Human nature did not change with the adoption of the so-called peace policy. The government had constantly to be on guard against the dishonest agent, while improved facilities in communication increased the squatters' ability to intrude upon valuable lands. The Sioux treaty of 1868, whereby the United States abandoned the Powder River route and erected the great reserve in Dakota, west of the Missouri River, was scarcely dry before rumors of the discovery of gold in the Black Hills turned the eyes of prospectors thither.
Early in 1870 citizens of Cheyenne and the territory of Wyoming organized a mining and prospecting company that professed an intention to explore the Big Horn country in northern Wyoming, but was believed by the Sioux to contemplate a visit to the Black Hills within their reserve. The local Sioux agent remonstrated against this, and General C. C. Augur was sent to Cheyenne to confer with the leaders of the expedition. He found Wyoming in a state of irritation against the Sioux treaty, which left the Indians in control of their Powder River country--the best third of the territory. He sympathized with the frontiersmen, but finally was forced by orders from Washington to prevent the expedition from starting into the field. Four years later this deferred reconnoissance took place as an official expedition under General Custer, with "great excitement among the whole Sioux." The approach from the northeast of the Northern Pacific, which had reached a landing at Bismarck on the Missouri before the panic of 1873, still further increased the apprehension of the tribes that they were to be dispossessed. The Indian Commissioner, in the end of 1874, believed that no harm would come of the expedition since no great gold finds had been made, but the Montana historian was nearer the truth when he wrote: "The whole Sioux nation was successfully defied." It was a clear violation of the tribal right, and necessarily emboldened the frontiersmen to prospect on their own account.
[Illustration: POSITION OF RENO ON THE LITTLE BIG HORN
From a photograph made by Mr. W. R. Bowlin, of Chicago, and reproduced by his permission]
Still further to disquiet the Sioux, and to give countenance to the disgruntled warrior bands that resented the treaties already made, came the mismanagement of the Red Cloud agency. Professor O. C. Marsh, of Yale College, was stopped by Red Cloud, while on a geological visit to the Black Hills, in November, 1874, and was refused admission to the Indian lands until he agreed to convey to Washington samples of decayed flour and inferior rations which the Indian agent was issuing to the Oglala Sioux. With some time at his disposal, Professor Marsh proceeded to study the new problem thus brought to his notice, and accumulated a mass of evidence which seemed to him to prove the existence of big plots to defraud the government, and mismanagement extending even to the Secretary of the Interior. He published his charges in pamphlet form, and wrote letters of protest to the President, in which he maintained that the Indian officials were trying harder to suppress his evidence than to correct the grievances of the Sioux. He managed to stir up so much interest in the East that the Board of Indian Commissioners finally appointed a committee to investigate the affairs of the Red Cloud agency. The report of the committee in October, 1875, whitewashed many of the individuals attacked by Professor Marsh, and exonerated others of guilt at the expense of their intelligence, but revealed abuses in the Indian Office which might fully justify uneasiness among the Sioux.