The Great Sioux Campaign Of 1876 Day By Day

Drawing on more than 22 years' research, this book presents an exhaustive chronology of the Great Sioux Campaign in three parts: the U.S. Seventh Cavalry's communications, decisions and movements October 15, 1875-June 21, 1876, are traced day-by-day; the three-day prelude to the Battle of Little Bighorn hour-by-hour; and the battle itself minute-by-minute. The separate actions of the several military commands and the Indians involved are narrated in coherent sequence. Archival intelligence summaries offer the reader fresh perspective on the events leading to the decisive Indian victory known as Custer's Last Stand.

“A fine book…In the twenty-two chapters that comprise the background and the campaign narrative, the author is at his best when he moves away from the Washington scene to detail the field operations. But it is the second part of the book—seven chapters labeled “Facets”—that moves Centennial Campaign into the realm of the exceptional. Here Dr. Gray combines impressive research, careful analysis, and sound deduction to reconstruct Indian movements, locations, and concentrations.”—Western Historical Quarterly

It was the greatest of all Indian wars and it involved far more than the annihilation of George Armstrong Custer's command on a summer's day in 1876. The Great Sioux War of 1876-77 was a confrontation of two flowering cultures. It involved not one, but more than a dozen battles, played out over the vast landscape of the northern plains. The stakes were high - gold in the Black Hills, rights to the great Yellowstone Basin, and two ways of life. For the Sioux and Cheyenne peoples it was, as Black Elk later put it, all our own country, and they defended it fiercely against the army columns of Gibbon, Crook, Terry, Miles and Custer and against the railroads, town builders, cattlemen, and gold seekers.

This volume offers accounts of the many battles and skirmishes in the Great Sioux War as they were observed by participating officers, enlisted men, scouts, surgeons, and newspaper correspondents. The selections-some rendered immediately after the encounters and some set down in reminiscences years later - are important and little-known sources of information about the war. By their personal nature, they give a compelling sense of immediacy to the actions. The editor's introduction and commentary on each of the accounts help readers understand the interrelationship of events and appreciate the entire spectrum of the conflict.

In writings about the Great Sioux War, the perspectives of its Native American participants often are ignored and forgotten. Jerome A. Greene corrects that oversight by presenting a comprehensive overview of America's largest Indian war from the point of view of the Lakotas and Northern Cheyennes.

The Battle of the Rosebud may well be the largest Indian battle ever fought in the American West. The monumental clash on June 17, 1876, along Rosebud Creek in southeastern Montana pitted George Crook and his Shoshone and Crow allies against Sioux and Northern Cheyennes under Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. It set the stage for the battle that occurred eight days later when, just twenty-five miles away, George Armstrong Custer blundered into the very same village that had outmatched Crook. Historian Paul L. Hedren presents the definitive account of this critical battle, from its antecedents in the Sioux campaign to its historic consequences. Rosebud, June 17, 1876 explores in unprecedented detail the events of the spring and early summer of 1876. Drawing on an extensive array of sources, including government reports, diaries, reminiscences, and a previously untapped trove of newspaper stories, the book traces the movements of both Indian forces and U.S. troops and their Indian allies as Brigadier General Crook commenced his second great campaign against the northern Indians for the year. Both Indian and army paths led to Rosebud Creek, where warriors surprised Crook and then parried with his soldiers for the better part of a day on an enormous field. Describing the battle from multiple viewpoints, Hedren narrates the action moment by moment, capturing the ebb and flow of the fighting. Throughout he weighs the decisions and events that contributed to Crook’s tactical victory, and to his fateful decision thereafter not to pursue his adversary. The result is a uniquely comprehensive view of an engagement that made history and then changed its course. Rosebud was at once a battle won and a battle lost. With informed attention to the subtleties and significance of both outcomes, as well as to the fears and motivations on all sides, Hedren has given new meaning to this consequential fight, and new insight into its place in the larger story of the Great Sioux War.

The Sioux War of 1876-1877 was the largest campaign of the late-nineteenth century Indian Wars. This conflict grew out of the desire of the United States Government to resolve confusing territorial claims to the Black Hills and the "unceded territories" of the Powder and Yellowstone River valleys. The numerous and fierce Lakota and their northern Cheyenne allies controlled these areas and drove out rival Indian tribes and the United States Army in the late 1860s, and established dominance in the region. The Division of the Missouri, led by Lieutenant General Philip Sheridan, had developed a successful concept to defeat the tribes of the southern plains from 1867 to 1873 that used converging columns, winter expeditions, and attacks against Indian stores and possessions to catch the Indians when they were least mobile. Sheridan's initial campaign plan against the Lakota and their allies used this same concept, but failed to develop an operational approach that linked tactical actions to the strategic objective. His initial plan used against the Lakota and Cheyenne embraced the tactics of the southern plains in an environment and against a massed enemy for which they were disastrously ill-suited, and resulted in a string of defeats that culminated in the Battle of the Little Big Horn. This defeat provided impetus for the additional resources that Sheridan used to develop an operational approach that turned the war against the Lakota around in the winter and spring campaign of 1876-1877. Sheridan developed a campaign approach that utilized the modern concept of operational art, linking tactical actions in time, space and purpose to achieve a strategic end state. After Little Big Horn, Sheridan linked his main effort at the Indian reservation agencies to isolate the hostile Lakota from their summer roaming agency Lakota that constituted the preponderance of the Lakota and Cheyenne combat power. In order to make it possible to pacify the Lakota at the agencies, Sheridan coupled those efforts with the establishment of a network of bases in the unceded territories and relentless pursuit of the remaining hostile bands. Sheridan understood that Lakota and Cheyenne culture and military capabilities revolved around their ability to hunt buffalo and raid against their neighboring tribes from horseback with rifles. By taking away these tools and confining the Lakota and Cheyenne on the reservation, Sheridan could successfully extend the Army's reach into the territories and defeat the smaller hostile bands that remained.

The Great Sioux War pitted almost one-third of the U.S. Army against Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyennes. By the time it ended, this war had played out on twenty-seven different battlefields, resulted in hundreds of casualties, cost millions of dollars, and transformed the landscape and the lives of survivors on both sides. In this compelling sourcebook, Paul Hedren uses extensive documentation to demonstrate that the American army adapted quickly to the challenges of fighting this unconventional war and was more effectively led and better equipped than is customarily believed.