Was the area under Lakota and Tsisitas (Cheyenne) control at all? Crow Agency is right there.
If I remember correctly, the Crow were pushed out of the area around 1840 or so. Lakota were in the bighorns in the 1860s. Skirtmishes and raids between the two groups likely continued.
The Crow might have got the reservation area in exchange for cooperation with U.S. gvtmnt. Psa Toka scouts with Custer. I don't know the answer.
The Cheyenne reservation is very close also.
I believe I recall reading that the Lakotas moved west in numbers in response to the power vacuum created by the devastating smallpox epidemic of 1837 that effectively took out the Arikara, Mandans and Blackfeet especially, leaving few survivors.
Yes. Smallpox wiped out the Mandan. Strangely, The Lakota were more closely related to the Crow than their Algonquin allies, the Cheyenne and Arapahoe. The latter three pushed west from MN and north and east by other tribes.
My memory let me down. The Crow were given/ assigned the Powder River and east yellowstone country in the early 1850s Laramie treaty. The Lakota and Cheyenne were assigned areas to the east. The current Crow agency is quite a way east of the original agency. Red Cloud changed the dynamics of the Black Hills and west in the 1860s. To the west of the little BH, the Crow fought the Lakota allies to a standstill.
Point I was trying to make was the Custer fight was on land the US gvnent might have been in the process of planning to take from their Crow allies. Did the Lakotah view the land as disputed rather than Lakotah? Even Red Cloud and his allies?
Hard spinning nomads down.
