Quotes about Black Hills

Philip Henry Sheridan

At a meeting which occurred in Washington on the 3d of November […] the President decided that while the orders heretofore issued forbidding the occupation of the Black Hills country by miners should not be rescinded, still no fixed resistance by the military should be made to the miners going in.... Will you therefore cause the troops in your Department to assume such attitude as will meet the views of the President in this respect.

Prior, the Military, worked hard to enforce the Fort Laramie Treaty which gave the Lakota Sioux Indian Tribe exclusive use of the Black Hills. Bu then gold was accidentally found in the Black Hills and white miners started to illegally enter the Lakota territory. Many of them killed Indians that they ran across. See Quotation 643700. President Grant, under huge political pressure instructed General Sheridan to stop enforcing the provisions of the treaty and keep the whites out of the Black Hills. They idea was to allow the miners to clash with the Lakota who would likely defend their sacred land, and when some whites had been killed, send the army in to “pacify” the Indians and use that as a means of relegation of the Treaty so the the gold areas would bee legally accessible.

Dana Perino

I love to drive in the Black Hills of Wyoming and South Dakota with Mount Rushmore as the central stop.

George Armstrong Custer

Gold has been found in paying quantities.

The discovery started a white frenzy to prospect the Black Hills. The trouble was that the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie had guaranteed the Black Hills to the Lakota Sioux. The Army tried to keep the white gold seekers out, but it was too difficult and there was not great public support for honoring the treaty. So the army decided to buy the Black Hills from the Indians and open it to legal prospecting. But the Sioux refused to sell not wanting to trade their sacred land for money and having no interest in gold. So the whites broke the treaty and took the gold anyway. This led to the hostilities and the greatest Indian victory wiping out Custer and his men at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

Clive Sinclair

Deadwood lies at the northern tip of the Black Hills, where the land is ancient and rubbed smooth by time. The Black Hills are more rugged at their southern extremity, where bare granite forms pinnacles and spires.

Heather Cox Richardson

The Treaty of Fort Laramie established most of what would later become South Dakota as a reservation, along with the Black Hills. But the treaty did not stop miners, buffalo hunters, railroad men, or settlers from intruding on Lakota lands.

Will Hobbs

I've been reading about Crazy Horse and Custer for a long, long time, and I thought that if I was going to write a story that took place in the Black Hills, I should find a way to include this history in it.

Adam Vinatieri

I'm a South Dakota kid.

Little Bear

The Black Hills are the house of gold for our Indians.

American Horse

If you have got to wear golden slippers to enter the white man's heaven no Indian will ever get there, as the whites have got the Black Hills and with them all the gold.

United States Government

If bad men among the whites, or among other people subject to the authority of the United States, shall commit any wrong upon the person or property of the Indians, the United States will, upon proof made to the agent, and forwarded to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs at Washington city, proceed at once to cause the offender to be arrested and punished according to the laws of the United States, and also reimburse the injured person for the loss sustained.

William Tecumseh Sherman

The United States agrees, at its own proper expense, to construct, at some place on the Missouri river, near the center of said reservation where timber and water may be convenient, the following buildings, to wit, a warehouse, a store-room for the use of the agent in storing goods belonging to the Indians, to cost not less than $2,500; an agency building, for the residence of the agent, to cost not exceeding $3,000; a residence for the physician, to cost not more than $3,000; and five other buildings, for a carpenter, farmer, blacksmith, miller, and engineer-each to cost not exceeding $2,000; also, a school-house, or mission building, so soon as a sufficient number of children can be induced by the agent to attend school, which shall not cost exceeding $5,000. The United States agrees further to cause to be erected on said reservation, near the other buildings herein authorized, a good steam circular saw-mill, with a grist-mill and shingle machine attached to the same, to cost not exceeding $8,000.

This treaty ended Red Cloud’s War. It shows a very sophisticated attempt by the white and Indian leadership. In addition to assuring the Indians control over the Black Hills, the parties provided for economic development. A white doctor, teacher, engineer, blacksmith and other technicians were to live on the reservation and teach their trades to the Indians. The Lakota Sioux had been at war with their neighbors before the whites ever came. Hunting and war was all they knew, and this treaty would give them a chance to modernize and earn a living. Unfortunately, gold was found in the Black Hills and whites soon usurped the land breaking the treaty and undoing the progress that had been made. Then the whites seized and confiscated the Sioux land in violation of the treaty and the Government was later ordered to pay $105 million by the courts. The Indians however did not want the money—a fortune then; they wanted their land back.

William Tecumseh Sherman

Whites looking for gold kill Indians just as they would kill bears and pay no regard for treaties.

Gold had been discovered in the Black Hills lands that were sacred to the Lakota Sioux and were reserved for exclusive use of the Indians by the Fort Laramie Treaty. Greedy whites, ignoring the treaty provisions not only entered the Black Hills to pan and mine for the gold, but killed many Indians they ran across Sherman was angry and wrote to his old friend President Grant. Grant, now a political, had to contend with public opinion that thought it absurd that gold should not be mined because a few Indians regarded the land as sacred. Meanwhile Grant was working with a few others to portray minor clashes between whites and Indians in the Black Hills as violent and dangerous Indians breaking the treaty.

Black Hills Quotes