The Mountain

The Black Hills were given to the Lakota in perpetuity by the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. Six years later, Custer's expedition confirmed gold. Ada finds the internal Army dispatch from the day the confirmation was sent — three weeks before the official report — and the legal memorandum circulated within the Grant administration in the intervening days. The memo is not about gold. It is a formal argument for how to void a ratified treaty.