The Treaties

What You Are Building

Stage 3 adds The Treaties section: a focused look at the two Fort Laramie Treaties, the most consequential federal documents of the Reservation System era.

The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 was the first major treaty with the Plains nations. It established recognized territories for the Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Crow, Assiniboine, and other nations. It was intended to reduce conflict between nations and to guarantee safe passage for settlers on the Oregon Trail. The United States promised annuities and respect for those territorial boundaries. The boundaries were not respected.

The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 is the more significant document. It created the Great Sioux Reservation and guaranteed the Black Hills to the Lakota Nation in perpetuity. It explicitly required the consent of three-fourths of all adult male Lakota to be modified. In 1877, Congress seized the Black Hills without that consent. In 1980, the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians that this was an unconstitutional taking and awarded over $100 million in compensation. The Sioux Nation refused the money. The Black Hills are not for sale. That legal claim remains unresolved today.

Read the Primary Sources

Before you fill in your content, spend 15 minutes reading the actual treaty language. You are looking for: what the treaty promised, which nations signed it, and what the language says about how it can be modified.

New CSS: Treaty Cards

The treaties section uses a two-column side-by-side layout. Each treaty gets a card with a year badge, a title, provisions list, and an outcome note. The new CSS classes are below.

Treaty card grid and structure

• grid-template-columns: 1fr 1fr: Two equal columns, one treaty per column. Placing them side by side invites comparison: what was similar, what was different, what escalated between 1851 and 1868.
• gap: 32px: Slightly wider than the policy cards (24px). Treaty cards hold more text and benefit from more breathing room between them.
• border-radius: 14px: Slightly larger radius than the policy cards (12px). The treaties are the central documents of this era. A little more visual weight is appropriate.

Treaty year badge and header

• font-size: 3.5rem: Large ghosted year number. At 3.5rem and very low opacity (rgba(119,141,169,0.18)), it acts as a decorative background element, not text to be read. It anchors the card in time without competing with the actual content.
• color: rgba(119,141,169,0.18): Lavender Grey at 18% opacity. Low enough to recede. High enough to still be visible. The same ghosting technique you used for the connection year numbers in Unit 12.
• margin-bottom: -4px: Pulls the title up slightly to close the gap between the large year number and the treaty title below it. Without this negative margin, there would be too much empty space between the year decoration and the content.

Provisions list and outcome note

• list-style: none on .treaty-provisions: removes the browser's default bullet points. You will replace them with a custom ::before pseudo-element so you control the exact marker style and color.
• content: ', ' on li::before: places an em dash before each provision. A dash is more editorial than a bullet and fits the archival tone. position: absolute; left: 0 aligns it to the left edge of the list item's padding area.
• border-top: 1px solid var(--gold-border) on .treaty-outcome: a thin horizontal rule separates the provisions list from the outcome note. This signals a structural shift: from "what was promised" to "what happened."

Fill In Your Content

Find the <!-- REPLACE: ... --> comments in the editor. Each treaty card has three editable areas: the provisions list, the outcome note, and optionally the subtitle.

• Fort Laramie 1851 provisions: What did this treaty establish? Which nations signed it? What was the United States' obligation under it?
• Fort Laramie 1851 outcome: What happened to the terms of this treaty? How were the boundaries treated?
• Fort Laramie 1868 provisions: What did this treaty guarantee? What was Article 12? What was the modification process?
• Fort Laramie 1868 outcome: What happened to the Black Hills? What did the Supreme Court rule? What did the Sioux Nation decide?

Why This Layout Works

Placing the two treaties side by side does something a written summary cannot: it lets the reader compare them directly. Reading them in parallel, a pattern becomes visible. The 1851 treaty is broad, covering many nations and large territories. The 1868 treaty is narrower and more specific, a sign that the political ground had shifted. The more specific and ironclad the language became, the more directly it was violated.

The ghosted year number behind each card is a technique you will see in editorial design when the year itself is the most important fact. You do not need to say "this is from 1868." The 1868 does that work visually, before the reader reads a word.