Unceded Indian Territory: Bears Belly

In 1867, Congress approved a contingent of four civilians and three army officers to make peace with the Indian tribes of the plains and partition land specific to each tribe. These treaties were meant to ensure that American settlers and the Indigenous residents of the land could live peaceably and be segregated in the vast prairie of America. Many skirmishes between Indians and settlers were told in stories that regaled Easterners with fear and wonder. However, lives were lost as both sides attempted to understand what life truly meant when confronted with strange and confusing people. The Indians wanted to maintain their way of life on the land they always lived on. The settlers wanted to expand, prosper, and experience this newfound "American" way of life. Boundaries were often tested, and fights were prevalent. Women and children also lost their lives on both sides as the men warred with one another. Life on the prairie was complicated and needed a solution, so Congress sought to make treaties with the tribes, seen as individual nations, to help garner that peace.

The newly formed contingent began working up plans for these treaty lands immediately, but it took them two years to visit each tribe and establish its boundaries. Why the American government firmly believed it controlled these lands the Indigenous peoples lived in centuries before the founding of any colony on the East Coast belies the arrogance of the new nation itself. In forming these treaty lands, the American government established its perceived dominance over the land by telling the Indians where they could live and continue their life. In reality, the lands were already divided through centuries of war and affiliations between the tribes. Each had its areas, and the divisions were already made. However, the United States saw each tribe as "uncivilized" and necessitating help from the "civilized" population of the land. So they stepped in with bravado and faith, thinking they were there to help a people who didn't need or want their help.

In April 1868, the congressional contingent met with the Dakotas and defined their boundaries with them through a revised Treaty of Laramie. Both sides agreed upon peace, and the given lands as "unceded Indian territory,” so Indian land was set for the Sioux. The land "given" to the Lakota Sioux was far less than they had freely sojourned previously but included the Black Hills, which the Sioux viewed as sacred. The Dakota had their settlements but were also semi-nomadic, especially when hunting buffalo. They needed large swaths of land to roam. Yet, philosophies collided when discussing treaty land.

For the Americans, primarily guided by the political philosophy of John Locke, they saw the land not as universal but as something to be divided up into parcels, given to individuals or families to use. "All wealth is the product of labor," John Locke wrote in his Second Treatise of Government in 1689. Locke further described his vision of private property, which Americans still see as today’s central truth. Before the "nature of governments" had blessed the land, all people had common access to the land and "fruits thereof which God provided for their use." Yet Locke went on to improve upon God's intent by declaring that as time passed, people had to appropriate some land for their desires to feed, clothe, and provide for their families. Locke argued further that this notion of private property wasn't sanctioned by man's laws but by "natural law,” the same law that allowed people to use common lands in the first place, and that every man had the "natural right" to ownership of land. For Locke, any land claimed by an individual, a "man,” becomes property if that individual put labor into "producing" that land, removing it from common use and into individual use. Thus, private property became the rallying cry of many settlers in America who sought to find their own parcel of land to farm and maintain. They wanted to provide for their families and used a philosophy that, in many ways, was contrary to the philosophy of the various Native Nations that preceded them in the land.

For the Indians in the "natural state" of Locke's understanding, Americans argued the Indians all held common land and didn't produce from the land they lived on. As a result, it gave the white settlers a sort of divine mandate to "be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth." The settlers were on God's side, and the Indians were not. The settlers saw the land and animals as property to dominate, own, and abuse. The Indians, as noted in the story of the Arikara origins, saw animals and all living creatures as relatives to be treated with honor and respect. The American settlers did not see or understand the Indian way of life in full.

The Sioux and most other tribes in the northern plains were not fully nomadic. They created villages and farms that produced food from the land, rotating farmland and moving villages as they progressed. They traveled to hunt buffalo and find resources from the "common land.” Still, each tribe already had its areas of residence, and clans and smaller formations of people within each tribe had their particular plots of land within the tribe's land. If the American settlers saw the Indians as human, they would have further known that the Indians did fit into John Locke's greater argument of "private property" as they produced from the land. Yet, greed and ignorance are hard to fight. The Indians had a different picture of the land, and how to steward it, but for the American settlers, it was much easier to fill this divine mandate if there were some "Canaanites" to defeat, as the book of Genesis and the Old Testament of the Bible told of Israel's — the people of God— fight against the uncivilized and unwelcome tribes that kept them from their divine mandate.

And so, the treaties the United States government agreed to with the area’s tribes were destined to be ignored. Gold was discovered in the Black Hills years before, but many American settlers found it difficult to mine on treaty land that the government, prematurely, in the eyes of the settlers, gave over to the Indians. However, with more and more stories coming out about the abundance of gold in the area, a gold rush ensued in 1874 on treaty land for the Lakota Sioux, and many settlers ignored the treaty and began to infiltrate Sioux land with hopes and dreams of riches. The Sioux had been dealing with white settlers ignoring their treaty for years prior, and now more were flaunting the laws and the treaty for gold riches. Tensions brewed. Indian fights and dead white settlers became more of an issue. The Sioux became more rebellious towards the lying U.S. government. And the U.S. government became more interested in the gold.

This article is part of a larger series on Bears Belly, a man who many have seen images of but don't know his story. You can find the other entries in the series here.