mooney] DEVELOPMENT OF THE SIOUX TROUBLE 825 



cows, physicians, farmers, teachers, and other good things were prom- 

 ised (hem, and they agreed to allow railroad routes to be surveyed and 

 built and military posts to be established in their territory and neigh- 

 borhood. At one stroke they were reduced from a free nation to depend- 

 ent wards of the government. It was stipulated also that they should 

 be allowed to hunt within their old range, outside the limits of the 

 reservation, so long as the buffalo abounded — a proviso which, to the 

 Indians, must have meant forever. 



The reservation thus established was an immense one, and would 

 have been ample tor all the Sioux while being gradually educated 

 tow aid civilization, could the buffalo have remained and the white man 

 kept away. But the times were changing. The building of the rail- 

 roads brought into the plains swarms <d' hunters and emigrants, who 

 began to exterminate the buffalo at such a rate (hat in a lew years the 

 Sioux, w ith all the other hunting tribes of the plains, realized that their 

 food supply was rapidly going. Then gold was discovered in the Black 

 hills, within the reservation, and at once thousands of miners and 

 other thousands of lawless desperadoes rushed into (he country in defi- 

 ance of the protests of the Indians and the pledges of the government, 

 and the Siou\ saw their last remaining hunting ground taken from 

 them. The result was the Custer war and massacre, and a new agree- 

 ment in LS76 by which the Sioux were shorn of one third of their guar- 

 anteed reservation, including the Black hills, and this led to deep and 

 widespread dissatisfaction throughout the tribe. The conservatives 

 brooded over the past and planned opposition to further changes 

 which they felt themselves unable to meet. The progressives felt that 

 the while man's promises meant nothing. 



On this point Commissioner Morgan says, in his statement of the 

 causes of the outbreak : 



Prior to tin' agreement of 1876 buffalo and deer were the main .support of the 

 .Sioux. Food, tents, bedding were the direct outcome of hunting, and with furs and 

 pills as articles of barter or exchange ii was easy for the Sioux to procure whatei er 

 constituted for them tin- necessaries, the comforts, or even the luxuries of life. 

 Within eight years from the agreemenl of 1876 the buffalo had gone and the Sions 

 had left to them alkali la nil ami government rations. It is hard to overestimate the 

 magnitude of the calamity, as tiny view ed it. which happened to these people by the 

 sudden disappearance of the buffalo and the large diminution in the numbers of deer 

 anil other wild animals. Suddenly, almost without warning, they were expected at 

 once ami without previous training to settle down to the pursuits of agriculture in a 



la ml largely unfitted tor such use. The freedom of the chase was to 1 ^changed for 



the idleness i,t' the eamp. 'the boundless ranee was to lie abandoned for the circum- 

 scribed reservation, ami abundance of plenty to he supplanted bj limited and decreas 

 ing government subsistence and supplies. Under these circumstances it is not in 

 human nature not to be discontented ami restless, even turbulent anil violent. 

 (Comr., ■ 



It took our own Aryan ancestors untold centuries to develop from 

 savagery into civilization. "Was it reasonable to expect that the Sioux 

 could do the same in fourteen years! 



