Black Hills Betrayal

The government guaranteed Paha Sapa, the Black Hills, to the Lakota people through
the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. Six years later, the government sent Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and a thousand-man expedition into the Black Hills. Custer took along prospectors who discovered gold there, setting off a stampede ending with the Lakotas’ loss of the Black Hills. Terry Mort’s Thieves’ Road: The Black Hills Betrayal and Custer’s Path to Little Big Horn recounts how the Lakotas were guaranteed possession of the hills but the government took them away through the expedition that ultimately resulted in Custer’s death and the deaths of members of the 7th Cavalry at the Little Big Horn. Thieves’ Road is an excellent addition to every Western history buff’s library.

— Bill Markley, author of Deadwood Dead Men