Slim Buttes

Fought over two days, September 9 and 10 of 1876, the clash at Slim Buttes pitted American soldiers against Miniconjou Sioux warriors on the ground of the Great Sioux Reservation. The engagement belonged to the wider Great Sioux War of that same year. For the army, it stood as the first meaningful triumph since General George Custer's shocking rout at Little Bighorn that preceding June.

Background

After the disaster at the Little Bighorn, Lieutenant General Philip H. Sheridan, head of the Department of Missouri, directed the Army to bring the hostile Indians back under reservation control. Generals Alfred Terry and George Crook mounted a pursuit of the Lakota and Cheyenne through the late summer months, but the effort failed to produce results. Operations began again on August 5, and five days later the joint force abandoned its wagon train in order to move more freely, pressing eastward toward the Black Hills. The trail turned to thick mud under poor weather, and both soldiers and animals grew worn down, forcing the combined command to split apart on August 18; at that point Terry's troops headed back to their posts.

Crook, however, kept his men moving after the enemy, though supplies soon ran low. He cut his soldiers down to half rations, and before long many were forced to eat the meat of their mules and horses just to survive. Hoping to remedy the shortage, he sent Captain Anson Mills and a column of troops toward Deadwood, a mining settlement in the Black Hills, in search of provisions. On the way there, Mills's men came upon American Horse's Miniconjou Sioux village by chance.

Battle

At dusk on September 8, 1876, close to what is now Reva, South Dakota, Captain Mills led 150 troopers of the 3rd U.S. Cavalry in encircling a camp of thirty-seven lodges, striking it at dawn the following day and firing on anyone who put up resistance. Caught off guard, the villagers scattered, and American Horse, mortally hurt, took cover in a nearby ravine along with fifteen women and children. He would not accept care from the army's surgeons once he gave himself up, and he later succumbed to his injuries, as did two women and a child. A young boy from the village turned up unharmed, having remained asleep through the entire clash. Sioux who managed to flee carried news of the attack to nearby camps of Sans Arc, Brulé, and Cheyenne people, informing Crazy Horse and fellow leaders that they had run into somewhere between 100 and 150 soldiers. What they did not realize was that Crook's larger force, made up of infantry, artillery, and additional cavalry, had already reached the scene.

Crazy Horse, together with 600 to 800 warriors, covered ten miles heading north to reach American Horse's camp, which lay tucked into a hollow surrounded by hills. Upon reaching a ridge above the site, they found far more soldiers, and far better armed ones, than they had anticipated encircling the village. Firing down from the high ground, the warriors prompted Crook to quickly draw his men into a defensive ring shielding the horses and mules. He then gave the order to burn the village down. Advancing skirmishers, four companies of infantry at the front followed by dismounted men from three cavalry regiments, moved forward under Crook's direction. Roughly forty-five minutes of sustained gunfire followed, and the soldiers' push eventually cleared most of the warriors from the surrounding heights. A handful of Sioux refused to withdraw, at one point even rushing the defensive line held by the 3rd Cavalry, but they too were ultimately driven back.

In the aftermath, the troops captured 110 ponies from the camp along with stores of dried meat, which went to feeding the sick and wounded among Crook's men. Stirring deep feeling among the cavalrymen was the discovery of relics from the Little Bighorn fight, among them a guidon belonging to Company I of the 7th Cavalry, the blood stained gauntlets once worn by the slain Captain Myles Keogh, along with government firearms, ammunition, and other related items.

By September 10, Crook moved his hungry men away from the still burning village, setting a course for the Black Hills, where food and supplies awaited. Sioux fighters harassed the column in a running battle over the days that followed, until Crook's troops finally reached a supply train on September 15. The engagement at Slim Buttes claimed the lives of two cavalrymen and civilian scout Charles "Buffalo Chips" White, along with at least ten Sioux dead.

Aftermath

Long after the guns fell silent here, the army kept hunting down the Indian camps still holding out. Two more clashes of note followed: on November 25 troops confronted Dull Knife and Wild Hog along the Red Fork of the Powder River, an engagement remembered as the Dull Knife Fight, and on January 8 Crazy Horse met soldiers at Wolf Mountain. Between these fights, a series of additional strikes through autumn and winter left most Sioux and Cheyenne convinced that further resistance was pointless. By May 1877 Crazy Horse had given himself up at Fort Robinson, while Sitting Bull chose instead to lead those still with him across the border into Canada.

Today the ground where the Slim Buttes battle unfolded belongs to private owners. Visitors can find a monument nearby that marks and honors the fighting that took place there.