The Black Hills had been lost and so had the unceded hunting territories. Early summer of 1877 witnessed the forced removal of Cheyenne to Indian Territory in Oklahoma. The hostiles had promised upon their surrender that they would remain quietly at Red Cloud Agency. Crazy Horse grew morose and sullen at the agency, and made it clear to all who would listen that he would not hesitate to escape should the opportunity arise. However, as the Sioux began to realise that their situation was grim, that they had finally lost the war and their land for good, even members of Crazy Horse's own band failed to support their leader. The agency chiefs, including Red Cloud, considered Crazy Horse to be a trouble-maker, and agreed, in September 1877, to work with the troops to arrest him.
Crazy Horse did flee the agency, but was caught by agency Sioux who turned him over to the military. In the ensuing tussle between the young warrior, other leaders of the Crazy Horse band and members of the military, Crazy Horse was stabbed and killed. To this day it is unclear as to who killed him. There are those who say it was a military man, there are others who say it was an agency Sioux.
The US was attempting to relocate the Sioux east to the Missouri River. Red Cloud, Spotted Tail, and other agency leaders went to Washington to seek a compromise with President Hayes. Hayes promised that if their people wintered at the Missouri then in the spring they would be able to choose any location on the now-much diminished Great Sioux Reservation that suited them, and have their agencies relocated there. In 1878, the Oglala finally settled at Pine Ridge Agency and the Brulé at Rosebud Agency, where they have both remained ever since.
The 1887 Dawes Act gave Indians the right to individually own and farm allotments of reservation land. All surplus lands were then sold and opened up to white settlement. By the late 19th century, the Sioux were isolated to small, worthless pockets of land within the ever-shrinking Great Sioux Reservation. Agencies had been created within the Reservation: Pine Ridge, Rosebud, Lower Brule, Crow Creek, Cheyenne River, and Standing Rock. The Sioux land base was further reduced with the establishment of separate reservations, when the Sioux signed an agreement with the US in 1889 to break up the Great Sioux Reservation. These agencies then became individual reservations to which the Sioux were confined, and the Great Sioux Reservation was broken up once and for all.
© 2002 by Bornali HalderSite, Page and Article © Copyright 2002 by Bornali Halder