Black Hills War

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Black Hills War
Powder River – Rosebud – Little Bighorn – Warbonnet Creek – Slim Buttes – Cedar Creek – Dull Knife Fight – Wolf Mountain

The Black Hills War (also known as the Little Big Horn Campaign) was a series of conflicts between the Lakota (Sioux), their allies, and the United States from 1876 until 1877 ¹.

1 Background
2 The Campaign
3 Notes
4 References
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Background

The Black Hills were claimed by the Lakota since their victory over the Cheyenne in 1776, and considered sacred lands. Following Red Cloud's War, the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868) included them in the Great Sioux reservation from which non-Indians were excluded. While the Black Hills were often considered "terra incognita", rumors of gold in them were proven true by the George Armstrong Custer Expedition of 1874.

Miners, suffering from the Panic of 1873, began a gold rush to the Black Hills, in violation of the treaty and Federal law. Further angering the Lakota and their allies was the consistent failure of the United States Army to keep intruders out. Eventually, Tatanka Iyotake (Sitting Bull), Tasunka Witko (Crazy Horse) and their people waged war against the intruders and the United States. Many historians today believe that the U.S. Grant Administration deliberately provoked the war, as a new gold rush and the opening of the Black Hills would aid recovery from the economic depression which had lasted three years.

[edit] The Campaign

Following unseasonable and unreasonable demands for Lakota families and hunters to report to the various agencies in the middle of the winter of 1875-76, Grant approved orders for the Army to round up the bands by force. In the spring of 1876, the Army launched a coordinated campaign, involving three columns of troops operating in what is today a five-state region. It resulted in the Battle of Rosebud, where the Lakota, under Tasunka Witko, defeated one of the three Army columns moving to find and force the tribes home. Days later, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer's 7th Cavalry attacked a camp of the Lakota and their Cheyenne allies on the banks of Greasy Grass Creek Little Big Horn River. The resulting Battle of the Little Bighorn saw the Sioux and Cheyenne, under the leadership of Tatanka Iyotake and Tasunka Witko, defeat the 7th Cavalry, killing 258 soldiers (43% of the regiment present) in one of the worst defeats of the Indian Wars for the Army.

In later battles in the summer and fall of 1876, including the Dull Knife Fight and the Battle of Slim Buttes, cavalry and infantry units defeated the Lakota war parties and forced the Lakota people to return to the agencies.

The war was finally ended with another treaty, in which the Lakota ceded a 50-mile strip along the western border of their reservation, and some additional lands. This gave the US legal title to the Black Hills and legalized the previously-illegal gold hunters and camp followers in Custer City, Deadwood, and other boom towns in the Black Hills.