II.

The Struggle Against U.S. Encroachment

Some Sioux fought on the side of the British during the American Revolution (1775-1783) and the War of 1812. In 1815, however, the eastern groups made treaties of friendship with the United States, and in 1825 another treaty confirmed Sioux possession of an immense territory that included much of present-day Minnesota, the Dakotas, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, and Wyoming. In 1837 the Sioux sold all their territory east of the Mississippi River to the United States; additional territory was sold in 1851.

At this time a pattern of assault and counterassault developed as settlers pushed forward onto Sioux lands. The first clash was in 1854 near Fort Laramie, Wyoming, when 19 U.S. soldiers were killed. In retaliation, in 1855 U.S. troops killed about 100 Sioux at their encampment in Nebraska and imprisoned their chief. Red Cloud’s War (1866-1868), named after the Oglala Lakota chief Red Cloud, ended in a treaty granting the Black Hills in perpetuity to the Sioux. The treaty, however, was not honored by the United States; gold prospectors and miners flooded the region in the 1870s. In 1876 and 1877 the Sioux and their allies, the Cheyenne and the Arapaho, fought numerous battles against the U.S. Army. The most famous of these encounters was the Battle of the Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876, in which General George Armstrong Custer and about 250 troops were killed by warriors under Lakota chiefs Sitting Bull, Gall, and Crazy Horse. The massacre by U.S. troops of as many as 370 Sioux men, women, and children at Wounded Knee in December 1890 marked the end of Sioux resistance until modern times.