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Sioux

An Indian nation spread across the southwestern Dakota Territory, western Nebraska, eastern Wyoming Territory and parts of the eastern Montana Territory.[1]

Named from the abbreviated form of the French term Nadouessioux, meaning "Northern Iroquoian."[1]

By the late 1860s, the encroachment of white emigrants and the U. S. Army into the Powder River country in the Wyoming Territory led to armed conflict for control of the region. To end the hostilities, the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie was signed, which ceded the lands of southwestern Dakota Territory to the Sioux, creating the Great Sioux Reservation.[1]

Though restricted from the reservation, white men often trespassed into the Sioux land, usually to take advantage of the rich, natural resources of the Black Hills, such as hunting for fur or prospecting for gold. The Sioux protected their lands aggressively, leading to continued conflict.[1]

When general George Armstrong Custer's Black Hills Expedition discovered gold, a stampede of fortune-seeking gold miners flooded into the area. The Sioux met the invasion with heightened hostilities, which led to further Sioux Wars and the U. S. government taking the Black Hills and other lands away from the Sioux, reneging the Treaty of Fort Laramie.[1]

Stage West: In July of 1875,[2] a band of Sioux warriors discovered Bret Maverick taking gold out of the Black Hills. They chased him across the Dakota prairies for two days, during which time Bret was forced to kill two of the band in self defense. Bret escaped the band[3] into Nebraska,[2] but the Sioux attacked a Tomah stagecoach, west-bound for Twin Bluffs, believing Bret was aboard. They killed the driver and passengers and burned the coach and bodies. The Sioux tracked Bret to the Packsaddle Station and demanded his surrender. Mart and Rip Fallon dressed the body of Sam Harris' mining partner Matson in Bret's clothing and threw it to the Indians. The Sioux headman, believing Matson's corpse to be Bret's, was appeased. The Sioux tied the body by the feet and dragged it away.[3]