At this point, Red Cloud visited Washington DC. And was treated very well by the Government there. This is when some Lakota started becoming a little more accepting of the white man's ways, and willing to settle down into the European expectation of social order, but still, others would not, this created a key division among the Lakota. The ones more accepting of the whites, and their annuities were called "progressives"" and the ones that wanted to continue the old self-sustaining, nomadic ways were dubbed "traditionalists."".
A little after this period, prospectors found gold in the very heart of the Lakota territory. The discovery of gold sent tensions among whites with the Lakota to a fevered pitch, in order to prevent a massacre of gold hungry civilians, the U.S. government mad another attempt at ceding the land of the Lakota people, most specifically, the Black Hills of South Dakota. In contradiction with the first treaty signed, the second one did not have the pardon of two thirds of the Lakota as the first had stipulated must happen for a valid treaty. The fact that the U.S. government ignored this stipulation exposed first the split between progressive, and traditionalist Lakota, and second, a kind of weakness that can come about in a more individualistic society such as that of the nomadic Lakota.
Traditionalist Lakota continue to dispute the second treaty and are attacked by Custer and his regiment in an attempt to subdue the Lakota with blunt force. What ensues is a massacre of Custer and all of his men that are instantly wired back East to the horror of the general public on the United States centennial year (1879). Outraged, the United States public calls for Sitting Bull's head after one of the single most publicized battles of the United State's history to that date. Defeated twice, the military takes a more indirect approach to defeating the Lakota. This approach is to take out the Lakota's main food source, the buffalo.