Sinte Gleska, Spotted Tail, led the Sicangu Lakota through the years of the treaties and the reservations, and by 1881 he had many enemies among his own people, who accused him of dealing too comfortably with the government and keeping money from ranchers who grazed cattle on Sicangu land. Crow Dog, a traditionalist and a former captain of the agency police whom Spotted Tail had dismissed, was one of them. On August 5, 1881, as Spotted Tail rode from a council, Crow Dog shot him dead.
The Sicangu settled the killing in their own way: the families met, and Crow Dog's family paid Spotted Tail's in horses, money and goods. The federal government did not accept that. Crow Dog was arrested, tried in Dakota Territory and sentenced to hang. In December 1883 the Supreme Court, in Ex parte Crow Dog, set him free, ruling that no federal law gave the territorial court jurisdiction over a crime by one Lakota against another on the reservation.
Congress answered in 1885 with the Major Crimes Act, which put murder and other serious crimes by Native people on reservations under federal courts, a law that still governs justice in Indian Country and that the nations have long seen as taking away one of the core powers of a people. Spotted Tail lies in the Episcopal cemetery at Rosebud, his grave listed on the National Register of Historic Places, a few miles from the university that carries his name.
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