Natural Resource Quotes



The discovery started a white frenzy to prospect the Black Hills. The trouble was that the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie had guaranteed the Black Hills to the Lakota Sioux. The Army tried to keep the white gold seekers out, but it was too difficult and there was not great public support for honoring the treaty. So the army decided to buy the Black Hills from the Indians and open it to legal prospecting. But the Sioux refused to sell not wanting to trade their sacred land for money and having no interest in gold. So the whites broke the treaty and took the gold anyway. This led to the hostilities and the greatest Indian victory wiping out Custer and his men at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.