The destruction of the village and the death of many leaders fragmented the culture of the Cheyenne and Arapaho. Public outcry at the massacre led eventually to more humane policies relating to Indian tribes following the Civil War.

Satanta and Addo-eta were eventually tried and sentenced in July of 1871. The Indians were found guilty of murder in the first degree and sentenced to hang on the first day of September 1871. The executions, however, were never carried out.

Following the massacre, the survivors reached the camps of the Cheyenne on the Smokey Hill and Republican rivers. The war pipe was smoked and passed from camp to camp among the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors in the area.

120 members

The Warren Wagon Train raid, also known as the Salt Creek massacre, occurred on May 18, 1871….Warren Wagon Train raid.

At dawn on November 29, 1864, approximately 675 U.S. volunteer soldiers commanded by Colonel John M. Chivington attacked a village of about 750 Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians along Sand Creek in southeastern Colorado Territory. Using small arms and howitzer fire, the troops drove the people out of their camp.

On October 30, the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribe of Oklahoma, the Northern Cheyenne Tribe of Montana and the Rosebud Sioux Tribe of South Dakota successfully purchased land near the sacred Bear Butte for $1.1 million at an auction.

Henry Sibley’s

After gold was discovered in the Black Hills in 1874, the government tried to convince the Native Americans to sell the Black Hills. When that effort failed, the government ordered all Indians living outside the reservations to return to them by January 31, 1876, or be sent back by force.

The Sioux never accepted the legitimacy of the forced deprivation of their Black Hills reservation. In 1920, lobbyists for the Sioux persuaded Congress to authorize a lawsuit against the United States in US Claims Court.

1876 – 1877

1889

But not all of them went. Although many did move, they frequently traveled seasonally to pursue better hunting opportunities. In 1874, the U.S. government sent General George Custer on the Black Hills Expedition to choose a location for a new Army fort and to investigate the area’s natural resources.

The Black Hills Expedition (1874) was led by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer through modern day North and South Dakota. The group also had with it Custer’s favorite Indian scout, Bloody Knife. The expedition returned to Fort Abraham on August 30, 1874 after covering nearly 1,200 miles and lasting sixty days.

The Black Hills were a hunting ground and sacred territory of the Western Sioux Indians. At least portions of the region were also sacred to other Native American peoples—including the Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Arapaho—and the area had also been inhabited by the Crow.

The Black Hills Gold Rush took place in Dakota Territory in the United States. It began in 1874 following the Custer Expedition and reached a peak in 1876-77. Prospectors found gold in 1874 near present-day Custer, South Dakota, but the deposit turned out to be small. …

Horatio Ross & Custer’s Black Hills Gold Find. An odd coincidence links the man who discovered gold in the Black Hills in 1874 and the man who discovered gold at Sutter’s Mill in California 25 years earlier. The coincidence is that neither man became rich by being the first to discover the precious metal.

Nevada

The Homestake Mine was a deep underground gold mine (8,000 feet or 2,438 m) located in Lead, South Dakota. Until it closed in 2002 it was the largest and deepest gold mine in North America. The mine produced more than forty million troy ounces (43,900,000 oz; 1,240,000 kg) of gold during its lifetime.

state of Nevada

Bingham Canyon Mine

Stats for Stories: South Dakota 130th Anniversary (40th state): November 2, 2019. South Dakota was admitted to the Union simultaneously with North Dakota on November 2, 1889, as the 39th and 40th states, with generally the same boundary as the present state.