The government’s defense throughout the proceedings was to argue that the 1877 act had been a legitimate exchange — that the rations provided to the Sioux constituted fair value for the Hills, that Congress had made a genuine effort to reach an agreement, and that the courts should defer to Congress’s judgment.

The Commission rejected this argument.

The Court of Claims rejected it on appeal.

The Supreme Court rejected it in 1980.

What the Commission’s process revealed, in the years of historical examination it required, was the full scope of what had happened between 1868 and 1877 — the trajectory from treaty to violation, the specific mechanisms of the “sell or starve” coercion, the deliberate disregard of the three-fourths requirement, the inadequacy of the consideration offered.

The record that the Commission assembled became the basis for the Supreme Court’s comprehensive historical account.