Sioux Wars

The Sioux Wars were a series of conflicts between the United States and various subgroups of the Sioux people that occurred in the latter half of the 19th century.

1854 - 1890 : The earliest conflict came in 1854 when a fight broke out at Fort Laramie in Wyoming, when Indian warriors killed 29 U.S. soldiers after their chief was shot in the back, in what became known as the Grattan Massacre. The U.S. exacted revenge the next year by killing approximately 100 Sioux in Nebraska.

1866 - 1867 : A one-year conflict dubbed Red Cloud’s War, concluded with a treaty that guaranteed the Sioux permanent possession of the Black Hills of present-day South Dakota. The covenant, however, was not observed by the United States. Prospectors and miners itching for gold inundated the territory in the 1870s.

In the ensuing hostilities, Brigadier General George Crook commanded the Sioux to move onto a reservation. Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse refused to comply and move their people. Infuriated by unjust assaults, Sitting Bull gave notice: "We are an island of Indians in a lake of whites... These soldiers want war. All right, we'll give it to them!"

On June 17, 1876, a war party of Sioux and Cheyenne took Crook's soldiers by surprise in southern Montana and routed them in the Battle of the Rosebud. General George A. Custer then led a force against the Indians. On June 25, he and his men ran into a Sioux war party on the Little Bighorn River. Not a single soldier in Custer's immediate command of some 300 men survived "Custer's Last Stand."

The Sioux then separated into bands to get away more easily. The army caught some, and others surrendered. A few, including Sitting Bull's band, escaped to Canada.