A FAR-SEEING CONSIDERATION—THAT FUTURE LEGALITIES might eventually favor the red man—promped the government to eventually try to simply buy back the Black Hills. There was yet another conference, but Crazy Horse spiked it immediately by sending an emissary to say that he would kill anybody who sold even an acre of the Black Hills. The emissary was Little Big Man, the same who would hold Crazy Horse’s arms as he was being bayoneted in Fort Robinson. The Little Big Man of Thomas Berger’s novel was someone else.

This sale did not proceed. A second effort in 1876 ended inconclusively. At the time the Battle of the Little Bighorn occurred the status of the Black Hills was very much in dispute.

The American masters and commanders were ruthless men. Grant, Sheridan, Sherman, and the rest had seen Shiloh, Vicksburg, Gettysburg, and the Wilderness. All had witnessed great carnage, but they were sensitive to the fact that solemnly making a treaty and reneging on it five years later smacked of dishonorable behavior.

Grant and his friends eventually adopted a see-no-evil speak-no-evil policy which essentially ignored the problem of the treaty. The public debate was extensive, and somewhat one-sided: most Americans emphatically favored taking back the Black Hills and digging out that gold. And if the Sioux didn’t like it, they could lump it.

Only a few foresaw the day when the Sioux would be educated people who could hire pricy lawyers to represent them.

Clarity, if not justice, was attained the next year, when the whites simply took back those famous hills.

As I mentioned earlier, the journalist Alex Shoumatoff reckoned that the United States had made 354 treaties and broken them all. It is possible to see the whole continent, from Point Barrow to the Golden Gate, as one big land grab. Wavering over the Black Hills and then taking them is the type of process that had occurred many times—always with the same result.

Throughout 1875 travel by whites in the Black Hills was an extremely chancy thing. The government took a hands-off policy: anyone who wanted to head into those hills was taking a big chance, but the discoveries at first were rich enough to keep the miners coming. The extralegal process by which we took back the Black Hills was clearly a disgrace.

Tales of miners coming in with coffeepots full of gold were mostly false but still widely publicized.

Custer went home to Libbie a national hero again. What Libbie felt about it is not known. In any case he wasn’t home for long.