On August 15, 1876, two months after the Battle of Little Big Horn, the US Congress passed a "starve or sell" bill providing that no further appropriations would be made for the subsistence of the Sioux Indian nation unless they gave up the Black Hills, where General George C. Custer had found gold in 1874.

Learn more about the US seizure of the Black Hills and Sioux legal efforts to have the land returned.