Prairie Man: The Struggle Between Sitting Bull and Indian Agent James Mclaughlin, Norma E. Matteoni, c. 2015.

Prairie Man: The Struggle Between Sitting Bull and Indian Agent James Mclaughlin, Norma E. Matteoni, c. 2015.

• should be on recommended / required reading book like for high school students

Prairie Man: The Struggle Between Sitting Bull and Indian Agent James Mclaughlin, Norma E. Matteoni, c. 2015.

Matteoni: longtime student of this subject, particularly, Sitting Bull; a legal scholar and a practicing lawyer. Has written a two-volume treatise on the Law of Eminent Domain in California. 

Matteoni, his home, apparently, is in Santa Clara county, California.

The Great Sioux Reservation, 1868 - 1889, was essentially the entire west one-half of South Dakota with a tiny toehold in south-central North Dakota.

When one read's the author's preface, it is amazing (and almost "criminal") that Kathlene DuVal did not mention Sitting Bull even once in her 2024 book, Native Nations. Link here. Link here. Link here.

I'm not sure how much note-taking I will take on this book. I may just read it for pleasure.

Having just read the first chapter, I would say that this author, Norman E. Matteoni, does a much better job of interpreting exactly what happened between the whites and the Native Americans at this time in history and won't attribute any of it to "woke" culture and climate change, as Kathleen DuVal does in her book. 

After reading that first chapter, it's hard not to read / interpret this story as one of genocide similar (unfortunately) to many other such stories of genocide perpetrated on groups that could not protect themselves.  

Lakota word for bison: Pte (p. 6).

Northern plains: Teton Sioux.

The history of the Teton Sioux, p. 7.

French traders first mentioned them in mid-1860s -- time of the Civil War -- Great Lakes area.

Sioux is shorthand for what the Ojibwa (Chippewa) enemies: called these tribes: Nadowesioux or  Nadouesou -- the shorthand, "Sioux."

They called themselves "friends" or "allies": Dakota, Nakota, Lakota.

Lakota division made up seven subgroups or bands, known as "seven council fires," to include: Oglala, Yanktonai, Miniconjou, and Hunkpapa.

The Sioux moved or were forced to move from woodlands of the north to northern plains to the (south)west.

Long plain of grasslands. They were soon known as Teton Sioux, from "Titonwan," said to mean "tolive where they can see" or "dwellers on the prairie."  

Multitudesof buffalo wherever they could see.

Then the acquisition of the horse form the southwest.

Produced a second shift in way of life.

The Teton Sioux made enemies of the Crow, Kowa, Shoshone, and Assiniboiine who shared in these lands.

Teton Sioux took the Black Hills away from the Crow.

Oregon Trail -- p. 8.

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Handwritten Notes Starting Chapter 5 Need To Be Transcribed

The chiefs
The generals
The politicians
The Indian agents

The treaty: the Laramie Treaty

The Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868): link here. Three years after US Civil War.

US transcontinental railroad, first: built between 1863 and 1869.

Between US and Lakota, Dakota, Arapaho nations.

The Treaty of Fort Laramie (also the Sioux Treaty of 1868) is an agreement between the United States and the Oglala, Miniconjou, and Brulé bands of Lakota people, Yanktonai Dakota, and Arapaho Nation, following the failure of the first Fort Laramie treaty, signed in 1851.

The treaty is divided into 17 articles. It established the Great Sioux Reservation including ownership of the Black Hills, and set aside additional lands as "unceded Indian territory" in the areas of South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, and possibly Montana.

It established that the US government would hold authority to punish not only white settlers who committed crimes against the tribes but also tribe members who committed crimes and were to be delivered to the government, rather than to face charges in tribal courts.

It stipulated that the government would abandon forts along the Bozeman Trail and included a number of provisions designed to encourage a transition to farming and to move the tribes "closer to the white man's way of life."

The treaty protected specified rights of third parties not partaking in the negotiations and effectively ended Red Cloud's War. That provision did not include the Ponca, who were not a party to the treaty and so had no opportunity to object when the American treaty negotiators “inadvertently” broke a separate treaty with the Ponca by unlawfully selling the entirety of the Ponca Reservation to the Lakota, pursuant to Article II of this treaty.

The United States never intervened to return the Ponca land. Instead, the Lakota claimed the Ponca land as their own and set about attacking and demanding tribute from the Ponca until 1876, when US President Ulysses S. Grant chose to resolve the situation by unilaterally ordering the Ponca removed to the Indian Territory. The removal, known as the Ponca Trail of Tears, was carried out by force the following year and resulted in over 200 deaths.

The treaty was negotiated by members of the government-appointed Indian Peace Commission and signed between April and November 1868 at and near Fort Laramie, in the Wyoming Territory, with the final signatories being Red Cloud himself and others who accompanied him. Animosities over the agreement arose quickly, with open war breaking out again in 1876, and in 1877 the US government unilaterally annexed native land protected under the treaty.

The treaty formed the basis of the 1980 Supreme Court case, United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, in which the court ruled that tribal lands covered under the treaty had been taken illegally by the US government, and the tribe was owed compensation plus interest. As of 2018 this amounted to more than $1 billion. The Sioux refused the payment, having demanded instead the return of their land which wouldn't be possible to contest if the monetary compensation was accepted. 

Could one say the "legal relationship" between Indian nations living on all land drained by the Missouri River (west of Mississippi, north of Kansas to South Dakota (North Dakota?) and to Wyoming / Montana) began with the Laramie Treaty of 1868. Election of 1868, US Grant won the presidency, so the president at the time the treaty was being negotiated / signed was Andrew Johnson. 

The first Laramie Treat, 1851:

No land covered by the treaty was claimed by the US at the time of signing. The five “respective territories” of the participating tribes – Sioux (1); Arapaho (1); and Cheyenne (1); Crow (1); and,  Assiniboine, Arikara, Hidatsa and Mandan (1) – were defined. North of the Sioux, the Arikara, Hidatsa and Mandan held a joint territory. The territory of the Crows extended westward from that of their traditional enemies  in the Sioux tribe. The Powder River divided the two lands.

When the Senate reduced the annuity to 10 years from originally 50, all tribes except the Crow accepted the cut. Nevertheless, the treaty was recognized as being in force.