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.

Answer:

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."

Images of Indians, Past and Present


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!"

Today, one of the poorest counties in the United States is Shannon, South Dakota, which includes the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation (the southwestern reservation established in 1851 on the map above) where the unofficial unemployment is around 90 percent and the average yearly income is $3,417 -- less than half of the GNP of Mexico or Argentina. One in four homes have no indoor toilets and the death rate from alcoholism is nine times the national average.

Now examine contemporary maps of South Dakota counties and the presence of Indian populations and their reservations.

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?

Created by Ingolf Vogeler on 7 September 1999; last revised on 7 February 2000.