These provisions were accepted by Red Cloud and other signers as part of the overall agreement, though the degree to which the signing parties understood all of the implications is a question historians have debated.

The treaty was ratified by the U.S.

Senate and signed by President Andrew Johnson.

It was the law of the land.

Its provisions were real legal obligations of the United States government.

The subsequent history — the Black Hills gold discovery, the failure of the government to enforce the treaty’s exclusion provisions, the legislative seizure of the Black Hills in 1877 — represented not a policy change but a breach of contract.

The treaty hadn’t expired or been superseded.