The Treaty, the Taking, and the Billion Dollars Nobody Will Touch

This is a story about a promise the United States made and then broke on purpose. In eighteen sixty-eight, the United States signed the Fort Laramie Treaty with the Great Sioux Nation. The treaty language was direct: the Black Hills and a vast surrounding territory would belong to the Sioux forever, set apart for their absolute and undisturbed use and occupation.

The Black Hills, which the Lakota call Paha Sapa, were the center of their spiritual world. The treaty was clear and the United States signed it. In eighteen seventy-four, the Custer expedition confirmed gold in the hills.

By eighteen seventy-five, prospectors were streaming in despite the treaty's explicit prohibition. The Army was briefly ordered to remove the trespassers, and then stopped. By eighteen seventy-seven, Congress simply passed a law declaring the old treaty void and taking the Black Hills.

The act required Sioux signatures under the treaty's own amendment clause. Only about ten percent of adult Sioux men had signed the agreement presented to them. Congress passed the taking anyway.

In nineteen eighty, the United States Supreme Court ruled in a case called United States versus Sioux Nation of Indians that the taking had been unconstitutional, an exercise of power without just compensation. The Court awarded the original fair market value of the hills plus interest, an amount that had grown to more than one billion dollars as of twenty eighteen. The Sioux Nations have refused to accept the money.

For more than forty years, the funds have sat in a federal account collecting interest, unclaimed. The Sioux position has not changed. The Black Hills are not for sale at any price.