The government now faced a choice: enforce the treaty it had signed, at the cost of ejecting tens of thousands of gold-hungry settlers from the Hills, or find another way to acquire the land.

It chose another way.

The Taking — And The Method

The year 1876 brought two developments that would shape what followed.

In August 1876, Congress attached a rider to an appropriations bill.

The rider provided that no further funds would be appropriated for the subsistence of the Sioux — no more government rations, which the treaty had provided for and which many Sioux people had become dependent upon given the destruction of the buffalo herds — unless the tribes first relinquished their rights to the Black Hills and to their hunting territories outside the reservation.