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The Plains Wars
The Plains nations — Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa and others — lived by the bison and the horse on the grasslands between the Mississippi and the Rockies. The Little Bighorn was a tactical victory that hastened a strategic defeat: the reaction in the United States made further compromise politically impossible. Wounded Knee in 1890 is usually taken as the end, and coincides with the census bureau declaring the frontier closed. The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 had guaranteed the Black Hills to the Lakota; gold found there in 1874 voided the guarantee in practice. The Supreme Court held in 1980 that the land had been taken unlawfully and awarded compensation, which the Lakota have refused to accept, because acceptance would confirm the sale.
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