"THE DEFEAT OF THIS ACT WAS A VICTORY FOR INDOLENCE, BARBARISM, AND DEGRADATION AS AGAINST THE INFLUENCES OF THE FARM, THE WORK-SHOP, THE SCHOOLS, AND THE GOSPEL": 1888 REPORT RELATIVE TO OPENING A PART OF THE SIOUX RESERVATION

(UNITED STATES CONGRESS) (NATIVE AMERICANS). Letter from the Secretary of the Interior, Transmitting, in Response to Senate Resolution of December 13, 1888, Report Relative to Opening a Part of the Sioux Reservation. (Washington, DC: G.P.O., 1888). Octavo, disbound. Housed in a custom cloth clamshell box. $450.

First edition of this governmental report on the proposed further break up of the Great Sioux Reservation, with folding map printed in color and two wood-engraved plates, one printed in red and the other in blue, representing ballots for the Sioux—the red for rejecting the terms of the act and the blue one for accepting them, with blanks provided for the voting Sioux members' names.

The Great Sioux Reservation was established in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, and included all of present-day western South Dakota and Boyd County, Nebraska. In 1887, however, Congress passed the Dawes Act to break up communal Indian lands into individual family holdings. On March 2, 1889, Congress passed another act (just months before North Dakota and South Dakota were admitted into the Union on November 2, 1889), which partitioned the Great Sioux Reservation into five smaller reservations. The present report contains exchanges of the federal agents charged with garnering support and the responses of the Sioux leaders. The folding map printed in color depicts the boundaries of the "Proposed Diminished Sioux Indian Reservation in Dakota." This Senate report is from the Second Session of the 50th Congress, and is Ex. Doc. No. 17.

Spine with stitching and glue intact, remnants of paper and binding cloth; text clean, map and plates fine. A near-fine copy.