The Plains Wars

Between 1854 and 1890 the nations of the American plains fought the United States Army over land guaranteed to them by treaty. They won several of the battles and lost the war, and the manner of it — through the destruction of the bison — matters as much as any engagement.

Who was involved

The Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa, Comanche and others lived by the bison on the grasslands between the Mississippi and the Rockies. It was not an ancient way of life but around a hundred and fifty years old: it depended on the horse, which had spread north from Spanish New Mexico after 1680.

Timeline

1851

the first Fort Laramie treaty sets territories and rights of passage

1864

the Sand Creek massacre in Colorado: around 230 killed, mostly women and children

1868

the second Fort Laramie treaty guarantees the Black Hills to the Lakota "for ever"

1869

the transcontinental railroad is completed

1871

Congress stops making treaties with Indigenous nations

1874

gold is found in the Black Hills; the 1868 guarantee is set aside

1876

the Little Bighorn: Custer's detachment is annihilated

1877

Crazy Horse surrenders and is killed in custody

1877

the Black Hills are taken by statute, in breach of the treaty

1884

the bison is effectively extinct

1890

Wounded Knee: around 300 Lakota killed

1980

the Supreme Court holds that the Black Hills were taken unlawfully

Why the bison decided it

Between 1870 and 1884 an estimated thirty million bison were reduced to a few hundred. The railway made it profitable: hides could be carried east and tanned into drive belts for factory machinery.

The connection to military policy is not a later interpretation — it stands in the sources of the time. Several officers and politicians recommended extermination explicitly as a faster means than war of forcing the Plains nations onto reservations. Once the food supply was gone, the reservation was the only place food existed.

The Little Bighorn

The battle of 1876 was a complete victory for the Lakota and Cheyenne under Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. It hastened the defeat. The news reached the United States during the centennial of independence, and the reaction made any compromise politically impossible. Within a year the resistance was broken.

The Black Hills

In 1980 the Supreme Court held that the Black Hills had been taken in breach of the 1868 treaty, and awarded compensation. The Lakota have refused the money. The award sits in an account and has passed two billion dollars with interest. Accepting it would confirm the sale, and the claim is not for money — it is for land.