Contact with White Settlers

"The Plains way of life came under pressure from the growing traffic of traders and emigrants across the continent. As early as 1825, under the terms of a ‘friendship treaty' with the U.S., several Plains nations, including the Lakota and the Cheyenne, agreed to let wagon trains pass through their territory. The trail cut a barren strip across the middle of the hunting grounds, dividing the buffalo into two herds and splitting several tribes - among them the Cheyenne and the Arapaho - into ‘southern' and ‘northern' branches."

"In the Spring of 1874, General Custer and a party of 1,200 soldiers, scientists, and newspapermen set out to explore the Black Hills of South Dakota, where, reportedly, parties of illegal miners had found gold. The area, known to the Lakota as Paha Sapa, was the sacred heart of the Sioux universe, ‘the heart of everything that is'..."
(Wilson, 1998:264)