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Jeffrey Ostler. The Lakotas and the Black Hills: The Struggle for Sacred Ground. New York: Viking, 2010. 238 pp. Cloth, $22.95.
Peter A. Kindle, University of South Dakota
In 1980, more than a hundred years after the Native American tribe called the Lakotas were removed from the Black Hills, the US Supreme Court found that this land had been taken without just compensation. The case had been making its way through the courts for fifty-seven years, but rather than celebrate this victory and accept the offered compensation, the Lakotas rejected the payment. They want their land back. Jeffrey Ostler, professor of history at the University of Oregon, documents the intimate relationship between the Lakotas and the Black Hills with 320 endnotes and great attention to detail. Ostler avoids explicitly advocating for the return of the Black Hills to the Lakotas, but the attentive reader may find a tinge of this throughout the text. The first hint may be in the dedication, "For the next generation."
After a brief introduction highlighting the white man's stamp of ownership on the Black Hills - the faces carved into Mount Rushmore - Ostler begins by sketching the archaeological findings of human inhabitants of the Black Hills and relating the scant written evidence. The Lakotas were the westernmost Sioux tribe encountered by French explorers in the mid to late iooos. The Seven Council Fires that comprised the Lakotas (Oglalas, Brûlés, Minneconjous, Hunkpapas, Two Kettles, Shiasapas, and Sans Arcs) migrated westward to avoid conflict with other tribes or to tap richer hunting grounds. By the 17505 there is evidence that the Lakotas were established in villages along the Missouri River and hunted on the plains east of the Black Hills. By 1804 Lewis and Clark encountered Lakotas on their ascent of the Missouri and noted the conflict between the Lakotas and other...