The Horsemeat March of 1876 occurred during the Great Sioux War of 1876, a conflict that arose from disputes over the Black Hills of the Dakota Territory. The war involved the U.S. Army against multiple Native American groups including the Lakota, Sioux, Arapaho, and Northern Cheyenne. Following the Battle of Powder River in March, organized by General Crook and led by Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds, larger military efforts were undertaken in the spring to move Native populations to reservations. General Crook's command led a military expedition in pursuit of a band of Sioux who had achieved an overwhelming victory over George Armstrong Custer's 7th Cavalry Regiment at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Multiple columns of soldiers were deployed to trap the enemy and prevent their escape.
The Horsemeat March was characterized by severe hardship and logistical failure. Poorly rationed and hampered by muddy conditions, Crook's soldiers faced mounting difficulties as the campaign progressed. As horses and mules became lame or injured during the difficult pursuit, the soldiers were forced to butcher and eat their own animals for survival, giving the march its distinctive name. The conditions were so severe that the expedition became known by multiple names reflecting its hardships: the Mud March and the Starvation March.
The expedition concluded with the Battle of Slim Buttes, which marked the end of Crook's campaign. The outcome included the capture and looting of American Horse the Elder's richly stocked village, representing a tactical success for the U.S. Army in securing supplies and achieving a military objective against the Sioux forces.
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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