The Treaty of Fort Laramie (also the Sioux Treaty of 1868) is an agreement between the United States and the Oglala, Miniconjou, and Brulé bands of Lakota people, Yanktonai Dakota, and Arapaho Nation. The first Fort Laramie treaty, signed in 1851, had been a resounding failure. The United States had almost immediately violated it, with American miners and settlers migrating to Indian territory. The United States Army had further broken the 1851 treaty when it initiated an armed invasion that resulted in the Grattan massacre in 1854, which sparked the first Sioux War. The 1868 treaty negotiations were thus initiated to replace the 1851 treaty, which had proven entirely ineffective.
The treaty is divided into 17 articles. It established the Great Sioux Reservation including ownership of the Black Hills, and set aside additional lands as "unceded Indian territory" in the areas of South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, and possibly Montana. It established that the US government would hold authority to punish not only white settlers who committed crimes against the tribes but also tribe members who committed crimes and were to be delivered to the government, rather than to face charges in tribal courts. It stipulated that the government would abandon forts along the Bozeman Trail and included a number of provisions designed to encourage a transition to farming and to move the tribes "closer to the white man's way of life." The treaty protected specified rights of third parties not partaking in the negotiations and effectively ended Red Cloud's War. That provision did not include the Ponca, who were not a party to the treaty and so had no opportunity to object when the American treaty negotiators "inadvertently" broke a separate treaty with the Ponca by unlawfully selling the entirety of the Ponca Reservation to the Lakota, pursuant to Article II of this treaty. The United States never intervened to return the Ponca land. Instead, the Lakota claimed the Ponca land as their own and set about attacking and demanding tribute from the Ponca until 1876, when US President Ulysses S. Grant chose to resolve the situation by unilaterally ordering the Ponca removed to the Indian Territory. The removal, known as the Ponca Trail of Tears, was carried out by force the following year and resulted in over 200 deaths.
The treaty was negotiated by members of the government-appointed Indian Peace Commission and signed between April and November 1868 at and near Fort Laramie, in the Wyoming Territory, with the final signatories being Red Cloud himself and others who accompanied him. Animosities over the agreement arose quickly, with open war breaking out again in 1876, and in 1877 the US government unilaterally annexed native land protected under the treaty.
The treaty formed the basis of the 1980 Supreme Court case, United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, in which the court ruled that tribal lands covered under the treaty had been taken illegally by the US government, and the tribe was owed compensation plus interest. As of 2018 this amounted to more than $1 billion. The Sioux refused the payment, having demanded instead the return of their land which would not be possible to contest if the monetary compensation was accepted.
Background
The first Treaty of Fort Laramie, signed in 1851, attempted to resolve disputes between tribes and the US Government, as well as among tribes themselves, in the modern areas of Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, and North and South Dakota. It set out that the tribes would make peace among one another, allow for certain outside access to their lands (for activities such as travelling, surveying, and the construction of some government outposts and roads), and that tribes would be responsible for wrongs committed by their people. In return, the US Government would offer protection to the tribes, and pay an annuity of $50,000 per year.
No land covered by the treaty was claimed by the US at the time of signing. The five "respective territories" of the participating tribes – Sioux, Arapaho and Cheyenne, Crow, Assiniboine, Arikara, Hidatsa and Mandan – were defined. North of the Sioux, the Arikara, Hidatsa and Mandan held a joint territory. The territory of the Crows extended westward from that of their traditional enemies in the Sioux tribe. The Powder River divided the two lands.
When the Senate reduced the annuity to 10 years from originally 50, all tribes except the Crow accepted the cut. Nevertheless, the treaty was recognized as being in force.
The 1851 treaty had a number of shortcomings which contributed to the deterioration of relations, and subsequent violence over the next several years. From an inter-tribal view, the lack of any "enforcement provisions" protecting the 1851 boundaries proved a drawback for the Crow and the Arikara, Hidatsa and Mandan. The federal government never kept its obligation to protect tribal resources and hunting grounds, and only made a single payment toward the annuity.
Although the federal government operated via representative democracy, the tribes did so through consensus, and although local chiefs signed the treaty as representatives, they had limited power to control others who themselves had not consented to the terms. The discovery of gold in the west, and the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad, led to substantially increased travel through the area, largely outside the 1851 Sioux territory. This increasingly led to clashes between the tribes, settlers, and the US government, and eventually open war between the Sioux (and the Cheyenne and Arapaho refugees from the Sand Creek massacre in Colorado, 1864) and the whites in 1866.
None of the other tribes signing the 1851 treaty engaged in battle with the US soldiers, and most allied with the Army. With the 1851 intertribal peace soon broken, the Arikara, Hidatsa and Mandan called for US military support against raiding Sioux Indians in 1855. By summer 1862, the three tribes had abandoned all their permanent villages of earth lodges in the treaty territory south of the Missouri, which was now under Sioux control, and lived together in Like-a-Fishhook Village north of the river.
In the mid-1850s, the western Sioux bands crossed the Powder River and entered the Crow treaty territory. Sioux chief Red Cloud organized a war party against a Crow camp at the mouth of Rosebud River in 1856. Despite the Crows fighting "... large-scale battles with invading Sioux" near present-day Wyola in Montana, the Sioux had taken over the western Powder River area by 1860.
In 1866 the United States Department of the Interior called on tribes to negotiate safe passage through the Bozeman Trail, while the United States Department of War moved Henry B. Carrington, along with a column of 700 men into the Powder River Basin, sparking Red Cloud's War. However, most of the wagon track to the city of Bozeman "crossed land guaranteed to the Crows under the 1851 treaty" "... the Sioux attacked the United States anyway, claiming the Yellowstone was now their land." Red Cloud's war "... appeared to be a great Sioux war to protect their land. And it was – but the Sioux had only recently conquered this land from other tribes and now defending the territory both from other tribes" and the passing through of whites. During the war, the Crows sided with the soldiers in the isolated garrisons. Crow warrior Wolf Bow urged the Army to, "Put the Sioux Indians in their own country, and keep them from troubling us."
After losing resolve to continue the war, following defeat in the Fetterman Fight, sustained guerrilla warfare by the Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho, exorbitant rates for freight through the area, and difficulty finding contractors to work the rail lines, the US Government, organized the Indian Peace Commission to negotiate an end to ongoing hostilities. A peace counsel chosen by the government arrived on April 19, 1868, at Fort Laramie, in what would later become the state of Wyoming. The outcome would be the second treaty of Fort Laramie Treaty, signed in 1868.
Articles
The treaty was laid out in a series of 17 articles:
Article I
Article one called for the cessation of hostilities, stating "all war between the parties to this agreement shall for ever [sic] cease." If crimes were committed by "bad men" among white settlers, the government agreed to arrest and punish the offenders, and reimburse any losses suffered by injured parties. The tribes agreed to turn over criminals among them, any "bad men among the Indians," to the government for trial and punishment, and to reimburse any losses suffered by injured parties. If any Sioux committed "a wrong or depredation upon the person or property on any one, white, black, or Indians" the US could pay damages taken from the annuities owed the tribes. These terms effectively relinquished the authority of the tribes to punish crimes committed against them by white settlers. In addition, these terms would subject tribal members to judgment under the U.S. government.
Similar provisions appeared in nine such treaties with various tribes. In practice, the "bad men among the whites" clause was seldom enforced. The first plaintiff to win a trial case on the provision did so in 2009, based on the 1868 Fort Laramie treaty.
In 1873, the US exercised the right to withhold annuities and compensate for Sioux wrongs against anyone, including Indians. After a massacre on a moving Pawnee camp during a legal Sioux hunting expedition in Nebraska, the Sioux "were made to pay reparations for the loss of life, meat, hides, equipment, and horses stolen..." The Pawnee received $9,000.
Article II
Article two of the treaty changed the boundaries for tribal land and established the Great Sioux Reservation, to include areas of present day South Dakota west of the Missouri River, including the Black Hills. This was set aside for the "absolute and undisturbed use and occupation of the Indians". In total, it allocated about 25% of the Dakota Territory as it existed at the time. It made the total tribal lands smaller, and moved them further eastward. This was to "take away access to the prime buffalo herds that occupied the area and encourage the Sioux to become farmers."
The government agreed that no parties, other than those authorized by the treaty, would be allowed to "pass over, settle upon, or reside in the territory". According to one source writing on article two, "What remained unstated in the treaty, but would have been obvious to Sherman and his men, is that land not placed in the reservation was to be considered United States property, and not Indian territory."
As in 1851, the US recognized most of the land north of the Sioux reservation as Indian territory of the Arikara, Hidatsa and Mandan. In addition, the US still recognized the 1851 Crow claim to the Indian territory west of the Powder. The Crow and the US came to an agreement about this expanse on May 7, 1868.
With the reservation border following "the northern line of Nebraska", the Peace Commission ceded to the Sioux the original Ponca Reservation, which had already been guaranteed the Ponca in multiple treaties with the government. "No one has ever been able to explain" this blunder, which was nonetheless enforced by the government, irrespective of their earlier agreements.
Article III
Article three provided for allotments of up to 160 acres (65 ha) of tillable land to be set aside for farming by members of the tribes. By 1871, 200 farms of 80 acres (32 ha) and 200 farms of 40 acres (16 ha) had been established including 80 homes. By 1877, this had risen to 153 homes "50 of which had shingle roofs and most had board floors" according to an 1876 report by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Article IV
The government agreed to build a number of buildings on the reservation:
- Warehouse
- Store-room
- Agency building
- Physician residence
- Carpenter residence
- Farmer residence
- Blacksmith residence
- Miller residence
- Engineer residence
- School house
- Saw mill
Article four also provided for the establishment of an agency on the reservation for the purpose of government administration. In practice, five were constructed and two more later added. These original five were composed of the Grand River Agency (Later Standing Rock), Cheyenne River Agency, Whetstone Agency, Crow Creek Agency, and Lower Brulé Agency. Another would later be set up on the White River, and again on the North Platte River, but would later be moved to also be on the White.
Articles V through X
The government agreed that the agent for the Bureau of Indian Affairs shall keep his office open to complaints, which he will investigate and forward to the Commissioner. The decision of the Commissioner, subject to review by the Secretary of the Interior, "shall be binding on the parties".
Article six laid out provisions for members of the tribes to take legal individual ownership of previously commonly held land, up to 320 acres (130 ha) for the heads of families, and 80 acres (32 ha) for any adult who was not the head of a family. This land then "may be occupied and held in the exclusive possession of the person selecting it, and of his family, so long as he or they may continue to cultivate it."
Article seven addressed education for those aged six to 16, in order, as the treaty states, to "insure the civilization of the Indians entering into this treaty". The tribes agreed to compel both male and females to attend school, and the government agreed to provide a schoolhouse and teacher for every 30 students who could be made to attend.
In article eight, the government agreed to provide seeds, tools, and training for any of the residents who selected tracts of land, and agreed to farm them. This was to be in the amount of up to $100 worth for the first year, and up to $25 worth for the second and third years. These were one of a number of provisions of the treaty designed to encourage farming, rather than hunting, and move the tribes "closer to the white man's way of life."
After 10 years the government was able to withdraw the individuals from article 13, but if so, it would provide $10,000 annually "devoted to the education of said Indians ... as will best promote the education and moral improvement of said tribes." These were to be managed by a local Indian agent under the Commissioner of Indian Affairs.
Article 10 provided for an allotment of clothes, and food, in addition to one "good American cow" and two oxen for each lodge or family who moved to the reservation. It further provided for an annual payment over 30 years of $10 for each person who hunted, and $20 for those who farmed, to be used by the Secretary of the Interior for the "purchase of such articles as from time to time the condition and necessities of the Indians may indicate to be proper."