The Fort Laramie Treaties of 1851 and 1868 shaped the destiny of the Lakota people for generations. In the 1868 treaty, the government promised to care for them by building an agency on the reservation with commensurate facilities and by providing food, clothing, and annuities at specified rates over 30 years. It also promised education, land ownership and cultivation, and seeds and implements to help them get started. In return, the Sioux agreed to be confined to the reservations, while the federal government would remove all military forts in the Powder River area and prevent non-Indian settlement in their lands. The treaty further guaranteed that any changes had to be approved by three-quarters of all adult Sioux males. Agencies were established to monitor the Dakota and Lakota living on the reservation, and soon Army forts were built to protect Indian agents and support staff. Lakota living off the reservations complained bitterly when the federal government allowed Northern Pacific Railroad survey crews into the unceded territory in direct violation of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. The best known violation of Sioux rights came with the 1874 Black Hills Expedition of geologists and soldiers under George Custer, sent by the federal government to explore the Black Hills and report on the extent of gold deposits. The government admitted the expedition was illegal and justified it as a way to gain information about mineral wealth in the Black Hills. Once reports of gold in the Black Hills became public, miners flooded into the area, trespassing on land defined as Sioux Country in the 1868 treaty. Military efforts to keep them out were unsuccessful, and by 1875 the Black Hills were overrun by prospectors. Rather than enforce the treaty, the government called a council to change its terms again, but Lakota and Dakota bands from all agencies overwhelmingly rejected proposals to sell or negotiate away their rights to the Black Hills. Food and clothing were distributed only to those living on the reservations to encourage abandonment of their traditional way of life. Harsh winters and late rations led many Indians to continue leaving the reservations to hunt in the unceded territory as provided in the 1868 treaty. By the spring of 1876, tensions among Indians, government officials, and trespassers in Sioux Country were at an all-time high. Events that year included the Little Big Horn, the deaths of Charles Nolin near present day Sturgis and Preacher Smith near Deadwood, and the Battle of Slim Buttes in Harding County. These events were in part the result of the failed promises of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868.