Kul Wicasa Oyate

Kul Wicasa Oyate. Lower Brule Sioux Tribe. This place of memory honors the ancestors, people and lands of the Kui Wicasa Oyate. We are related families of the Sicangu (burnt thigh) band, people to the Tetonwan (Lakota) nation, dwellers on the plains. Long ago, we lived among rivers and lakes in the prairies east of the Mni Sose (Missouri River). Then a great change came to pass. A winter count of a Sicangu man, Wapostangi (Brown Hat), pictures a horse for the first time around the year 1709. When we got these horses, we could follow the great herds of titania (buffalo) wherever they went across their grasslands. What once took weeks of travel took days. By the mid-1800s, Lakota territory extended north along the Missouri to the Heart River, south to the Platte River, west past the Paha Sapa (Black Hills) to the Powder River in Yellowstone country. and beyond. , Our ancestors favored the valleys and bottomlands along the Missouri. This inspired our name - Kul (lower) Wicasa (people). In recent memory, our homes were near the mouth of the Makizita Wakpa (White River), which flows eastward from the Black Hills, and empties into the Missouri a few miles downstream. Living by the Missouri, we were always among other tribes, and travelers. Mandan and Arikara bands once lived in earthlodge villages on the terraces, overlooking their gardens of corn and other crops. By the time French traders appeared in the late 1700s, epidemics of European diseases had forced these famers to move far upstream. The traders called us the Brùlées (burnt) after our Sicangu name. Some of them married into the Tribe and settled down here, and many of our people carry on their family names. , In 1804, a small boat passed by our homes and changed life forever. It was captained by soldiers named Lewis and Clark. They belonged to a country called the United States, and they said they wanted only friendship. In 1815, at a crossing on the lower Missouri River, Lakota leaders signed a peace treaty with this country, sealing the friendship. Our leaders soon learned, however. that these newcomers had no intention of respecting our homeland. Lewis and Clark traveled up the Missouri because the United States had purchased it from France - as if our people and lands did not exist. Then, in 1825, when Lakota, Yankton, and Yanktonai leaders placed their marks on the next treaty, at Fort Lookout, on the southern boundary of our current Reservation, they had to agree that "they reside within the territorial limits of the United States, acknowledge their supremacy, and claim their protection". Within 20 years, U.S. soldiers, traders and settlers invaded our country with overwhelming power, technologies, and resources, determined to take it over. , , The taking of Lower Brule lands began in 1851 with a treaty at Fort Laramie. On this piece of paper, our leaders had to agree that Lakota territories has specific boundaries, something we could not even imagine. This still did not satisfy the United States. Through treaties in 1865, with our Kul Wicasa Oyate, and in 1868, with all Lakota, the government forced us into even smaller areas in our homelands. Many times, our people rose up to fight for our freedom. Then, in 1876, Lakota, Cheyenne and other Plains warriors defeated General Custer's battalion of the U.S. Army 7th Cavalry at Greasy Grass (Battle of the Little Bighorn), and the U.S. fought back by takin away our sacred Black Hills. With this illegal act, they broke the 1868 treaty, which had agreed on a Sioux Reservation for the Lakota (modern-day South Dakota west of the Missouri River), and then, in 1889, they threw the treaty out completely. They divided our Lakota nation into small reservations for each Tribe and opened the rest of the land to settlers. It was clear they intended to destroy our way of life. , , At that time, our families lived above and below the the mouth of the White River, near the Lower Brule Agency at the site of present-day Oacoma. Because the U.S. had long planned to let a railroad cross there, they told us we had to move north of Fort Lookout, where the Missouri makes a huge bend around a long chain of hills. Our people fought bitterly to stay where we had lived for centuries, but after 10 years of struggle, and the loss of many families who left us to join our Sicangu relatives in the uplands around Rosebud Creek, we moved to a terrace below this Big Bend, next to a new Lower Brule Agency . , , For more than 50 years after this, we spread up and down the valley, building homes in the bottomland at places we name Fort George, LaRoche Bottom, Cedar Creek, Iron Nation, Little Bend, and Fort Hale. Life was hard, but often good. While our land base was small and the buffalo were gone, be were still Lakota, and we still had the river. Then, in 1944, the US government decided to dam the Missouri and flood our lands to help farmers avoid floods far downstream. When the second of two reservoirs, Lake Sharpe, reached its official level in 1964, it drowned our beautiful valley and everything in it. They set up a new Lower Brule, but in place of river meadows we lived on a dry clay grassland above the reserver. They built new houses, but all we wanted was our old life. Still, our elders faced these harsh changes with courage and determination, inspired by the wisdom of their elders, our Lakota beliefs and values, and the strength of our traditions. , Now, as you read this history, please honor our Kul Wicasa Oyate and our Lakota ways, past, present and future. Once, it you looked to the east from this place, you could see our old town in patches of meadow along a shining river, split into ribbons by sandbars and islands, with forest of cottonwoods. It is still there, under the water - houses, a store and post office, churches. graveyards and dance grounds. As our elders' homes still survive in the water that brings us life, and we cherish memories of our old day, we will continue to thrive, hold our people close, and share a good future together.