This is a section of an article taken from the Cornel Law School website. As it is very jargon-y, I have edited it down, a lot. Good info. For the whole article, look here.
1800′s: At the outset of the 19th century, the Yankton Sioux Tribe held exclusive dominion over 13 million acres of land (20,312 square miles) between the Des Moines and Missouri rivers, near the boundary that currently divides North and South Dakota.
In 1858, the Tribe ceded “all the lands now owned, possessed, or claimed by them, wherever situated, except four hundred thousand acres thereof… In consideration for the cession of lands and release of claims, the United States pledged to protect the Yankton Tribe in their “quiet and peaceable possession” of this reservation and agreed that “[n]o white person,” with narrow exceptions, would “be permitted to reside or make any settlement upon any part of the [reservation].”
1862: When war broke out between the United States and the Sioux Nation in 1862, the Yankton Tribe alone sided with the Federal Government, a decision that isolated it from the rest of the Sioux Federation and caused severe inner turmoil as well. The Tribe’s difficulties coincided with a period of rapid growth in the United States’ population, increasing westward migration, and ensuing demands from non-Indians to open Indian holdings throughout the Western States to settlement.
1887: The Dawes Act was passed, which permitted the Federal Government to allot tracts of tribal land to individual Indians and, with tribal consent, to open the remaining holdings to non-Indian settlement. Within a generation or two, it was thought, the tribes would dissolve, their reservations would disappear, and individual Indians would be absorbed into the larger community of white settlers.
By 1890, the allotting agent had apportioned 167,325 acres of reservation land, 95,000 additional acres were subsequently allotted in 1891, and a small amount of acreage was reserved for government and religious purposes. The surplus amounted to approximately 168,000 acres of unallotted lands.
In 1892, the Secretary of the Interior dispatched a three-member Yankton Indian Commission to Greenwood, South Dakota, to negotiate for the acquisition of these surplus lands. When the Commissioners arrived on the reservation in October 1892, they informed the Tribe that they had been sent by the “Great Father” to discuss the cession of “this land that [members of the Tribe] hold in common,” and they abruptly encountered opposition to the sale from traditionalist tribal leaders. In the lengthy negotiations that followed, members of the Tribe raised concerns about the suggested price per acre, the preservation of their annuities under the 1858 Treaty, and other outstanding claims against the United States, but they did not discuss the future boundaries of the reservation. Once the Commissioners garnered a measure of support for the sale of the unallotted lands, they submitted a proposed agreement to the Tribe.
The Tribe would “cede, sell, relinquish, and convey to the United States” all of the unallotted lands on the reservation and the United States agreed to compensate the Tribe in a single paymen
Overlooking Missori River: Just outside Lake Andes, SD
t of $600,000, which amounted to $3.60 per acre and all the signatories and adult male members of the Tribe would receive a 20-dollar gold piece to commemorate the agreement.
President Cleveland issued a proclamation opening the ceded lands to settlement as of May 21, 1895, and non-Indians rapidly acquired them. By the turn of the century, 90 percent of the unallotted tracts had been settled. A majority of the individual allotments granted to members of the Tribe also were subsequently conveyed in fee by the members to non-Indians.
Today, the total Indian holdings in the region consist of approximately 30,000 acres of allotted land and 6,000 acres of tribal land. (combining the two, that is 36,00 acres, or 56.25 square miles)
