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Picture

AIGM President, Steve Melendez, and his children at the site of the Homestake Gold Mine. The mine is an open pit 1250 ft. 
deep and a half mile across. (Summer 2006)

The Homestake Gold Mine
By Steve Melendez


The Homestake Gold Mine, in Lead, South Dakota,  operated for 125 years and produced 41 
million troy ounces of gold(over $24 billion at today's gold prices of over $600 per ounce). In 
the summer of 1874, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer was sent into the Black Hills by Gen. 
Philip Sheridan to search for gold. This was in direct violation of the Treaty of Fort Laramie of 
1868. Today, there is a large photograph at the mine of Custer and his entourage entering 
the Black Hills. The caption information tells us that after gold was discovered, many miners 
came into the Black Hills in defiance of the army and the Indians but fails to mention that 
Custer’s army was violating the 1868 Treaty. Neither does the caption information remind 
visitors to the mine that article 6 of the U.S. Constitution calls a treaty the supreme law of the 
land.
Custer came into the Black Hills with 1,000 soldiers, over 100 covered wagons,  2 or 3 
gatling guns, a cannon, a 16 piece brass band mounted on white horses, and  two 
prospectors who were the experts on gold. On July 30th 1874 Custer sent a dispatch to Ft. 
Laramie which read: “Gold has been found in paying quantities. I have upon my table 40 or 
50 small particles of pure gold. In size averaging that of a small pinhead. And most of it found 
today from one pan full of earth.” Today, the area where the placer gold (gold carried by 
mountain streams) was found , is the town of Custer, South Dakota.
Probably the most significant bit of information absent from the Custer photograph at the 
mine is what the President of the United States said to Congress the following year: “…The 
Discovery of gold in the Black Hills, a portion of the Sioux Reservation, has had the effect to 
induce a large immigration of miners to that point. Thus far the effort to protect the treaty 
rights of the Indians to that section has been successful, but the next year will certainly 
witness a large increase of such immigration. The negotiations for the relinquishment of the 
gold fields having failed, it will be necessary for Congress to adopt some measures to relieve 
the embarrassment growing out of the causes named. The Secretary of the Interior suggests 
that the supplies now appropriated for the sustenance of that people, Being no longer 
obligatory under the treaty of 1868, but simply a gratuity, may be issued or withheld at his 
discretion.” President Ulysses S. Grant’s entire message can be found in Messages and 
Papers of the Presidents Vol. 9 Pg.4306.
The fact that President Grant would 
suggest that a starvation policy should 
be implemented may be difficult for 
most Americans to believe but the 
attitude of that day can be found in the 
words of another President whose 
image is carved 40 miles south of the 
Homestake Mine on Mt. Rushmore.



"The Most ultimately righteous of all 
wars is a war with savages. The rude, 
fierce settler who drives the savage 
from the land lays all civilized mankind 
under a debt to him...it is of 
incalculable importance that America, 
Australia, and Siberia should pass out 
of the hands of their red, black, and 
yellow aboriginal owners, and become 
the heritage of the dominant world 
races."
The Winning of the West Vol. 4 
The Indian Wars Page 56
 by President 
Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt
Picture

Mount Rushmore in South Dakota


Wounded Knee

​

If you ever have the opportunity to visit the 
mass grave site of the Wounded Knee 
Massacre, you must reflect on why such a 
thing happened. It was the 7th Cavalry that 
did it, so the average American is led to 
believe that it was revenge for Custer’s Last 
Stand at the Little Big Horn. But knowing 
President Grant’s words to Congress is to 
know that the gold was on the Sioux 
Reservation and that Custer was there in 
violation of the Treaty of Ft. Laramie of 
1868. And to know President Grant’s words 
to Congress is to know that he called on 
America to starve the Indians off their land.
Picture

Wounded Knee, December 1890.
Courtesy of the Denver Public Library

Picture

Wounded Knee Memorial Site, 2006.






​When a president of a country openly calls for the 

deliberate and systematic destruction of a people, 
what other conclusion can be reached? If you ever 
visit the mass grave site at Wounded Knee on the 
Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, know that 
the men, women and children who were thrown into 
this trench, were the victims of genocide.

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