Wolf Mountain Moon: The Battle of the Butte, 1877

During the Indian Wars, the [Regular Army] soldier, isolated from his own people and faced by a skilled enemy, lived under conditions that would have broken the spirit of most groups. Badly armed and clothed, underfed and plopped into holes on the prairie, the soldier made do and “re-upped,” left the army after a single hitch, or deserted. It is most remarkable that they did not all desert.

—Neil Baird Thompson

Crazy Horse Called Them

Walk-a-Heaps

The Sioux campaigns of 1876 were marked with few engagements, but those that did take place were conspicuous for the desperateness with which they were fought and the severe losses sustained. Nearly four hundred and fifty officers and men of the army were killed and wounded during the year…. The enemy’s loss is now known to have been severe at the Rosebud, Little Big Horn, Slim Buttes and Bates Creek. But the far-reaching results of the campaigns extended beyond the consideration of how many were killed and wounded. They led to the disintegration of many of the hostile bands of savages, who gladly sought safety upon the reservations and who have not since attempted any warlike demonstrations.

—George F. Price

Across the Continent with

the Fifth Cavalry

Desperate, hungry, and weary of fighting, the rapidly weakening Indian coalition rallied one last time at Wolf Mountains, when the soldiers threatened the sanctity of their homes. But for the Sioux and Cheyennes, offensive warfare was over. Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse never again united. Instead, the disintegration of the massive Indian resistance was finally at hand. As Miles averred, “We … had taught the destroyers of Custer that there was one small command that could whip them as long as they dared face it.”

—Jerome Greene

Yellowstone Command

It is the opinion of some who had had years of experience in Indian fighting, that there has rarely, if ever, been a fight before in which the Sioux and Cheyennes showed such determination and persistency, where they were finally defeated.

—Captain Edmond Butler

“Army and Navy Journal”

March 31, 1877

If a Crazy Horse camp could be struck, where would the people be safe?

—Man Sandoz

Crazy Horse—Strange Man of

the Oglala