Whitestone Hill was a Civil War engagement fought in North Dakota, 1863. It was a Union victory.
Following Brig. Gen. Henry Hastings Sibley's victories over the Sioux, he left the area, crossing the James River. The Sioux then recrossed the Missouri River and returned to their old hunting grounds. Brig. Gen. Alfred Sully decided to find these Sioux and punish them, if possible. By September 3, Sully reached a lake where he found numerous remains of recently killed buffalo. A 6th Iowa Cavalry detachment discovered a Native American camp of more than 400 lodges, about 3:00 pm, which they endeavored to surround until a courier could inform Sully. Word reached Sully around 4:00 pm, and he set out with the rest of the troops, except for the poorly mounted men who remained to protect the animals and supplies. About an hour later, Sully and his men arrived at the Sioux camp and observed that the Sioux were attempting to leave. Sully sent in his troops to help the 6th Iowa Cavalry. Although the Sioux did counterattack, it was to no avail. The Sioux eventually broke under the firepower and fled, hotly pursued. Fighting subsided after dark but scattered firing continued. Sully ordered the bugler to sound rally, and all the troops remained at arms during the rest of the night. In the morning, Sully established a camp on the battlefield and, during the next two days, sent out scouting parties looking for remnants of the enemy. He also ordered the destruction of Native American foodstuffs, supplies, etc., found in the area. On September 5, one officer and 27 men from the 2nd Nebraska and 6th Iowa Cavalry regiments went in search of a surgeon and eight men missing since the battle on the 3rd. About 15 miles northwest of camp, they were attacked by a party of about 300 Sioux. The men could not stand up to this number of the enemy and began a slow retreat while returning fire. As the enemy came closer, the men panicked and stepped up their retirement despite entreaties from the officers. They eventually returned to camp and safety, after losing six men in the skirmish. Altogether, Sully's men overran a large Sioux camp, destroyed much of the contents, killed or wounded a large number of men, and captured numerous women and children. This engagement weakened but did not destroy the Native American resistance in the area.
Whitestone Hill was the site of a clash during the Sioux Wars of 1863, fought in Dakota Territory as a reprisal against the Sioux following the Dakota War of 1862. The Dakota themselves came to know it as the Whitestone Hill Massacre. Over the course of three days, September 3 through September 5, 1863, Brigadier General Alfred Sully directed U.S. Army forces in an assault on a village housing Yanktonai, Santee, and Teton (Lakota) Sioux. Figures on the toll of the fighting differ depending on the source, though estimates place Sioux deaths somewhere in the range of 150 to 300, with another 150 to 250 taken prisoner, a group that included women and children alongside the men. On the Army side, losses amounted to roughly 22 dead and 38 injured.
The Dakota War of 1862 erupted when a segment of the Santee Dakota, also called the Sioux, took up arms against the United States after federal authorities failed to deliver food and money owed to them under existing treaties. During the uprising, Sioux fighters killed more than 600 white settlers, the vast majority of them unarmed civilians. Once the rebellion coll
Sully reached the ridge above the sprawling, widely scattered Indian camp around six in the evening. By his own reckoning, he had only 600 to 700 men on hand. Watching the Sioux gather their tipis and begin moving out, he judged that they meant to run rather than stand and fight. His plan was to hem the Indians in, so he positioned his troops to block their avenues of retreat while pressing toward the village itself. Colonel Wilson's 6th Iowa was directed to the right flank, while Colonel Furnas took the 2nd Nebraska to the left, both aiming to hold ravines that could otherwise have hidden fleeing Sioux from view. With his flanks secured, Sully pushed forward into the camp with three companies and his artillery, meeting little resistance. Chiefs Little Head and Big Head gave themselves up along with roughly 150 of their people. The cramped, disordered terrain of the fight kept Sully from putting his cannon to use.
A large number of Sioux found themselves squeezed between the two regiments, as the Iowa infantry advanced on foot and drove them toward the Nebraska line, where the two sides traded shots from a mere 60 yards apart. As night drew near, Wilson made the questionable call to send one battalion forward in a mounted charge. In the rush, he neglected to see that all his men had loaded their weapons, and when the Sioux answered with heavy fire, the horses panicked and the assault collapsed. The battalion pulled back and dug in on foot instead.
On the opposite flank, Furnas likewise pulled his Nebraska troops into a defens
The Union force at this engagement fell under the Department of the Northwest, specifically the District of Iowa, which encompassed the Territory of Dakota, with Brigadier General Alfred Sully in command. Serving under him were Colonel David S. Wilson, leading the 6th Iowa Cavalry, and Colonel Robert W. Furnas, at the head of the 2nd Nebraska Cavalry. Also present was Company I of the 7th Iowa Cavalry, commanded by Captain Andrew Jackson Millard.
A portion of this battlefield now falls under the care of the State Historical Society of North Dakota, preserved as Whitestone Hill State Historic Site. Visitors can find a small museum devoted to the engagement, along with a picnic area and a pair of monuments, one paying tribute to the Indian dead and the other remembering the soldiers who lost their lives there. Access to the grounds is limited to certain times of year. In caring for and interpreting the battlefield, the state historical society works alongside the Whitestone Hill Battlefield Historical Society, a nonprofit organization known as WHBHS.
Sully's horses and mules were in bad shape, and his supply situation left him no way to chase down the Sioux after the engagement. On September 6 he pulled his troops away from Whitestone Hill and headed toward Fort Pierre, located in what is now South Dakota. Close by he constructed a second post, Fort Sully, and stationed part of his command there through the winter months. These events set the stage for another campaign against the Sioux the following year, culminating in the fight at Killdeer Mountain in 1864. Although the expedition left some bands of Sioux destitute, it fell short of Sully's goal of eliminating the danger they posed across the eastern Dakotas.
LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, who serves as a tribal historian for the Standing Rock Sioux, offers a different account. According to her, soldiers kept chasing, harassing, and killing Sioux people for days after the clash had ended.
In the battle's wake, roughly 600 Sioux, the majority of them Santee, fled north into Canada, and another 3,000 joined them there in 1864. Minnesota responded by driving out every Sioux person within its borders, even those who had taken no part in the 1862 Dakota War, and it forced out the Winnebago as well, despite their friendly stance. The state seized all land belonging to the Sioux and sold it off. In the end, only 25 Santee, individuals who had remained loyal allies of white settlers, were permitted to stay in Minnesota.
This page covers Whitestone Hill. A full Aubrey report for the area pulls together this battle alongside historic sites, land records, and everything else the record holds within a few miles:
Every location is different. Not every section appears for every place, only what the historical record actually holds turns up in a report.
The account on this page is written by Aubrey Research from cited sources. Wikipedia is cited as a reference; its text is not reproduced.
Aubrey generates in-depth historical research for any location in the US, drawing on NRHP records, battlefield archives, census history and geological data to tell the full story of a place.