territory ; now capital ofNorth Dakota ) to the Black Hills or Paha Sapa, the Lakota were defeated by theUS Army in theBlack Hills War , and a new treaty made in 1877, which took a strip of land along the western border of Dakota Territory convert|50|mi|km wide, plus all land west of the Cheyenne andBelle Fourche River s, including all of the Black Hills in modernSouth Dakota . However, the bulk of the Great SiouxReservation remained intact for another 13 years.In 1887, Congress passed the General Allotment Act, also called the
Dawes Act . And on2 March 1889 , Congress passed another act (just months before North Dakota and South Dakota were admitted to the Union on2 November 1889 ) which partitioned the Great Sioux Reservation, creating five smaller reservations out of portions of it: theStanding Rock Reservation (which included land in modern North Dakota which had not been part of the Great Sioux Reservation) with its agency atFort Yates ; the Cheyenne River Reservation with its agency on the Missouri near the mouth of the Cheyenne River (later moved toEagle Butte following the construction ofOahe Reservoir ), theLower Brule Reservation with its agency nearFort Thompson , the Upper Brule orRosebud Indian Reservation , with its agency near Mission, and thePine Ridge Reservation (Oglala Sioux) with its agency at Pine Ridge near theNebraska Border. (Neither theCrow Creek Reservation east of the Missouri River in central South Dakota nor theFort Berthold Reservation which straddles the Missouri River in western North Dakota were part of the original Great Sioux Reservation, although many historians assume one or both were.) With the boundaries of these five reservations established, approximately 9 million acres (36,000 km²), 1/2 of the former Great Sioux Reservation, was opened for ranching and homesteading. Much of the area was not, in fact, homesteaded until the 1910s. The Lakota tribes "received" $1.25 per acre, usually used to offset agency expenses in meeting federal treaty obligations to the tribes.Following the procedures of the Dawes Allotment Act, the remaining reservations were in turn greatly reduced in size, through the allocation of 320 acre (1.3 km²) parcels to heads of families and other measures which greatly reduced the land in Indian ownership, while attempting to force them to convert to farmers and craftsmen. "Surplus" land was then made available for homesteading, and often, allocated land was sold by its Indian owners. By the 1960s, the five reservations were apparently melting away, both through the allocation process and through the seizure of land for construction of
Lake Oahe and other Mainstem reservoirs on the Missouri River as part of thePick-Sloan Plan . Rosebud Reservation, which once included all of 4 counties and part of another, had its boundaries reduced to a single county: Todd County in south-central South Dakota, even though much Indian-owned land remained in the other counties. Similar reductions occurred in the other reservations, and in some cases, even when homesteads were abandoned during theDust Bowl era of the 1930s, the land finally ended up in federal control, as part of the modern National Grasslands,Badlands National Park , and land controlled by theBureau of Land Management , rather than reverting to the Lakota nations and people. In some cases, more land was taken inside the reduced reservation boundaries, as in the case of the WW2-eraBadlands Bombing Range , taken from the Oglala Sioux of Pine Ridge during the war and when declared surplus toUSAF needs in the 1960s, was transferred to theNational Park Service rather than returned to the tribe's ownership.Both inside and outside the current reservation boundaries in West River today, the Lakota are a part of the landscape: many towns (such as
Owanka ,Wasta , andOacoma , to name a few still in Lakota, and others, such asHot Springs ,Timber Lake , and Spearfish, in English translation), rivers, and mountains retain their Lakota names. Buffalo andantelope still graze together with cattle and sheep, and monuments to white and Lakota heroes and events are everywhere.ources
*Nathan A. Barton, "Environmental Assessment of Rosebud Indian Reservation" (2003) [PLA Associates, Inc] .
*"Atlas of Western United States History" (1989) [University of Oklahoma Press] .
*Michael L. Lawson, "American Indian Heirship" (Spring 1991) [South Dakota State Historical Society Quarterly] vol 21, no. 1.External links
* [http://wintercounts.si.edu/html_version/pdfs/map.cmyk.pdf Map of the Great Sioux Reservation]
* [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9507E3DF1731E433A25753C1A9649C94629FD7CF New York Times 1883 article about the opening of the reservation]
* [http://www.und.edu/dept/indian/Treaties/Division%20of%20great%20sioux%20reservation%201889.pdf Text of the law dissolving the Great Sioux Reservation]
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