Now and then we look back at history and consider some questions about liberty, aggression, and conflict in general.

Commonly we are taught that the AmerInd (“Native Americans” or “Indigenous People”) were people who were above all at one with nature and peaceful, able to ensure justice for all, and at liberty to live meaningful lives. Then, we are told, the colonizers, the conquerers came: first the Spanish and Portuguese, then the English and Spanish (and more). These colonizers, we are informed, not only committed genocide and robbed the peoples of the misnamed “New World” and destroyed their cultures, societies, languages, and economies.

Today, the LandBack movement demands that some land “stolen” from the various AmerInd tribes by the evil white people and their governments be returned. Starting with the vast lands of the Great Plains and Great Basin. It seems more and more people are demanding this. At the same time, the FedGov and State governments are kowtowing to demands that the tribes that once owned some lands are often given veto power over proposals for development and use of those lands: mining, pipelines, even flight paths, and viewsheds.

More and more people seem to be in favor of doing just that: they are deeply ashamed at how their ancestors (or some of them) mistreated, abused, stole from, and killed some of the ancestors of modern AmerInd (enrolled members of federally-recognized tribal nations).

But sometimes, people ask the right question, and can actually sit and ponder and accept that just maybe history should not be written by the losers any more than by the victors.

After all, myths created to counter other myths are still myths. We need the truth. Not to excuse what has been done, but to understand it and place it in the correct context.

Here is one such question:

Is it true that the Lakota tribe stole the Black Hills from the Cheyenne tribe?

Basically, yes.

The Lakota (Saone) record that a war party crossed the Missouri River in 1754 or 1755 and “discovered” the Black Hills (the Paha Sapa or He Sapa: Lakota name). At the time the Cheyenne (Tsis tsis’tas) lived in and around the Black Hills (which they called the Moʼȯhta-voʼhonáaeva). This discovery started a 20+ year war between the Lakota and the Cheyenne, finally won by the Lakota ending with two major battles in 1776 in which the Cheyenne were defeated, at Battle Mountain near Hot Springs, SD, and on Battle Creek, somewhere between Hermosa and Keystone, SD. The Cheyenne withdrew to the West of the Hills, into the Thunder and Powder River Basins of Wyomng. The treaty ceding the Black Hills to the Lakota led to an alliance between at least many bands of the two tribal nations, and let the Cheyenne come to Bear Butte (Noahvose to Cheyenne, Mato Paha to Lakota) annually for certain rituals, involving the Sacred Arrows given to Sweet Medicine at Noahvose by Maheo (God, the Creator).

The Lakota expanded their area of occupation west and surrounded the Black Hills, but shared the hunting grounds/land to the west with the Cheyenne, fighting against enemy Crow and Shoshone for more than a century. A century after the Lakota stole the Paha Sapa, and after several broken treaties, the United States Army defeated the Lakota (and Cheyenne) in 1876 and took the Black Hills from the Lakota. The Lakota (at that time) were confined to a reservation between the Black Hills and Missouri, which was later broken up into the modern five reservations of the Lakota in North and South Dakota.

The Cheyenne were deported to Oklahoma and put into a reservation with the southern band of their nation, until they broke out and escaped north in 1878. They were mostly recaptured and imprisoned briefly at Fort Robinson, Nebraska. Some were then able or allowed to go to southern Montana on the Power River (modern Lame Deer). But some escaped and hid out (at least many did) on what became the Rosebud Reservation (home of the Oyate Lakota Sichangu: Rosebud Sioux Tribe). The Oglala, on Pine Ridge Reservation, had the remaining land closest to the actual Black Hills, and do today. So, we know for certain that the Black Hills has been stolen twice by more powerful (or lucky) nations. And possibly before that, they were stolen (conquered/occupied) before. Some Lakota claim that they were in the Black Hills centuries earlier and were driven eastward all the way to the Appalachians and then gradually made their way back to the Black Hills. Colonialism is nothing new.

Of course, similar theft (conquest) took place for thousands of years around the globe: consider the history of modern France, from Basque and Belgiae to Celtic Gauls, Romans, then Vandals and Visigoths, and finally Franks. But others came in and stole parts of modern France, such as Normandy before the descendants of the Franks reconquered that area. The French then spread out to conquer Basques and Belgaie and what today we would call Swiss and Alsatian land, expanding to the Rhein River, and then partially having “their land” again stolen in part or whole, sometimes briefly. We see the same thing in Latin America (especially Mesoamerica), Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Russia and the Pacific.

In North America, there are records of the constant rise and fall of empires and confederacies of various tribal nations. One nation would conquer another, and either absorb them or completely destroy them: exactly as the Europeans and their descendants did to many other tribes. Sometimes the conquest and destruction of their enemies were the result of what we would today call environmental disasters: droughts earthquakes and massive blizzards. Sometimes it was overpopulation or disease. And as in the Old World, those with superior organization, technology, and ruthlessness usually won.

Something to remember when teaching or just talking to those who are promoting things like LandBack and reparations.