Why did the black hills become a battleground?

Answer 1

The Black Hills were a battleground long before any white people turned up. They were the scene of constant fighting between many of the Plains tribes and had been in the lands occupied at different times by the Cheyenne, Arikara, Crows, Kiowa and the Pawnee tribes before the Lakota took over the area by force. Fighting betwen the Lakota and Kiowa was extremely savage in the fight for possession of the Black Hills.

Why was this conflict so fierce? The native American view was the area was sacred and special in a religious way; a more pragmatic view is that the area offered excellent hunting, Natural Resources in the form of pines that were used for tipi poles, water sources, a variety of types of rock and stone, good grazing for horses and wildlife, a large and diverse population of grazing animals, mountain lions and small mammals and other natural resources.

It is ironic that in exactly the same way that the Lakota drove out the Kiowa and other tribes by force to benefit from the resources of the area, white Americans later drove out the Lakota by military force in order to extract mineral resources, in particular gold.

Answer 2

The Black Hills were a battleground long before any white people turned up. They were the scene of constant fighting between many of the Plains tribes and had been in the lands occupied at different times by the Cheyenne, Arikara, Crows, Kiowa and the Pawnee tribes before the Lakota took over the area by force. Fighting betwen the Lakota and Kiowa was extremely savage in the struggle for possession of the Black Hills.

Why was this conflict so fierce? The native American view was the area was sacred and special in a religious way; a more pragmatic view is that the area offered excellent hunting, natural resources in the form of pines that were used for tipi poles, water sources, a variety of types of rock and stone, good grazing for horses and wildlife, a large and diverse population of grazing animals, mountain lions and small mammals and other natural resources.

It is ironic that in exactly the same way that the Lakota drove out the Kiowa and other tribes by force to benefit from the resources of the area, white Americans later drove out the Lakota by military force in order to extract mineral resources, in particular gold.