Slim Buttes 1876: An Episode of the Great Sioux War
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About this book
General George Crooks controversial Horsemeat March culminating in the battle at Slim Buttes is considered the turning point of the Sioux Wars. After Lieutenant General George A. Custers shocking defeat at the Little Big Horn River Montana Territory in 1876 General Crook and the men of this Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition were given orders to pursue and subjugate restive tribes of the Northern Cheyenne and Teton Sioux Indians in the area.General Crook an able and experienced Indian campaigner insisted that his men travel light and fast. This tactic nearly proved disastrous. Provisions ran out and with the nearest settlements still far away in the Black Hills Crooks troops were forced to abandon and later to devour their exhausted and stringy mounts.When a detachment under Captain Anson Mills was dispatched to bring provisions from the settlements ahead Mills accidentally came across a large Indian village at Slim Buttes. Lured as much by supplies of food in the village as by a desire to subjugate the Indians Mills attacked Crook arrived with reinforcements and by the evening of the second day September 9 1876 the battle was over.The climax of General Crooks career and of one of the most arduous military expeditions in American history this battle was the first of a series of blows that ultimately broke the Indians resistance and forced their submission.The victory was not without irony. Crooks starvation march his troops nearly unanimous criticism of his command Mills account of an Indian childs tears over her mothers corpse and doubts about whether the Indians involved had indeed had anything to do with Custers defeat combined to steal most of the glory from the victor.Slim Buttes 1876 presents in vivid detail the grisly realities of the Indian Wars and the suffering experienced by both sides. For the troops who campaigned in the lonely hinterlands of America it was bloody dangerous and exhausting warfare fought as General Crook said without favor or hope of reward.
