CHAPTER XIX
PERMANENT SETTLEMENT
In April, 1858, the Yankton Sioux Indians, who claimed all the land between the Big Sioux and Missouri rivers, as far north as Pierre and Lake Kampeska, made a treaty with the whites, by which they gave up all their lands except four hundred thousand acres in what is now Charles Mix County. This treaty, made by the head men of the Yanktons, was not very popular with the rank and file of the tribe. Struck by the Ree, the boy who was born when Lewis and Clark were at Yankton in 1804, and whom Captain Lewis clothed in the American flag, stood firmly for the treaty, but Smutty Bear, an older man, was strongly opposed to it, and the Yanktons were divided into two parties who were almost at the point of civil war over its ratification.
The time came on the 10th of July, 1859, when the government expected the Yanktons to give up their lands and remove to the reservation. The entire tribe was assembled at Yankton and were in most earnest deliberation over the treaty. Struck by the Ree, with his party, favored going at once to the new home, but old Smutty Bear harangued his people about the graves of their kindred and the hunting grounds of their fathers, and his
