Copyright © 1989 by the South Dakota State Historical Society. All Rights Reserved. The Sioux Agreement of 1889 and Its Aftermath HERBERT T. HOOVER The 1989 centennial in South Dakota "is not a celebration most Indian tribes are comfortable witb," wrote Lakota Times editor Tim Giago recently. With statehood one hundred years ago came "the further erosion of the [Sioux Indian] land base" and in sub- sequent years the loss of "millions of acres of excess lands" on Copyright © 1989 by the South Dakota State Historical Society. All Rights Reserved. Sioux Agreement of 1889 57 reservations through the allotment process. Coupled with this loss over the past century has been the exclusion of tribal members from mainstream social life, Giago added, and from "decision mak- ing at a state level." For American Indians, he concluded, "what is there to celebrate?"' No historical development ha.s had greater impact on the histo- ry of this state than the transfer of land from tribal control to non- Indian ownership and the aftermath of that transfer. Due to the complexity of the matter, most historical literature offers scanty explanations and perpetuates misunderstandings regarding the way in which the land issue affected Indians. Similarly, this lack of detailed historical explanation denies readers of all backgrounds appropriate access to knowledge about a complicated develop- ment that has had long-lasting influence on all residents of the state. A better understanding of the present attitudes of Ameri- l. SiOtU' Falla Argus Leader, 11! Nov. 1988. Copyright © 1989 by the South Dakota State Historical Society. All Rights Reserved. 58 South Dakota History can Indians must include a sharper perception of the ownership and use of land in the past.^ Sioux people ceded most of the area contained by the bound- aries of South Dakota to the United States in three transactions. The Treaty of Washington, D.C, in 1858 provided for a transfer of 11,155,890 acres east of the Missouri River and the settlement of the Yankton Sioux on a reservation containing 430,000 acres near Fort Randall, plus their continued ownership of 648.2 acres at the pipestone quarry in southwestern Minnesota. The Sioux Agreement approved on 28 February 1877 reduced the Great Sioux Reservation (established in one state and three territories west of the Missouri River by the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868) from approximately 60 million to slightly less than 22 million acres. For the next twelve years, the Great Sioux Reservation was situ- ated mainly within present-day South Dakota borders between the northern boundary of Nebraska and the south fork of the Can- nonball River, and from the Missouri to a western borderline on the 103rd meridian jutting eastward along the main forks of the Cheyenne River. The Sioux Agreement of 2 March 1889 reduced this reservation by 9,274,668.7 acres, leaving to the Teton and Yanktonai tribes only 12,681,911 acres within the boundaries of the Cheyenne River, Crow Creek, Lower Brule, Pine Ridge, Rosebud, and Standing Rock reservations.^ Through the three transactions, the Yanktons, Yanktonais, and seven tribes of Tetons lost their rights to use nearly 58,695,000 acres across tbe upper Missouri River drainage basin and retained only 13,111,911 acres in South Dakota, plus approximately a sec- tion of land surrounding the pipestone quarry in Minnesota.^ In 2. Substance for this article comes mainly from research accomplished during a grant leave funded by the Research Division of the National Endowment for the Humanities, 1978-1981, for the author and Sioux Indian consultant Joseph Rockboy. 3. Charles J. Kappler, comp. and ed., Indian Treaties, 1778-1883 (New York: Interland Publishing, 1972) pp. 776-80, 998-1007; U.S., Statutes at Ixirge, vol. 19. pp. 254-57, vol. 25, pp. 888-99, 1002-4; Herbert T. Hoover and Leonard R. Bruguier, The Yankton Sirnur {New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988), p. 30. The treaty- making process, which the United .States began with a 1778 treaty with Delaware Indians, ended in 1871. Thereafter, all transactions between recognized tribes and the united States gained expression in acts of Congress called "agreements." 4. In 1929, c:()ngress authorized the payment of $328,558.90 to 1,953 enrolled Yankton Sioux for title lu their Pipestone reservation, and federal officials subse- quently made it a national monument. Herbert T. Hoover, ' 'Yankton Sioux Tribal Claims agaiast the United States, 1917-1975," WesternHistofical Quarterly 7 (Apr. 1976): 131. Copyright © 1989 by the South Dakota State Historical Society. All Rights Reserved. Sioitx Agreement of 1889 59 other words, after three decades of negotiations they retained only 18.3 percent and relinquished 81.7 percent of their land to federal officials who represented a constituency of non-Indians that demanded access to natural resources and space for new ar- rivals as annual immigration approached its zenith in national history. All three land transactions came during an era of armed con- flict in Sioux Country that opened with the Grattan Affair of 1854 near Fort Laramie in present day Wyoming and closed at the death of Sitting Bull and the tragedy at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1890. Given this situation, tribal representatives acceded to de- mands for land cession under some duress if not a threat of at- tack during intermittent war. In response to demands from a burgeoning white population, federal representatives negotiated to confine Sioux people on reservations in order to open "surplus" areas for business development and agrarian settlement. Through discussions and negotiations leading t() the Treaty of 1858 and the Agreements of 1877 and 1889, spokesmen on both sides made hasty decisions. Their miscalculations later brought each transaction under the scrutiny of tribal representatives who entered claims against the United States with allegations of in- sufficient payment or "unconscionable" management by federal officials/' No Indian suit against the United States government has been more protracted or controversial than the "Black Hills claim" that grew out of the two agreements. Indeed, a Black Hills Coun- cil of tribal delegates initiated investigations into violations of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty by the Agreement of 1877 as early as the year 1887. Within a quarter century, all reservation groups mentioned above, plus the Santee Sioux in Nebraska, the Arapa- hos of Wyoming, and the Tongue River Indians of Montana, placed delegations on a council to demand compensation from federal officials."^ (In the centennial year of South Dakota, the western Sioux have yet to accept the recent award of $108 million, plus interest accrued, from the United States as additional payment,) At issue in the claim regarding the 1877 Agreement was the vio- lation of Article 12 in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, which re- 5. A summary of the claims process in the history of one tribe appears in ibid pp. 125-42. 6. "Resolution," 13 Nov. 1911, Councils of Crow Creek and Lower Brule Files; Philip Wells et al. to the ConimÍH.sioner of Indian Affairs (hereafter CIA), 20 Dec. 1913; and Alfred C. Smith to CIA, 14 Feb. 1914, all in Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Record Croup 75 {hereafter RG 75), Federal Archives and Records Center (hereafler FARC), Kan.sas City, Mo. (hereafter KC). Copyright © 1989 by the South Dakota State Historical Society. All Rights Reserved. 60 South Dakota History quired the assent of three-fourths of the adult males in all of the signatory tribes for any land cession in the Great Sioux Reserva- tion. In the climate of war that prevailed after the Battle of the Little Bighorn, this stipulation had heen ignored during the negoti- ation of the 1877 Agreement with chiefs and headmen. Thinking that the same procedure could be used again, federal officials made plans to approach the chiefs and headmen in 1882 ahout an additional cession of land. The Great Dakota Boom that began in 1878 brought an unprecedented rush of .settlers into southeast- ern Dakota Territory. Local politicians wanted to secure an addi- tional eleven million acres to accommodate new arrivals and business development west of the Missouri River.'^ Former territorial governor Newton Edmunds led a commission to the Crow Creek Agency as well as to ageticies west of the Mis- souri River and asked Yanktonai and Teton chiefs and headmen for an additional cession. His plans for negotiation stirred deep resentment among Indians and brought various reactions from ter- ritorial officials and Indian agents. Most politicians representing white constituents in .southern Dakota insisted that the opening of more land for settlement, by whatever means necessary, was essential to territorial development as preparation for statehood, and they expressed no concern about the consequence for Indi- ans. Only Governor Nehemiah G. Ordway, who was at odds with most other territorial leaders anyway, called foul in correspond- ence with the Indian commissioner. Ordway seemed to fear suffer- ing among Sioux people as much as armed resistance if such a land sale were accomplished without precaution. To avoid difficulty in the aftermath, he argued, federal officials should at least open farms and ranches on which able-bodied Indians could work "for a small weekly allowance" and see that "the old and trifling ones are cared for, under some proper system."" United States personnel assigned to western Sioux tribes wrote their superiors in Washington, D.C., expressing opinions about ad- 7, .John Rau, '"Polilical Leadership in Dakota Tt'rrilory; Newton Edmunds as Governor, Peace Ci) m missioner, and Elder Statesman," in South Dakula Leaders: From Piei're Choutetm, Jr., to Oscur Howe, ed. Herbert T. Hoover and Larry J, Zimmerman (Vermillion: University of South Dakota Press, I9S9), p. 24; T. A. Bland to White Ghost, I./)wer Brule Agency, 17 Nov.