Sioux (Oglala) at Fort Sully, Dakota Territory (1865)

What happened

On October 28, 1865, a United States commission met chiefs and head-men of the Oglala band of Dakota (Sioux) at Fort Sully, Dakota Territory. Commissioners were Governor Newton Edmunds, Edward B. Taylor, Major-General S. R. Curtis, Brigadier-General H. H. Sibley, Henry W. Reed and Orrin Guernsey. It is one of several separate band treaties made there in the fall of 1865.

In Article 1 the band acknowledged itself "subject to the exclusive jurisdiction and authority of the United States." It promised to stop hostilities against United States citizens and to use its influence, and force if necessary, to keep other Sioux bands or neighboring tribes from hostile acts. Later articles had it stop attacks on other tribes unless attacked first, and send quarrels with other tribes to the President.

Article 4 is the exchange. The band would "withdraw from the routes overland" already or later established through its country. In return the United States agreed to pay $10,000 a year for twenty years, in articles chosen by the Secretary of the Interior, as long as the band kept the treaty.

Article 5 protected individuals who chose to settle on band land to farm. When twenty lodges or families had settled to farm and told their agent, each would get $25 a year for five years in implements and improvements. At one hundred families they would be entitled to a farmer and blacksmith at government expense, and to teachers at the Secretary's option. Any Senate amendment, the treaty adds, would bind the band as if the chiefs had agreed to it. It was ratified March 5, 1866, and proclaimed March 17, 1866.

Good to know. This treaty ceded no land. Its header dates it October 28, 1865, but its closing clause says the chiefs signed on October 26.

Summarized with AI assistance from 3 sources and checked against their words; not yet reviewed by historians or by the nations. Report an error