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

Army prosecuted the campaign against the Lakota with the full commitment it had been unable to sustain in the Bozeman Trail period.

By the fall of 1876, the major Lakota resistance was broken.

In 1877, the United States Congress passed legislation that effectively seized the Black Hills — abrogating the 1868 treaty provision that had protected them.

The legal status of the Black Hills seizure has been challenged repeatedly in the century and a half since.

In 1980, the U.S.

Supreme Court ruled in United States v.

Sioux Nation of Indians that the 1877 seizure had been an unconstitutional taking of Lakota property.