what caused the conflicts between the Lakota nation and United States of America?

Chief Ten Bears quote

prosperity of the tribe

buffalo, food, shelter

right to occupy

1836 Studevart Map or Gallatain map of 1836

had an ancestral claim based on occupancy

culture

1933 Luther Standing Bear memoir (1874)

Lakota way of life

reservations were prisons

schools imposed painful accomodation, but not assimilation, attempted cultural annihilation, language death

competing leadership

Killing Custer

leadership

tribal/ democratic

leaders appointed by acclaimation

Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull

resources

gold

lumber

buffalo

for Lakota, eocnomic self-sufficiency; trade, food, shelter.

for Americans: hides for trade; supply chain for troops; hazard for railroads; treaty obligation to protect access to hunting grounds.

sovereignty

sovereign control over territory

railroads

Bozeman trail

seasoinal migration routes, hunting rights

right to occupy

military posts

homesteads

leadership and representation (neither group monolithic, competing interests)

Red Cloud v Crazy Horse

Sheridan V Legislature, Congress

cultural (ecomomics, family structurepolitics, religion, values)

industrial, monotheistic, agricultural, land as property,

seasonal migration, hunter gatherer, pantheistic

military strategy to extend US sovereighty and control over the continent

1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie, 1851

can establish military posts and roads

resided there

would offer certain privileges and remain peaceful

1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie

Spotted Tail and RedCloud (others) signed a treaty that said, within certain geographic boundaries, the land was for the absolute use and occupation of those indian nations named by the treaty.

who remain peaceful

right to pass only by authorization

within other geographic boundaries, to said indian nations, only for the purposes of hunting buffalo

only for as long as the buffalo exist there

buffalo are the only thing holding US to treaty obligations to hunting ground where buffalo are present

1881 General Sheridan's letter, 1881

killed off the buffalo and the indian

a continuation of his scorched earth strategy from Civil War

Harper's photo: killing for hides and secondary text

buffalo provide a supply chain for troops

competion for economic resources

1872 secratary Delano's letter

those who are willing to mine and log can lay claim to te land

occupants can be removed, ancestral claims extinguished

extiguishing the claim to the land is equivalent to"opening"

1874 Custer's 1874 Dispatch re: gold discovery

discover valued resources

lakota perspective: was he authorized, or in violation of the treaty-- a source of conflict

Editorials: Yankton and Dakotaian (After 1874)

will use the resources, those who make money from products of the land

a belief in cultural and racial superiority

1887 Dawes Act

agree to live separate and apart from their tribe of origin and take up farming on a quarter section or less of land, assimilate

1868 treaty

indians will take up farming

economic expansion

railroad photo

homestead act title and secondary source