The Native Americans of the Black Hills
- Natasha - Learnings
- Jul 21, 2015
- 2 min read
The Native American history in the Black Hills of South Dakota is extremely long, dating back to at least 7000 BC. The English name for the area itself is a direct translation of the Lakota Pahá Sápa. The Arikara arrived by 1500 AD, followed by the Cheyenne, Crow, Kiowa and Pawnee before the Lakota, also known as the Sioux, came from Minnesota in the 18th century and drove the other tribes out to the west. The Lakota originally called the land HeSapa, Black Mountains. French explorers began to descend from the north and map out the Missouri river, trading with the Natives for furs and eventually François and Joseph La Verendrye claimed the area in the name of King Louis XV. That was French land until President Thomas Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase. Shortly after, Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark to explore the territory. The Lakota never accepted the white man into their lands and as more and more people began to infiltrate the areas around their hunting grounds, there was a significant decline in relations between the Natives and the Europeans they thought of as invaders. The Army established posts nearby, but the trouble escalated when the Lakota began to raid settlements. Despite being pushed by the pioneers to explore them, the military understood the importance the Lakota tribes attached to the Black Hills. In the second half of the 19th century, the federal government entered into a series of treaties with the Lakota, the result being the Fort Laramie Treaty, which forever ceded the Black Hills to the Sioux, hoping to establish a lasting peace. In 1874 George Armstrong Custer led an expedition into the Hills and gold was discovered, which soon led to thousands of men violating the treaty and the federal law as they traveled through Lakota lands to reach the gold mines. It was the trigger that set off the last major white-Native war on the Great Plains. The U.S. Army defeated the tribe and formed yet another treaty a year after the end of the war. It gave the government title to the Black Hills and legalized gold mining in the territory, confining the Lakota to their reservation.