Though rising only 600 feet above the plains, Inyan Kara Mountain is one of the most important cultural and historical landmarks of the Black Hills and part of the sacred geography of the Black Hills for the Lakota and other northern Plains tribes. Traditional beliefs link Inyan Kara with other sacred sites including Devil’s Tower or Bear Lodge, Sundance Mountain, and Bear Butte in South Dakota, within a Black Hills spiritual landscape at the core of traditional belief systems. The 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie included this spiritual landscape in the reservation established for the Lakota in South Dakota and unceded Indian Territory in Wyoming, from which Euro-Americans were banned without express consent, but that exclusive use proved short-lived. In 1874, U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer led an expedition of 1000 men, 110 wagons, and 500 cattle into the Black Hills to scout places for military posts and explore for gold. Custer’s column reached Inyan Kara on July 22, 1874, and on July 23 he climbed the summit, leaving the inscription “74 Custer.” While camped at the mountain’s base, two of his soldiers died, George Turner from a gunshot wound and John Cunningham from dysentery. Custer’s incursion into the Black Hills led to the discovery of gold near Deadwood, South Dakota, and the resulting gold rush provoked the Lakota, culminating in the military campaigns of 1876 and Custer’s defeat and death at the Battle of Little Big Horn. Inyan Kara Mountain was enrolled in the National Registry of Historic Places in 1973.