Paha Sapa

Paha Sapa, named the Black Hills by white settlers, is sacred land to the Lakota, who regarded it as the womb of Mother Earth and came there for ceremonies, vision quests, and burials rather than to live. The Lakota believed the lightning over the hills was the spirits of fallen warriors and fought to keep white settlers from taking this sacred land as forts were built to protect travelers passing through their lands. In 1868, Oglala Chief Red Cloud signed a treaty at Fort Laramie declaring that Paha Sapa belonged to the Lakota, that no white settlers would be there, and that the army would enforce the treaty. After Yellow Hair, identified as General George Custer, discovered gold in Paha Sapa, the government sought to buy the land, and when the Lakota refused, soldiers left and the land was no longer protected from the thousands who came seeking fortune and claiming it for themselves. The Lakota again fought to protect what was theirs, and their victory against Yellow Hair at Greasy Grass, also called Little Bighorn, was followed by soldiers moving onto the reservation and taking guns and horses, while many of the Great Sioux Nation fled to Canada. Cold and hungry, most Lakota eventually returned to the reservations but still refused to sell or rent their lands, even as buffalo nearly disappeared, people starved, leaders such as Crazy Horse died, and fear grew that the Great Sioux Nation would be no more. In the Black Hills Gold Rush of 1874, two scientists attached to the Custer Expedition uncovered gold in sacred Sioux land in South Dakota, and after the Sioux refused to sell their reservation to the U.S. government during the Allison Commission in 1875, prospectors invaded despite earlier promises, leading by 1876 to thousands of fortune hunters in the Black Hills and another war with the Sioux. From 1876 to 1881, the Sidney-Blackhills Trail carried much of the traffic, supplies, and gold to and from the Black Hills mining towns after Sidney had already become a trailhead for shipping goods to the Nebraska Indian agencies.

Nebraska · United States