The Lakota Leader Who Forced The U.S. Army To Abandon Its Forts — And Won A War Most Americans Never Learned About

The three forts — Fort Reno, Fort Phil Kearny, and Fort C.F.

Smith — were formally abandoned.

The Powder River Country was designated as “unceded Indian territory,” meaning that while it was not formally part of the Great Sioux Reservation, it was set aside for the use of the Lakota and their allies, to the exclusion of Americans.

The treaty also established the Great Sioux Reservation, which encompassed all of what is now South Dakota west of the Missouri River, including the Black Hills.

This was the formal homeland in which the Lakota were expected to settle — provided with government rations, an agent, schools, farming equipment, and the other apparatus of the assimilation policy that characterized American Indian policy in this era.