Dull Knife Fight was a Indian Wars and Frontier Conflicts engagement fought in Wyoming, 1876.
On November 25, 1876, United States Army troops and their scouts clashed with Northern Cheyenne warriors along the Red Fork in what is now Johnson County, Wyoming. Known alternately as the Dull Knife Fight or the Battle on the Red Fork, this engagement formed a piece of the larger Great Sioux War of 1876. Its outcome proved decisive in a way that extended beyond the immediate combat: the Northern Cheyennes emerged from it largely unable to keep waging their struggle for freedom across the Great Plains.
On November 25, 1876, United States Army troops and their scouts clashed with Northern Cheyenne warriors along the Red Fork in what is now Johnson County, Wyoming. Known alternately as the Dull Knife Fight or the Battle on the Red Fork, this engagement formed a piece of the larger Great Sioux War of 1876. Its outcome proved decisive in a way that extended beyond the immediate combat: the Northern Cheyennes emerged from it largely unable to keep waging their struggle for freedom across the Great Plains.
The site where troops clashed with Dull Knife's band sits east of the Bighorn Mountains, within Johnson County, Wyoming, close to what is today Kaycee, Wyoming. Access to the grounds is restricted, as the property belongs to a private owner, and visitors may only walk the field through prior special arrangement. A working cattle ranch now occupies the ground where the fighting once took place.
Three of Dull Knife's sons died in the engagement. The bitter cold that descended that same night brought further misery, and eleven infants perished in the arms of their starving mothers. Among the recovered items, soldiers found articles taken earlier from the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
Stripped of adequate clothing and exposed to the harsh November conditions, Dull Knife's people endured widespread frostbite in the days ahead. Several women and children did not survive the cold. Starving and half frozen, a great many eventually gave themselves up at Camp Robinson, Nebraska, before April 1877 had ended. The soldiers sent these captives into exile on the Southern Cheyenne reservation in Indian Territory. Disease and starvation took a heavy toll during the year that followed, prompting Dull Knife and a number of his people to break free in the episode remembered as the Northern Cheyenne Exodus.
Not everyone who survived chose surrender. A considerable portion of Dull Knife's band pushed northward past the Bighorn Mountains until they reached the upper stretches of the Tongue River. Some found refuge with Crazy Horse's Oglala Sioux encampment along Beaver Creek, and on January 8, 1877, these warriors stood beside Crazy Horse and Two Moon in the fight at Wolf Mountain, fought near the Tongue River in Montana Territory.
For all intents and purposes, this clash marked the collapse of Northern Cheyenne opposition to American forces. In a telegram to the War Department, General Crook remarked that it would prove a devastating loss for the hostile bands, since the Cheyennes involved ranked among their most fearless fighters and had driven much of the raiding and trouble plaguing the region. Sporadic fighting continued afterward, yet by 1884 the Northern Cheyenne had been settled permanently on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation.
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