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The Black Hills, the United States' oldest mountain range, [11] is 125 miles (201 km) long and 65 miles (105 km) wide stretching across South Dakota and Wyoming. [12] The Black Hills derived its name from the black image that is produced by the "thick forest of pine and spruce trees" that covers the hills and was given the name by the Native Americans belonging to the Lakota (Sioux). [13]
The Black Hills, located in present-day western South Dakota, became an important source to the Lakota for lodge poles, plant resources and small game. A map of the Great Sioux Reservation as established in 1868. "Unceded lands" for Cheyenne and Sioux use were west of the reservation in Montana and Wyoming.
The Black Hills Expedition was a United States Army expedition in 1874 led by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer that set out on July 2, 1874, from Fort Abraham Lincoln, Dakota Territory, which is south of modern day Mandan, North Dakota, with orders to travel to the previously uncharted Black Hills of South Dakota.
In 1874, the discovery of gold in the Black Hills caused the United States to attempt to buy the Black Hills from the Sioux. The U.S. ordered all bands of Lakota and Cheyenne to come to the Indian agencies on the reservation by January 31, 1876, to negotiate the sale.
"The Report of Captain John Mix of a Scout to the Black Hills, March-April 1875" (PDF). South Dakota History. 7 (4). South Dakota State Historical Society: 385– 401 "Gordon Stockade". The Wi-Iyohi. 15 (11). South Dakota State Historical Society: 1– 8. February 1, 1962 – via South Dakota Digital Archives.
Considering the Black Hills sacred and illegally taken, in the 20th century, the Lakota pursued a suit against the US government for the return of the land. In the 1980 United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians , the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the land had been taken illegally.
The Sioux Wars were a series of conflicts between the United States and various subgroups of the Sioux people which occurred in the later half of the 19th century. The earliest conflict came in 1854 when a fight broke out at Fort Laramie in Wyoming, when Sioux warriors killed 31 American soldiers in the Grattan Massacre, and the final came in 1890 during the Ghost Dance War.
General William T. Sherman said that whites had no right to enter and occupy the Black Hills; since, the Indians had not ceded the area. In 1868, a group of entrepreneurs planned to invade the Black Hills without military protection. Officially, Governor Faulk said that he did not sanction this invasion; while, his rhetoric actually encouraged it.