16. Blacks Hills and Custer’s Last Stand
General Sheridan argued that a fort should be constructed in the Great Sioux Reservation so that the army could protect future railroad construction as well as subdue any Sioux attacks on white settlements. The site for construction of the fort was the Black Hills, a place sacred to the Oglala Sioux. Sheridan sent George Armstrong Custer and ten companies of the Seventh Cavalry to the Black Hills in the spring of 1874 to find a suitable location to construct the fort. While in the Black Hills, Custer found gold and sent word back to Washington. The news spread, sparking a gold rush to the Black Hills. The tribes of the northern plains, particularly the Sioux, were furious with this encroachment on their ancestral lands. In September 1875, the government offered the Sioux $400,000 a year to lease the Black Hills from them, or $6 million to buy the land outright. Predictably the Sioux refused the offer. The government decided to use this opportunity to punish the off-reservation Sioux. All Sioux, Northern Cheyennes, and Arapahoes, who were not within the boundary of the Great Sioux Reservation by the 31st of January 1876 would be considered hostile and therefore at war with the United States.
Sitting Bull summoned ally tribes to his camp at Rosebud Creek and by the time Custer and the Seventh Cavalry arrived at the Little Bighorn River, the Indians numbered in the tens of thousands. Custer’s famous Last Stand on the 25th June 1876, represented the last decisive victory for Native Americans in the Indian wars. As the Sioux and Cheyennes celebrated the victory convinced that they had successfully repelled the military Sheridan began preparing for yet another devastating winter campaign. The defeat of the Sioux in 1877 brought about what Grant’s Peace Policy had failed to do, the end of the most powerful tribe’s resistance to the Concentration policy.