Battle of Pease Bottom

Battle of Pease Bottom
Part of the Yellowstone Expedition of 1873
DateAugust 11, 1873
Locationpresent-day Treasure County, Montana, U.S. territory since May 7, 1868
Result United States Victory
Belligerents
 United States Lakota Sioux
Commanders and leaders
United States George A. Custer Sitting Bull
Strength
~500 soldiers ~400 warriors
Casualties and losses
3 killed, 4 wounded 3 killed, 1 wounded

The Battle of Pease Bottom, also called the Battle of the Bighorn River was a conflict between the United States Army and the Sioux on August 11, 1873 along the Yellowstone River opposite the mouth of the Bighorn River near present-day Custer, Montana. This was former Crow Indian country altered into U.S. territory on May 7, 1868. The main combatants were units of the 7th U.S. Cavalry under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, and Native Americans from the village of the Hunkpapa medicine man, Sitting Bull, many of whom would clash with Custer again approximately three years later at the Battle of the Little Big Horn in the Crow Indian Reservation.[1]

Short history of the battlefield

The site of the future battlefield came to be a locality in a treaty territory for the first time in 1851. The Treaty of Fort Laramie describes the area as Crow Indian country. The Lakota tribe acknowledged this.[2] Nearly all the battles in the mid-1860s and the 1870s "between the army and the Dakota [Lakota] were on lands those Indians had taken from other tribes since 1851."[3][4] When the Crows agreed to settle on a smaller reservation on May 7, 1868, all the 1851 Crow treaty land north of the Yellowstone - including the future Pease Bottom - became U.S. territory.[5] [6]

Participants

U.S. Army forces

Custer and ten companies of the 7th Cavalry were part of the Yellowstone Expedition of 1873, a military column commanded by Colonel David S. Stanley accompanying the Northern Pacific Railway survey party surveying the north side of the Yellowstone River west of the Powder River in eastern Montana. Stanley's column consisted of a 1,300 man force of cavalry, infantry, and two artillery pieces (3" ordnance rifles). It traveled with 275 mule-drawn wagons and 353 civilians involved in the survey. Twenty-seven Indian and mixed-blood scouts supported the column.[7]

Just a week before, the army had been under Lakota attack in U.S. territory at Honsinger Bluff.

Native American forces

The Native American forces were from the Sitting Bull's village, estimated at anywhere from 400 to 500 lodges.[8] It included Hunkpapa Sioux under Gall accompanied by the warchief Rain in the Face, Oglala Sioux under Crazy Horse, and Miniconjou and Cheyenne.

Battle

Map with the battlefield of Pease Bottom (1873), Montana, and relevant Indian territories. The site of the battlefield had been U.S. territory for five years. The conflict between the United States and the buffalo seeking Lakotas was a collision between two growing empires.[9] Most battles took place in areas the Lakotas recently had taken from the Crows. Between the battles of Honsinger Bluff (August 4) and Pease Bottom (August 11), a force of Lakotas attacked a Crow camp on Pryor Creek in the Crow reservation in a day long battle.[10] [11] Note that the line for the 1868 unceded Lakota territory "east of the summits of the Big Horn Mountains"[12] may be disputed.

On the morning of August 11, 1873, Custer was encamped with a portion of the 1873 Yellowstone Expedition (Ten companies of the 7th Cavalry and one company of the 22nd Infantry) along the north side of the Yellowstone River at what was later known as Pease Bottom near present-day Custer, Montana. In the early morning hours warriors from the village of Sitting Bull started firing at Custer's camp from across the river, and by dawn skirmishing had broken out in several locations. After Private John Tuttle of Company E, 7th Cavalry was killed in the morning fighting, warriors crossed the Yellowstone River and attacked the rear of Custer's camp. The 7th Cavalry successfully defended their rear from this attack, before the warriors suddenly broke off the fight. The soldiers under Custer soon learned this was because of the approach of Colonel Stanley and the main column. During the battle, Second Lieutenant Charles Braden of the 7th Cavalry was critically wounded, along with two other Private's of the same regiment. Braden's thigh was shattered by an Indian bullet and he remained on permanent sick leave until his retirement from the Army in 1878. He would posthumously be awarded the Distinguished Service Cross in 1925 for his actions during the battle.[13] At least one army horse was wounded during the engagement.

Order of Battle

United States Army

United States Army, Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer, 7th United States Cavalry Regiment, Commanding.

Yellowstone Expedition Regiment Companies and Others

Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer, commanding.
    

 7th Cavalry


   Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer
20th Infantry


   Second Lieutenant John McA. Webster

Native Americans

See also

References

  1. ↑ Lubetkin, M. John (2006). Jay Cooke's Gamble: The Northern Pacific Railroad, The Sioux, and the Panic of 1873. Norman, Oklahoma, USA: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 0-8061-3740-1.
  2. ↑ Kappler, Charles J.: Indian Affairs. Laws and Treaties. Washington, 1904, Vol. 2, p. 594.
  3. ↑ Ewers, John C.: Intertribal Warfare as a Precursor of Indian-White Warfare on the Northern Great Plains. Western Historical Quarterly, Vol. 6. No. 4 (Oct. 1975), pp. 397-410, p. 408.
  4. ↑ White, Richard: The Winning of the West: The Expansion of the Western Sioux in the Eightteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. The Journal of American History, Vol. 65, No. 2 (Sep. 1978), pp. 319-343, p. 342.
  5. ↑ Kappler, Charles J.: Indian Affairs. Laws and Treaties. Washington, 1904, Vol. 2, p. 1008.
  6. ↑ Hoxie, Frederick E.: Parading Through History. The making of the Crow Nation in America, 1805-1935. Cambridge, 1995, pp. 63, 92.
  7. ↑ Lubetkin, M. John, Jay Cooke's Gamble: The Northern Pacific Railroad, The Sioux and the Panic of 1873, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, OK, 2006 p.187
  8. ↑ Lubetkin, M. John, Clash on the Yellowstone, Research Review: The Journal of the Little Big Horn Associates, Vol. 17, No. 2, Summer, 2003, p. 17
  9. ↑ Calloway, Colin G.: The Inter-tribal Balance of Power on the Great Plains, 1760-1850. Journal of American Studies, Vol. 16, No. 1 (April 1982), pp. 25-47, p. 46.
  10. ↑ Hoxie, Frederick E.: Parading Through History. The making of the Crow Nation in America, 1805-1935. Cambridge, 1995, p. 107.
  11. ↑ Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1873, Washington, 1874, p. 116.
  12. ↑ Kappler, Charles J.: Indian Affairs. Laws and Treaties. Washington, 1904, Vol. 2, p. 1002.
  13. ↑ "Charles Braden". Military Times. Retrieved 1 November 2016.

Further reading

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