Black Hills — He Sapa, Heart of Everything That IsPlains Nations Mythology

The Black Hills — He Sapa in Lakota — are the sacred center of the Lakota universe. They are not merely important; they are 'the heart of everything that is.' In Lakota cosmology, the Black Hills are the place where the people emerged from the underground world, where the first ceremonies were taught, and where the most important vision quests take place. The hills are understood as a living body lying on the earth — specific peaks and formations correspond to parts of the body.

Bear Butte (Mato Paha), at the northeastern edge of the Black Hills, is one of the most sacred sites in Lakota and Cheyenne tradition. It is a laccolith — an igneous intrusion — rising 1,200 feet above the surrounding plains, and it is the site where the prophet Sweet Medicine received the Sacred Arrows of the Cheyenne and where Crazy Horse sought visions. Prayer cloths and tobacco ties festoon the mountain's slopes to this day.

The Lakota relationship to the Black Hills is not metaphorical or nostalgic. It is a living spiritual reality. The US Supreme Court ruled in 1980 (United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians) that the Black Hills were illegally taken from the Lakota in violation of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. The court awarded $105 million in compensation. The Lakota refused the money. They want the land back. The settlement fund, now worth over $1.3 billion with accrued interest, sits unclaimed in a US Treasury account — one of the most extraordinary acts of principled refusal in American history.

The Black Hills are an isolated mountain range rising from the Great Plains of western South Dakota and northeastern Wyoming. The highest point, Black Elk Peak (formerly Harney Peak), reaches 7,242 feet. The hills are covered in ponderosa pine forests — the dark appearance of the pine-covered slopes against the surrounding grassland gives the range its English name. The interior includes granite spires (the Needles), limestone caves (Wind Cave, Jewel Cave), and open meadows.

Mount Rushmore, carved into the granite of the Black Hills between 1927 and 1941, depicts four US presidents on what the Lakota consider sacred land. The Crazy Horse Memorial, begun in 1948 and still under construction, is an attempt to balance this with a monument to the Lakota leader who fought to defend the hills.

Jeffrey Ostler's 'The Lakotas and the Black Hills: The Struggle for Sacred Ground' (Viking, 2010) provides the most comprehensive scholarly account of the Lakota relationship to the Black Hills and the legal and political struggle over their return. Ostler documents how the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty guaranteed the Black Hills to the Lakota 'in perpetuity,' how the discovery of gold in 1874 (confirmed by Custer's expedition) led to illegal seizure, and how the legal case wound through the courts for over a century.

The 1980 Supreme Court decision acknowledged the taking was illegal and awarded compensation, but the Lakota's refusal of the money transformed the case from a legal dispute into a moral and spiritual statement. Lakota leaders have consistently argued that accepting money for the hills would be equivalent to selling their mother. The case remains unresolved. Legislation to return federal lands in the Black Hills has been introduced in Congress multiple times but has never advanced to a vote.