The Dakotas: "Indian Land Cessions"

From 1851 to 1891, Indian nations signed treaties with the U.S. government which included the transfer of lands and the establishment of reservations.
The map shows the year reservations were established and abolished in North and South Dakota.
How many reservations were left by 1891? Where are the Black Hills, the most scared of place of the Lakota? Regarding the Black Hills, Russell Means, an American Indian Movement activist and Oglala Sioux, says that "the Crazy Horse Monument [in the Black Hills] is a farce." Its promoters, of course, think they are celebrating Indianness. Means continues "it’s an insult to our entire being. It’s bad enough getting four white faces carved in up there [on Mount Rushmore], the shrine of hypocrisy." Source: The Progressive, September 2001, p.38.

The destruction of the buffalos and Indian well-being on the Great Plains
As late as 1871 buffalo on the Great Plains outnumber people in North America. In that year, buffalo could be seen from a bluff in the Dakotas in every direction for 30 miles. Herds were so large that it took days for them to pass by.

Wyatt Earp described one herd of a million animals stretching over a grazing area the size of Rhode Island.

Within nine years, the buffalo vanished from the Plains. As the Civil War hero General Philip Sheridan wrote at the time: "The Buffalo hunters have done in the past two years more to settle the vexing Indian Questions than the regular army has accomplished in the last thirty years. They destroyed the Indians' commissary. Send them powder and lead, and let them kill until they have exterminated the buffalo."

Between 1850 and 1880 more than 75 million buffalo hides were sold. No one knows how many more animals were slaughtered and left to rot on the prairie. A decade after Indian resistance had collapsed, Sheridan advised Congress to mint a commemorative medal, with a dead buffalo on one side and a dead Indian on the other.
Source: Wade Davis. 1996. One River. p. 81

• five reservations -- the ones with only a "starting" year and without an "ending" year (underlined)

• the Black Hills are in the southwestern corner of the South Dakota. Notice that this area ceased  to be Indian lands in 1876 when the U.S. government, which had previously guaranteed this area by treaty to the Lakota, forced a new treaty because whites had found gold here.  The main road into the Black Hills was called "freedom trail" by white miners and by the Lakota, "thieves' road."

Akicita Hanska, "Long Soldier," Hunkpapa Chief of the Standing Rock Agency wears a beaver top hat in vogue during the Civil War. He signed the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868. Photo by O.S. Goff, c. 1874.

Indians killing Indians. Four Crow Indian scouts for the 7th U.S. Cavalry stand atop Last Stand Hill on the Custer Battlefield where the dead of the Battle of the Little Bighorn are buried. Photo by Rodman Wanamaker, 1913.

Indian images are many and varied!

Robert Freeman, Luiseno/Hunkpapa Sioux, drew Lady in Waiting. From his card, "This painting was a reactionary one. Instead of painting typical 'Indian maidens,' I do 'Indian Babes.' They smoke and hang out and spit on you . . . they're real!"

1. Percent of Indians by county

2. Percent of Indians by block group -- a much finer geographical scale

3. Percent Indian language speakers

4. Percent of unemployed

5. Median Household incomes

6. Median Age of housing

Indians strongly support Democratic candidates, as they did John Kerry in the the 2004 Presidential election. Democrats generally are more supportive of Indian social programs and land issues than Republicans. What other distinctive ethnic and racial regions strongly supported this Democratic?