THE CHANGING SOUTH, Chapter 9

In Chapter 9, The Changing South, the author describes Southern post-Civil War years as ones in which "an institutionalized alternative to slavery suffused Southern life; segregation laws began to be passed. These Jim Crow laws were justified because whites presumed themselves superior to blacks and used the force of law to institutionalize this belief." (p.170)

During this same time period, widespread discrimination existed on the Dakota Plains, perpetuated by the white settlers against the Native Americans. In describing this cultural imperialism, James T. Carroll of the U.S. Catholic Historian writes, "The Spanish, French, and English all carried similar attitudes about the 'savagery' and 'barbarism' of the indigenous peoples and believed the twin engines of Christianity and education would produce a people more palatable to European sensibilities." When they didn't, when the Native Americans rejected the white man's religion, a rationalization of racism began to permeate the national thought. The Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Francis Walker, wrote in 1871, "When dealing with savage men, as with savage beasts, no question of national honor can arise. Whatever action the United States cared to take is solely a question of expediency." Others like William Simms seemed to show remorse, saying, "Our blinding prejudices...have been fostered as necessary to justify the reckless and unsparing hand with which we have smitten American Indians in their habitations and expelled them from their country." James Loewen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me, comments, "Instead of spreading democracy, we exported the ideology of white supremacy."

After the Homestead Act of 1862 was enacted, giving 160 acres to settlers who farmed and lived on the land for five years, white American expansion clashed violently with Native Americans attempting to preserve their lands, sovereignty, and way of life. Indian wars and skirmishes were frequent on the American frontier throughout the 1860s and 1870s. Congress met in 1865 to study the Indian uprisings and wars, initiating a series of treaties that would force the Indians to give up their lands and move onto reservations further west.

The 1868 treaty with the Sioux at Fort Laramie, in present-day Wyoming, excluded non-Indians and gave the Black Hills of South Dakota, or Paha Sapa, to the Sioux in an attempt to bring peace between the whites and the Sioux. The United States recognized the Black Hills as part of the great Sioux Reservation, set aside exclusively for use by the Sioux people.

Buffalo at Wind Cave, Black Hills, South Dakota

The Black Hills were sacred hunting grounds to the Sioux. In violation of the treaty and Federal law, in 1874, General George Armstrong Custer and a group of miners led an expedition into the Black Hills in search of gold. Once gold was found, miners began moving onto what the treaty delineated as Sioux hunting grounds. These prospectors wanted protection from the U.S. Army. Before long, the Army was defending trespassing whites against Sioux hunting on the range, enjoying the rights the treaty guaranteed.

George Armstrong Custer, Westpoint

General George A. Custer, Dakota Territory

Two years later, in 1876, Custer and an army detachment encountered the Sioux and Cheyenne at the Little Bighorn River. In this battle, inspired by Sioux warrior Sitting Bull and led by Crazy Horse, the Indians surrounded Custer's troops and annihilated them within an hour. After the fighting ended, women went to the battlefield. Evan Connell gives one woman's account in Son of the Morning Star, writing, "Two women punctured Custer's eardrums with a sewing awl. They did this to improve his hearing because he had not been able to hear what he was told in Oklahoma seven years before. When he smoked a pipe with Medicine Arrow and Little Robe they told him that if he broke his promise and again made war on the Cheyennes he would be killed." The woman said, "Many times I have thought of the handsome man I saw in the South. And I have often wondered if, when I was riding among the dead where he was lying, my pony may have kicked dirt upon his body." (Connell, p.422)

Battle of Little Bighorn

Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument

The U.S. Army continued to battle the Sioux in the South Dakota Black Hills until finally, in 1877, the U. S. government confiscated the land. United States citizens began to settle there.

One hundred years later, in 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court awarded the Sioux 106 million dollars for the broken treaty and the loss of the Black Hills. The Fort Laramie Treaty had stipulated that no changes could be made to the treaty without the written approval of 75% of the adult Sioux men. Only 10% of Sioux had signed the 1876 agreement relinquishing the Black Hills. The Supreme Court concluded that because the U.S. wanted the Black Hills to be mined for gold, it had attempted to starve the Sioux tribe and then forced a small number of them to sign the agreement. In its ruling, the court said, "A more ripe and rank case of dishonorable dealings will never, in all probability, be found in our history." The Sioux refused the money, saying, "The Black Hills are not for sale." To this day, they continue to fight for the return of their land.

Carroll, James T., U.S. Catholic Historian, "Project Muse - The Smell of the White Man"
Connell, Evan, Son of the Morning Star, North Point Press, San Francisco, 1984
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