The federal government made an endeavor to establish peaceful relationships between the tribes, including a number of Lakota and the Dakota tribes by bringing them together at Fort Laramie in the year 1851. Their main purpose was to ensure that the tribes were at peace with each other so that the settlers could continue moving across the area without fearing for their safety. The government officials after much deliberation found a solution to the problem. They decided to assign a particular region to each of the tribe. The negotiators encouraged each tribe to elect their own chief who would represent the tribe in these discussions thus enabling them to handle these meetings much more efficiently.
Now they could talk to the chiefs and no longer had to convince the whole of the tribe. The tribes were reluctant to accept this format as they realized that one man cannot speak for the entire tribe and that the treaty would not hold for all the people unless they were present there. However, the government officials persuaded the tribes to select their chiefs with whom they would negotiate. Thus this treaty looked forward to end the rivalry between the tribes and establish peaceful conditions which would benefit the travelers and the workers working on the rail road.
The Yanktonai tribe were not included in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 though they were a part of the similar treat that was declared in 1825. Their areas of occupancy were far from the area that the government wished to safeguard, i.e., far from the over land route leading to the Pacific coast. As the government refused to include all the tribal people in the negotiations a lot of people were ignorant of the treaty. Thus the inter tribe rivalry continued inspite of the treaty. The government could not control its own people who continued to trespass into Red Indian regions.
The number of such incidents increased as the number of travelers and workers in the area increased. There were numerous incidents in 1861 that affected both the Lakota and Dakota tribes. These incidents resulted in them becoming a part of Standing Rock Reservation. When the territory occupied Dakota was officially allotted then large portions east of the Missouri River was occupied by Yanktonai and the Hunkpatina tribe. The Minnesota Indian War which took place in 1862 changed this to a great extent. In 1861 after the discovery of gold along the banks of Missouri affected the Lakota territories too.
The tribe of Santee were displeased with the turn of events and the fact that their territories were shrinking continuously confronted the government in 1862. They attacked settlements and the military. They even managed to force about forty thousand settlers flee from the region. The federal government responded quickly and all the Red Indians in the entire region were considered to be hostile. The Santee people, afraid of punishment escaped into regions occupied by the Dakota. The Military continued to maintain the pressure and rumors of hostile Indians being present in those regions spread.