Glyph 55 | Year 1877

Waníyetu snižé
(Winter withering).

A withering year.

After the Battle of Little Bighorn, also known as Custer’s Last Stand, U.S. troops descended onto the Plains to force Dakota and Lakota Indians onto the Great Sioux Reservation, now known as the Standing Rock Reservation. By this time, treaty payments owed by the government had been neglected for many years and Native communities were suffering without adequate supplies and populations were dwindling from sickness and lack of food. They were then forced to give up their guns, horses, and were held as prisoners of war on the reservation. This is when the federal government began negotiations with various bands of Dakota and Lakota in attempt to coerce them into ceding the sacred Black Hills, and Congress voted to do so in direct violation with the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie. Missionary efforts also began around this time and Catholic boarding schools were opened for both boys and girls. Boys were made to cut their hair short.

Elsewhere in the world:
Thomas Edison makes the first recording of the human voice by reciting "Mary had a little lamb" into a phonograph