A concise and engrossing account of the Lakota and the battle to regain their homeland.
The Lakota Indians made their home in the majestic Black Hills mountain range during the last millennium, drawing on the hills’ endless bounty for physical and spiritual sustenance. Yet the arrival of white settlers brought the Lakotas into inexorable conflict with the changing world, at a time when their tribe would produce some of the most famous Native Americans in history, including Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, and Crazy Horse. Jeffrey Ostler’s powerful history of the Lakotas’ struggle captures the heart of a people whose deep relationship with their homeland would compel them to fight for it against overwhelming odds, on battlefields as varied as the Little Bighorn and the chambers of U.S. Supreme Court.
About The Lakotas and the Black Hills
The story of the Lakota Sioux’s loss of their spiritual homelands and their remarkable legal battle to regain it
The Lakota Indians counted among their number some of the most famous Native Americans, including Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. Their homeland was in the magnificent Black Hills in South Dakota, where they found plentiful game and held religious ceremonies at charged locations like Devil’s Tower. Bullied by settlers and the U. S. Army, they refused to relinquish the land without a fight, most famously bringing down Custer at Little Bighorn. In 1873, though, on the brink of starvation, the Lakotas surrendered the Hills.
But the story does not end there. Over the next hundred years, the Lakotas waged a remarkable campaign to recover the Black Hills, this time using the weapons of the law. In The Lakotas and the Black Hills, the latest addition to the Penguin Library of American Indian History, Jeffrey Ostler moves with ease from battlefields to reservations to the Supreme Court, capturing the enduring spiritual strength that bore the Lakotas through the worst times and kept alive the dream of reclaiming their cherished homeland.
About Jeffrey Ostler
Jeffrey Ostler is the Beekman Professor of Northwest and Pacific History at the University of Oregon. He is a specialist in the history of the American West, with a heavy focus on the history of American Indians. Ostler is the author… More about Jeffrey Ostler
About Jeffrey Ostler
Jeffrey Ostler is the Beekman Professor of Northwest and Pacific History at the University of Oregon. He is a specialist in the history of the American West, with a heavy focus on the history of American Indians. Ostler is the author… More about Jeffrey Ostler
