The Battle of the Rosebud or the Battle of Rosebud Creek took place on June 17, 1876, in the Montana Territory between the United States Army and its Crow and Shoshoni allies against a force consisting primarily of Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne Indians during the Great Sioux War of 1876. The Cheyenne called it the Battle Where the Girl Saved Her Brother because of an incident during the fight involving Buffalo Calf Road Woman. General George Crook's offensive was stymied by the Indians, led by Crazy Horse, and he awaited reinforcements before resuming the campaign in August.
After their victory in Red Cloud's War and with the signing of the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868), the Lakota and their Northern Cheyenne allies were allocated a reservation including the Black Hills, in Dakota Territory and a large area of unceded territory in what became Montana and Wyoming. Both areas were for the exclusive use of the Indians, and non-Indians (except for US government officials) were forbidden to trespass. In 1874, the discovery of gold in the Black Hills caused the US government to attempt to buy the Black Hills from the Indians. The US ordered all bands of Lakota and Cheyenne to come to the agencies on the reservation by January 31, 1876, to negotiate the sale. A few bands did not comply and when the deadline of January 31 passed the US forced Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and their followers onto the reservation. The first military expedition against the Indians in March 1876 was a failure, ending in the Battle of Powder River.
In June 1876, the US military renewed the fight with a three-pronged invasion of the Bighorn and Powder river country. Colonel John Gibbon led a force from the west; General Alfred Terry (with Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer) came from the east; and General George Crook advanced northward from Fort Fetterman, near present-day Douglas, Wyoming. The objective of the converging columns was to find the Indians and force them onto the reservation. Crook's force, called the Bighorn and Yellowstone Expedition, consisted of 993 cavalry and mule-mounted infantry, 197 civilian packers and teamsters, 65 Montana miners, three scouts, and five journalists. Crook's much-valued chief scout was Frank Grouard. Among the teamsters was Calamity Jane, disguised as a man.
Crook left Fort Fetterman on the abandoned Bozeman Trail past the scene of many battles during Red Cloud's War ten years earlier. His force reached the Tongue River near present-day Sheridan, Wyoming on June 8. Crazy Horse warned that he would fight if "Three Stars" [Crook] crossed the Tongue and on June 9 the Indians launched a long-distance attack, firing into the soldier's camp and wounding two men. Crook and his men waited near the Tongue for several days for Crow and Shoshoni warriors to join his army. 175 Crow and 86 Shoshoni showed up on June 14 with Frank Grouard. They welcomed the opportunity to strike a blow against their old enemies although they warned Crook that the Lakota and Cheyenne were as "numerous as grass." The Shoshoni and Crow were well-armed. Crook had made his reputation as an Indian fighter "using Indians to catch Indians" and the Crow and Shoshoni warriors were important to him.
The Indian Wars encompass more than three centuries of armed conflict between the United States government, American settlers, and Indigenous nations — from the Powhatan Wars of the 1620s through the final Plains campaigns of the late 19th century. The eastern conflicts — King Philip's War (1675–1676), the Tuscarora War (1711–1715), and the Creek and Seminole Wars — largely ended organized Indigenous resistance east of the Mississippi by the 1840s. On the Great Plains, the Sioux Wars (1854–1890), Red River War (1874–1875), and Nez Perce War (1877) followed the displacement wrought by the transcontinental railroad and the near-extinction of the American bison — an estimated 30 to 60 million animals reduced to fewer than 1,000 by 1890. The Ghost Dance religious movement and the massacre at Wounded Knee (December 29, 1890), in which US cavalry killed approximately 250 Lakota men, women, and children, marked the effective end of armed resistance. The Dawes Act (1887) allotted reservation land to individual families, opening millions of acres to white settlement and reducing Indigenous landholdings by about two-thirds over the following decades.
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