President Theodore Roosevelt Appoints a Native American to Survey the Great Standing Rock Reservation for US Takeover

The government takeover was the direct result of the Supreme Court decisions making Native American treaties subservient to subsequent actions of Congress

In 1874, General George A. Custer and his 7th Cavalry entered the Black Hills and discovered gold, starting a gold rush. The United States government wanted to buy or rent the Black Hills from the Lakota people, but led by their spiritual leader Sitting Bull, they refused to sell or rent their lands. The Great Sioux War of 1876 was a series of battles and negotiations that occurred between 1876 and 1877, with the Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne warring against the United States. Among the many battles and skirmishes of the war was the Battle of the Little Bighorn, often known as Custer’s Last Stand, the most storied of the many encounters between the U.S. Army and mounted Plains Native Americans.

This land also played an important role a decade or so later with Sitting Bull’s death. By the end of the 1890 growing season, a time of intense heat and low rainfall, it was clear that the land was unable to produce substantial agricultural yields. As the bison had been virtually eradicated a few years earlier, the Lakota were at risk of starvation. The people turned to the Ghost Dance ritual, which frightened the supervising agents of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Agent James McLaughlin asked for more troops. He claimed that spiritual leader Sitting Bull was the real leader of the movement.

Thousands of additional U.S. Army troops were deployed to the reservation. On December 15, 1890, Sitting Bull was arrested for failing to stop his people from practicing the Ghost Dance. During his arrest, one of Sitting Bull’s men, Catch the Bear, fired at Lieutenant “Bull Head”, striking his right side. He instantly wheeled and shot Sitting Bull, hitting him in the left side, and both men subsequently died.

In 1903, Lone Wolf, on behalf of the Kiowa tribe of which he was a member, sued to stop allotment on the Kiowa-Commanche-Apache reservation in Oklahoma. The justices of the Supreme Court heard the case. They decided that the powers of Congress were superior to the terms of the treaties that had been signed years earlier. This decision meant that if Congress decided to make a change to any reservation, it had the power to do so. Even though this decision was made in the case of the Kiowas, it applied to all reservations.

McLaughlin suggested that the Lakotas and Yanktonais of Standing Rock allow Congress to open much of the western portion of the reservation in both North and South Dakota. He also told the council that if they did not agree, Congress might take more land.

The council met and decided to give up 29 townships (668,160 acres). This was about one-half of what Congress wanted.

One successful Lakota student from Standing Rock, Joseph Archambault, left the reservation to study in English in 1881 and studied for three years, related later his granddaughter, JoAllyn Archambault, the program director for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. Once he returned to the reservation, he worked for his father on the family cattle ranch and later became a clerk and translator for Sitting Bull, she explains.

In 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Archambault as Agent to the Lakota tribe there and asked him to appraise the land for US takeover.

Document signed, Washington, February 26, 1909, naming Joseph Archambault, as “representative of the Standing Rock Tribe of Indians,” and appointing him a “commissioner to inspect, appraise, and value lands in the Standing Rock Indian reservation in South Dakota and North Dakota, as prodded by Act of Congress approved May 29 1908, Pamphlet Laws, Part 1, p. 460, with salary of ten dollars per day while actually employed and actual necessary traveling expenses, including sleeping-car fare and substance.”