The new treaty commission set up shop in 1875 on the White River-at a site that is now the border between Nebraska and South Dakota-not far from the agencies given to Red Cloud and Spotted Tail by treaty with the U.S. (Agencies were parts of a reservation assigned to an Indian chief and his tribe.)

In exchange for the Paha Sapa, the U.S. offered $6 million, a paltry sum compared to the $500 million in gold which the Black Hills eventually produced.

The Indians were not impressed by the sale price. The government had welched on less money in the past. To the Indians, the Black Hills were not a dollars-and-cents question. Even the tribes that readily signed treaties in the 1860s to obtain horses and blankets refused to sell the Black Hills.

Under the 1868 treaty, the U.S. could not buy the Black Hills unless "three-fourths of all adult male Indians" agreed to a new treaty. When Red Cloud and Spotted Tail pointed this out, the treaty commissioners explained that this applied only to friendly Indians, not to non-reservation Indians like Sitting Bull, who was considered to be at war with the United States.

Red Cloud and other Oglala Sioux eventually signed the treaty, primarily because they had no real choice. The cavalry had already assumed control of the Hills, although one non-signer-Sitting Bull-managed to inflict a horrible defeat on General George A. Custer.

Only 10 per cent of the Indians signed the agreement that gave the Black Hills to the U.S. Sitting Bull took his tribe to Canada and Crazy Horse, an Oglala, drifted about the Black Hills. In 1875, Crazy Horse's emissary. Little Big Man, told the treaty commission that Crazy Horse would never give the white man the Paha Sapa.

Two years later, Red Cloud and Spotted Tail-now reservation Indians-convinced Crazy Horse to accept his own reservation from the government. Crazy Horse did so reluctantly, aware that reservation life would deprive him of his leadership role.

While the reservation plans were being approved, some of Crazy Horse's braves sold themselves to the cavalry as scouts in a war against another tribe. Unable to stomach his people's disloyalty, Crazy Horse decided to return to the Powder River country, which was unalloted Indian land.

The cavalry caught up with him at Spotted Tail's agency, and arrested him. Under the grasp of his former comrade, Little Big Man (now an Indian policeman), Crazy Horse was led to the agency jail. When he refused to enter, a guard stabbed the Oglala chief with his bayonet, while Little Big Man held him captive. Crazy Horse was buried, ironically enough, at Wounded Knee.

The struggle between reservation Indians and non-reservation Indians, between Indians co-opted by the government and those who remain outside the government's grasp, erupted again at Wounded Knee. AIM asked for more than adherence to the 1868 Laramie treaty-it asked for the young Oglala to remember that Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull died at the hands of Indian police working for the U.S. government.