8/19/2009:
On this date in 1874, reports of Lieutenant Colonel Custer’s Black Hills Expedition were pouring into Bismarck. The newspapers delighted in printing fantastic tales about what the explorers found in the Southern Dakota Territory. For example, the Bismarck Tribune compared the Black Hills to the lost city of El Dorado, claiming that the land was filled with “rich nuggets of gold, lying about loose, sufficient to pay the national debt a thousand times over.”
But gold was not the only attraction of the Black Hills. According to the newspapers, the territory was a veritable paradise full of natural wonders. One reporter wrote that “springs from the mountainsides form beautiful rills that ripple along over their pebbly beds, the waters colorless, tasteless and pure.” Custer himself described the land as an enchanted haven where flowers grew thick as carpets and the streams were as clear as crystal.
The newspapers’ idyllic descriptions beckoned adventurous settlers to the Black Hills. Custer and his expedition seemed to have paved the way to paradise. All the settlers need do, he asserted, was make an eight-day journey from Bismarck to Bear Butte, and a wealth of gold and natural resources would be theirs for the taking. Yet there was one major flaw in Custer’s grand scheme: the second Treaty of Ft. Laramie.
In 1868, the United States government signed a treaty with the Sioux Indians guaranteeing them exclusive rights to the Black Hills Territory. According to the conditions of this treaty, the settlement of Sioux land by gold-seeking Americans was a violation of the peace agreement. But in Custer’s mind the solution was simple. “I shall recommend the extinguishment of the Indian title at the earliest moment practicable for military reasons,” he told a reporter in an interview for the Bismarck Tribune. “The Black Hills region is not occupied by the Indians and is seldom visited by them,” he further explained.
But Custer was sorely mistaken, for the Black Hills were sacred to the Sioux. Unfortunately, the Colonel’s appalling attitude toward the treaty was shared by many Americans. For example, during Custer’s interview, the reporter arrogantly stated, “[The] agricultural worth alone ought to be enough to cause the extinguishment of the Indian title were there no other reason.” Though the United States government offered the Sioux $106 million for the land, they refused to sell their sacred place and were eventually driven out of the Black Hills. To this day, the Sioux refuse government compensation, and the rightful ownership of the Black Hills remains in dispute.
Dakota Datebook written by Carol Wilson
Sources
The Bismarck Tribune, August 19, 1874.
The Bismarck Tribune, September 2, 1874.