Answer

The Black Hills are a small, albeit isolated, mountain ranges which start from the western South Dakota and extend towards the area of Wyoming in the US. In 1868, a treaty (Treaty of Laramie) was signed between the indigenous Indian populations and the US government which established the Great Sioux Reservation and served to exempt the Black Hills from any form of white settlement (Murolo, 2011). However, with the discovery of gold in the Black Hills in 1874, a gold rush started to occur with miners sweeping into the Black Hills. Against the wishes of the local people, the US government took back the area and reassigned it back to Lakota. However, the aim of the Treaty of Laramie was to place all tribes under the reservations and ensure that the sacred Black Hills were not invaded by white settlers.

The Treaty of Laramie and the discovery of gold in the Black Hills were responsible for the Battle of Bighorn and the Wounded Knee Creek. In specific, with the gold rush in the Black Hills, the Treaty of Laramie was violated resulting in the Great Sioux War (1876-1877) which occurred between the US government and the Lakota Sioux. In the climax of the war was the Battle of the Little Bighorn, an armed engagement between the Lakota, Arapaho tribes, and Northern Cheyenne’s combined forces, and the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the United States (Murolo, 2011). A resentment ensued later because of the effects of the Great Sioux War resulting in the massacre at the Wounded Knee Creek and officially the end of the ongoing warfare between the Plains Indians and the US government.