The US Army and the Sioux in the Badlands

I spent a good part of the last week researching US Army operations in western North Dakota and uncovered some interesting stories.  I was reminded that it was like being in college again with a semicircle of books around my desk, sticky notes everywhere, and working myself into a fever pitch where I didn't notice the passage of hours.  We posted my article on the website under The US Army and the Sioux but I will repost it here for convenience (and with additional pictures).  Happy reading!

Among the numerous engagements between American Indians and the U.S. Army in North Dakota, several encounters occurred near modern Theodore Roosevelt National Park in western North Dakota.  Two notable campaigns were those of General Alfred Sully in 1864 and General Alfred Terry and Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer in 1876.

The first wave of hostilities in western Dakota was rooted a year earlier in Minnesota.  In 1862 and 1863, members of several bands of Sioux including the Sisseton, Wahpeton, and Santee attacked numerous targets near the Minnesota River in south-central Minnesota.  In the fighting, more than 600 Minnesotan civilians and army personnel were killed.  Partly in response to these attacks known as the Minnesota Sioux Uprising, and despite the Civil War raging elsewhere in the United States, the U.S. Army retaliated against the Sioux in 1863 and 1864 against many groups of Sioux both responsible and not involved in the hostilities in Minnesota. Brigadier General Alfred Sully led the U.S. Army in its campaign in the western portion of the Dakota Territory in 1864.

Fanny Kelly, a white American, was captured by the Sioux in a raid in the summer of 1864 prior to Sully’s campaign.  Her captors were in turn pursued by Sully.  Kelly’s account offers an interesting perspective of the Sioux at that time, although she confuses many of the details in her narrative.  “The Indians felt that the proximity of the troops and their inroads through their best hunting-grounds would prove disastrous to them and their future hopes of prosperity, and soon again they were making preparations for battle,” she wrote.

In July of 1864, General Sully led two brigades – approximately 2,200 men from Iowa, Minnesota, and Dakota – to the Killdeer Mountains, about twenty miles southeast of today’s Theodore Roosevelt National Park North Unit.  There, a village of several bands of Sioux, about 8,000 people all together, were encamped.  Sully dismounted his troops into a parallelogram formation and advanced on the village on the afternoon of July 28, 1864.

Warriors led by Sitting Bull, Gall, and Inkpaduta sparred with Sully’s formation to little effect as the army advanced toward the village of 1,600 lodges.  For warriors like Sitting Bull, it was the first battle in which they experienced cannons and a large number of guns.  Fanny Kelly, who observed the battle from among the Sioux women and children hurriedly retreating from Sully’s troops, recalled, “General Sully’s soldiers appeared in close proximity, and I could see them charging on the Indians, who, according to their habits of warfare, skulked behind trees, sending their bullets and arrows vigorously forward into the enemy’s ranks.”

Lt. David Kingsbury recorded his perspective of the battle from the other side of the field.  “The Indians made repeated charges at the full speed of their ponies, keeping up meanwhile their unearthly yelling.  In these charges many of them were killed, while no casualties occurred on our side.” 

Once within artillery range, Sully pounded the village with two mountain howitzers until sundown, holding his troops back to avoid hand to hand combat.  The village was abandoned.

The next day, Sully’s troops destroyed the large stores of food, tipis, and supplies that had been left behind.  Lt. Kingsbury reported “The amount of supplies, including pemmican, jerked buffalo meat, dried berries, and buffalo robes, that was burned could not be estimated.”  

“We had left, in our compulsory haste,” Fanny Kelly recalled, “immense quantities of plunder, even lodges standing, which proved immediate help, but in the end a terrible loss.  General Sully with his whole troop stopped to destroy the property, thus giving us an opportunity to escape, which saved us from falling into his hands, as otherwise we inevitably would have done.” 

The several bands of Sioux split up after the fight.  The Sans Arcs, with Fanny Kelly, fled west into the badlands, eluding Sully for the moment but parting with much of their supplies and energy.  “On, and still on, we were forced to fly to a place known among them as the Bad Lands... The desolate, ruinous scene might well represent the entrance to the infernal shades… I was startled by the strange and wonderful sights,” recalled Fanny Kelly.  “The terrible scarcity of water and grass urged us forward, and General Sully’s army in the rear gave us no rest.”

 Looking over the rim of the badlands.  Nathan King photo.

Sully rejoined with 800 of his troops he had left guarding an emigrant wagon train at the Heart River and continued west with his full complement of 3,000, reaching the edge of the badlands on August 5, 1864.  Knowing that supplies were waiting for him along the Yellowstone River beyond the badlands, Sully led his troops into the rough terrain of steep, clay buttes.

Sioux warriors attacked Sully’s encampment near Square Butte, halfway between present-day Medora, ND and Sentinel Butte, ND on August 7.  Continuous small-scale combat continued over the next two days as the Sioux harassed the slow-moving, extended column of troops winding through the labyrinthine badlands.  Sully claimed 100 warriors killed and suffered 9 dead and 100 wounded of his own over three days of fighting in the badlands. Sully exited the badlands and reached the Yellowstone River on August 10, where steamboats were waiting with supplies.  His unit later proceeded to Fort Union, then to Fort Rice.

Sitting Bull.  NPS / Little Bighorn Battlefield NM.

After pushing the Sioux into Montana, Sully discontinued his pursuit.  Fanny Kelly lamented, “I had so hoped for liberty when my friends were near; but alas! all my fond hopes were blasted.”  Kelly was not freed for several more months, enduring hardship and starvation alongside the Sioux, and constant fear that she would be executed by her captors. Sitting Bull, who had not been responsible for her capture, helped arrange for her return, reportedly saying, “Friends, this woman is out of our path.  Her path is different.  You can see in her face that she is homesick and unhappy here.  So I am going to send her back.”  Sitting Bull’s compassion was noted by his people; the winter of 1864-65 is known as “The-Winter-When-the-White-Woman-was-Rescued” on the Hunkpapa Sioux calendar.  Kelly published a memoir of her experience with the Sioux in 1871.

In September 1864, a group of Hunkpapa Sioux led by Sitting Bull attacked stragglers in an emigrant wagon train protected by U.S. Cavalry under Captain James Fisk near modern Marmarth, ND.  Some of the cavalry turned back to assist, but were too late to save the soldiers that had been attempting to right an overturned wagon when the group of warriors including Sitting Bull attacked.  Jefferson Dilts, a cavalry scout, charged the warriors, killing up to six Hunkpapas.  Dilts took three arrows to the back while attempting to escape; he was killed.  Sitting Bull was wounded in the left hip in the fighting.  Fisk and his men dug in and found themselves trapped until they were rescued by 900 troops sent by General Sully after his return to Fort Rice.

Thus major hostilities in western North Dakota ended.  General Sully did not attempt to wage another campaign against the Sioux in 1865; operations in 1864 had not weakened the Sioux’s resolve.  Moreover, the warfare had cost the U.S. Government $40 million, and some thought that peace would be a less expensive policy.  Indeed, peace was President Ulysses S. Grant’s policy from 1869 to 1874.  The Peace Policy ended when unrest on the Southern Great Plains induced the Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Comanche to rebel: The Red River War.  On the Northern Great Plains, little changed in the years following Sully’s 1864 campaign.  Some Sioux collected annuities and lived on reservations, others lived on their hunting grounds in the traditional mode of life, and still others alternated between the two lifestyles for the time being.

Following the discovery of gold in the Black Hills by Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and his troops in 1868, prospectors flooded into that vitally important part of the Sioux reservation.  In defense of the Treaty of 1868 with the Sioux, under which the Sioux retained ownership of the Black Hills, the Army tried but half-heartedly to keep gold prospectors out.

Red Cloud and Spotted Tail negotiated with the U.S. Government in Washington, D.C. regarding the sale of the Black Hills in June of 1875.  The U.S. offered $6 million for the Black Hills, or $400,000 per year to lease the land.  Non-reservation Sioux, occupying the Sioux hunting grounds and raiding along its boundaries, opposed any treaty that would cede the Black Hills.  The Sioux and the U.S. Government did not reach an agreement.  

 George Armstrong Custer.  NPS / Little Bighorn Battlefield NM.

Meanwhile, hundreds of prospectors flooded into the Black Hills looking for gold while the Army did little to stop them.  After a controversial meeting between President Ulysses S. Grant, the Secretary of War, Secretary of the Interior, Commissioner of Indian Affairs and Generals Sheridan and Crook in November of 1875, the Army withdrew from the Black Hills, effectively opening the land for miners.  The Sioux’s ownership of the Black Hills from the Treaty of 1868 was not enforced.

On December 6, 1875, the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs sent out an ultimatum to the non-reservation Sioux to return to their reservations before January 31, 1876 or else be forced there by military action.  It is likely that this ultimatum was a ploy to lure non-reservation Sioux into war so that they would be forced to formally cede the Black Hills to the U.S. Government once defeated on the battlefield.  Although many Sioux stayed at their respective agencies, others ignored the ultimatum, setting the stage for hostilities.

Working under the theory that the “outlaw” Sioux that refused to return to their reservations would be easier to catch in winter, General George Crook struck north from Wyoming in March, 1876.  Crook failed to subdue the Sioux before severe winter conditions turned him back to Fort Fetterman.  He thrust northward again in May after the weather improved.

Winter’s ferocity also held General Alfred Terry in Fort Lincoln in Mandan until May.  Terry, with Lt. Col. George A. Custer, departed Fort Lincoln on May 17, 1876 to begin their campaign against the Sioux, more or less following General Sully’s trail from 12 years prior.  While negotiating the terrain around the badlands, Custer was in charge of scouting the trail.  Custer had a habit of getting too far ahead of Terry, who complained that they were wasting time and energy backtracking.  Custer tended to show indifference to Terry’s superiority.  For his part, Custer was lucky to have a command at all after recently causing headaches for President Grant in Washington.   
 

General Terry’s troops camped three miles south of modern Belfield, ND on May 26, and got their first view of the badlands the next day.   Terry wrote to his sister, “I cannot attempt any description of ‘the bad lands.’  They are so utterly unlike anything which you have ever seen that no description of them could convey to you any ideas of what they are like.  Horribly bare and desolate in general & yet picturesque at times to the extreme.” 

On May 29, 1876, Terry, Custer, and their troops camped just three miles south of present-day Medora, ND.  Terry had expected to encounter the Sioux along the Little Missouri River, but found no sign of them.  The troops took an extra day’s rest at their camp on the Little Missouri.

Custer wrote to his wife Libby, “We found the Little Missouri River so crooked and the Bad Lands so impassable that in marching fifty miles today we forded the river thirty-four times.  The bottom is quicksand.  Many of the horses went down frequently tumbling their riders into the water; but all were in good spirits, and every one laughed at every one else’s mishaps.”

The badlands.  NPS / Theodore Roosevelt NP Photo.

By June 1, 1876, the weather changed to rain, then sleet, then snow.  Terry and Custer’s troops were laid over near Square Butte, very near where Gen. Sully had fought with the Sioux twelve years prior.  There they shivered and waited until June 3 before proceeding west out of the badlands and into Montana.

On June 25, 1876, less than a month after passing through the badlands adjacent to today’s Theodore Roosevelt National Park, Custer was killed alongside 262 of his troops at the Battle of Little Bighorn.  A crushing and embarrassing defeat for the Army, it was the last major victory for Plains Indian people against the U.S. Army.  Following the disaster at Little Bighorn, the various bands that had gathered there split up.  The United States, responding to public outcry, was re-energized to bring an end to decades of conflict.  For his part, Sitting Bull escaped to Canada and held out until his surrender on July 19, 1881.

Visitors to Theodore Roosevelt National Park may be interested in side trips to sites related to the Sully and Terry/Custer expeditions. Brochures printed by the U.S. Forest Service for the Custer Trail Auto Tour are available in park visitor centers. Visitors may also contact the U.S. Forest Service Dakota Prairie Grasslands office (http://www.fs.fed.us/r1/dakotaprairie/) directly for more information about the Custer Trail Auto Tour. Initial Rock, a sandstone boulder along the tour, has the initials of two of the privates (W.C. Williams from Company H and F. Neely from Company M) that were part of Custer’s ill-fated expedition. A monument at the Killdeer Mountains battle site is located near Killdeer, ND.

Sources: 

Chorne, Laudie J. Following the Custer Trail.
Trails West.  Bismarck, ND.  1997.  Print.

Kelly, Fanny.  Narrative of my captivity among the Sioux Indians.
Mutual Publishing Company.  Hartford, CT.  1871.  Print.

Kingsbury, Lt. David L.  Sully’s Expedition Against the Sioux in 1864.
Reprinted in Minnesota Historical Society Collections.  1898?  Original printing date unknown.

Michno, Gregory F. Encyclopedia of Indian Wars: Western Battles and Skirmishes, 1850-1890.
Mountain Press Publishing Company.  Missoula, MT.  2003.  Print.

USDA Forest Service.  Custer Trail Auto Tour.
U.S. Government Printing Office.  2006.  Pamphlet.

Utley, Robert M. Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian, 1866 - 1891.
University of Nebraska Press.  Lincoln, NE.  1973.  Print.

Vestal, Stanley.  Sitting Bull: Champion of the Sioux
University of Oklahoma Press.  1980.  Original printing 1932 by Houghton Mifflin Company.  Print.