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When the government made this agreement (I suppose I should say treaty; treaty a nasty word with us because of the 800 treaties made with the Indians throughout the United States, some were very minimal, and some of them were huge, like the one I’m talking about. Over 800 of them, and the U.S. never lived up to one; not a single one). So anyway, they broke the treaty, and so therefore, that’s when the Indians decided: they’re not going to do a darn thing, so we might as well try to defend ourselves. So that’s how this began. Here’s a real trick: when they took that land and they told the Indians back then that they would pay them annuities on a yearly basis, they put the money for payments in the U.S. Treasury. And the few payments that they did make (I think it was two – probably three annuities were paid) – but here’s the catch: the annuity payments that were in the U.S. Treasury, the interest that accumulated from that money that was sitting there, they paid as the annuity. So they never actually paid for the land; never paid a cent for all this vast territory. It was the interest money that accrued. That’s history, but you don’t hear that, and it’s not in history books, certainly.
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Dean Blue. "." https://www3.mnhs.org/usdakotawar/stories/contributors/dean-blue/1006
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