The Fort Laramie Treaty was signed between the United States and the Lakota, Dakota, and Arapaho peoples after the First Sioux War — a conflict that the Lakota had effectively won, forcing the U.S.

Army to abandon forts along the Bozeman Trail.

The treaty established the Great Sioux Reservation, which included a large portion of present-day South Dakota, and guaranteed to the Lakota “absolute and undisturbed use and occupation” of the Black Hills.

The treaty also recognized the right of the Lakota to hunt in specified unceded territory outside the reservation — territory that included the area of the Little Bighorn — as long as the buffalo remained sufficient to justify the hunt.

The discovery of gold in the Black Hills in 1874 made these treaty provisions inconvenient for the United States government and for the thousands of miners who flooded into Lakota territory in violation of the treaty.