The Fort Laramie Treaty

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These lands were taken from them in spite of the Fort Laramie treaty signed in 1851 and agreed to by both the Lakota and the U.S. government in which the U.S. government formally recognized Lakota ownership of the Black Hills and the surrounding area as well as allocating to the Sioux almost all of the present states of South Dakota and Nebraska, along with portions of North Dakota, Kansas, Montana, and Wyoming. This treaty was shortly broken by the U.S. upon the discovery of gold and silver in the region, thereby prompting the U.S. government to construct a series of forts along what became known as the Bozeman Trail in order to secure passage through Sioux territory to the nearby mines (Churchill, 1990).