Background
The defeat of Little Crow in the Dakota War of 1862 caused the widespread dispersion of the Santee Sioux or Eastern Dakota. More than 4,000 Santee and other Sioux congregated in the summer of 1863 in a large encampment in present-day Kidder County, North Dakota. [1]
In June and July 1863, Brigadier general Henry Hastings Sibley led a military expedition to punish the Santee. Sibley had 2,056 men – 1,436 infantry, 520 cavalry, and 100 artillery and white and Indian scouts. On July 24, Sibley found the Sioux camp and the Battle of Big Mound ensued. The Sioux retired from the battlefield, the warriors fighting a rear guard action to protect their families for about 12 miles (20 km). As the families continued to flee toward safety across the Missouri River, the warriors paused at Dead Buffalo Lake, about two miles (3 km) northwest of present-day Dawson, North Dakota to await Sibley's advance. [2]
Many of the Santee under their leader Standing Buffalo had been reluctant fighters and appear to have avoided further conflict by fleeing northwest and eventually to Canada, rather than halt at Dead Buffalo Lake. The remaining Santee, Yankton, and Yanktonai whose best known leader was Inkpaduta, were joined by about 650 Hunkpapa and Blackfoot (Lakota) Teton warriors. This brought the number of Indian warriors up to 1,600, according to one estimate. Sitting Bull was among the Teton reinforcements. [3]
Battle
Sibley marched to Dead Buffalo Lake on July 26 and about noon camped near the shores of the small lake. Mounted Sioux appeared shortly on the hills surrounding the lake and Sibley's camp, threatening an attack. Sibley advanced his artillery, two companies of infantry, and his pioneers to a position about 600 yards in advance of his camp and opened fire at long range on the Indians. The Indians withdrew to a safe distance. [4]
The objective of the Sioux seems to have been to capture the army's pack train of horses and mules and immobilize Sibley. They first attempted an assault on Sibley's left flank, but were checked by a company of mounted rangers and two companies of infantry. The Indians then disappeared into the hills. Several muleteers in Sibley's camp assumed the engagement was over and took the livestock out of the defense lines to graze. The Sioux re-appeared in force on the right flank and made another effort to capture the stock, but were repulsed in a brief close-quarter fight by two companies of cavalry and 6 companies of infantry. Sitting Bull, armed with only a whip, was said to have counted coup on a muleteer and captured his mule. Failing in their mission to capture most of the horses and mules, the Indians then retired from the field and the battle was over. [5]
One soldier was killed. The soldiers estimated they had killed 15 Sioux. [6]
The Lakota are a Native American people. Also known as the Teton Sioux, they are one of the three prominent subcultures of the Sioux people, with the Eastern Dakota (Santee) and Western Dakota (Wičhíyena). Their current lands are in North and South Dakota. They speak Lakȟótiyapi—the Lakota language, the westernmost of three closely related languages that belong to the Siouan language family.
The Sioux or Oceti Sakowin are groups of Native American tribes and First Nations people from the Great Plains of North America. The Sioux have two major linguistic divisions: the Dakota and Lakota peoples. Collectively, they are the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, or "Seven Council Fires". The term "Sioux", an exonym from a French transcription of the Ojibwe term Nadowessi, can refer to any ethnic group within the Great Sioux Nation or to any of the nation's many language dialects.
The Battle of Killdeer Mountain took place during Brig. Gen. Alfred Sully's expedition against the Sioux in Dakota Territory July 28–29, 1864. The location of the battleground is in modern Dunn County, North Dakota. With a total of more than 4,000 soldiers involved in the total operation, and more than 2,000 in the battle, Sully's expedition was the largest ever carried out by the U.S. army against Native Americans.
The Sioux Wars were a series of conflicts between the United States and various subgroups of the Sioux people which occurred in the later half of the 19th century. The earliest conflict came in 1854 when a fight broke out at Fort Laramie in Wyoming, when Sioux warriors killed 31 American soldiers in the Grattan Massacre, and the final came in 1890 during the Ghost Dance War.
Nakota is the endonym used by those Native peoples of North America who usually go by the name of Assiniboine, in the United States, and of Stoney, in Canada.
The Battle of Big Mound was a United States Army victory in July 1863 over the Santee Sioux Indians allied with some Yankton, Yanktonai and Teton Sioux in Dakota Territory.
The Battle of Stony Lake was the third and last engagement of Henry Hastings Sibley's 1863 campaign against the Santee, Yankton, Yanktonai and Teton Sioux in Dakota Territory. Following the battle, the Indians fought delaying actions against Sibley until their women and children had successfully crossed the Missouri River. Sibley then gave up his chase of them.
The Mdewakanton or Mdewakantonwan are one of the sub-tribes of the Isanti (Santee) Dakota (Sioux). Their historic home is Mille Lacs Lake in central Minnesota. Together with the Wahpekute, they form the so-called Upper Council of the Dakota or Santee Sioux. Today their descendants are members of federally recognized tribes in Minnesota, South Dakota and Nebraska of the United States, and First Nations in Manitoba, Canada.
Spotted Tail was a Sichangu Lakota tribal chief. Famed as a great warrior since his youth, warring on Ute, Pawnee and Absaroke (“Crow”), and having taken a leading part in the Grattan Massacre, he led his warriors in the Colorado and Platte River uprising after the massacre perpetrated by John M. Chivington's Colorado Volunteers on the peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho camping on Sand Creek, but declined to participate in Red Cloud's War.
The Battle of Whitestone Hill was a battle of the Sioux Wars in 1863 in the Dakota Territory as punishment against the Sioux in the aftermath of the Dakota War of 1862. From September 3-5, 1863, Brigadier General Alfred Sully led U.S. Army troops against a village of Yanktonai, Santee, and Teton (Lakota) Sioux. The reported casualties vary, but U.S. Army troops killed somewhere between 150 and 300 Sioux and captured between 150 and 250 Sioux, including women and children, and they suffered approximately 22 killed and 38 wounded.
Alfred Sully was an American military officer who served in the United States Army during the Mexican-American War and the American Indian Wars. He served as Brevet Brigadier General in the Union army during the American Civil War but was removed from command by John Gibbon for failure to suppress a mutiny by the 34th New York Infantry Regiment. He was cleared by a court of inquiry of any wrongdoing and sent to command the District of Iowa in the Department of the Northwest during the Sioux Wars. After the Civil War, he served as major in the United States Army and continued to fight in the Indian Wars including the Nez Perce War and out of Fort Dodge, Fort Harker and Fort Vancouver. He served as Superintendent of Indian Affairs for Montana in 1869 and as colonel of the 21st Infantry Regiment in 1873.
The Battle of Wood Lake occurred on September 23, 1862, and was the final battle in the Dakota War of 1862. The two-hour battle, which actually took place at nearby Lone Tree Lake, was a decisive victory for the U.S. forces led by Colonel Henry Hastings Sibley. With heavy casualties inflicted on the Dakota forces led by Chief Little Crow, the "hostile" Dakota warriors dispersed. Little Crow and 150 followers fled for the northern plains, while other Mdewakantons quietly joined the "friendly" Dakota camp started by the Sisseton and Wahpeton bands, which would soon become known as Camp Release.
The Battle of Birch Coulee occurred on September 2–3, 1862, and resulted in the heaviest casualties suffered by U.S. forces during the Dakota War of 1862. The battle occurred after a group of Dakota warriors followed a U.S. burial expedition, including volunteer infantry, mounted guards and civilians, to an exposed plain where they were setting up camp. That night, 200 Dakota soldiers surrounded the camp and ambushed the Birch Coulee campsite in the early morning, commencing a siege that lasted for over 30 hours, until the arrival of reinforcements and artillery led by Colonel Henry Hastings Sibley.
The Surrender at Camp Release was the final act in the Dakota War of 1862. After the Battle of Wood Lake, Colonel Henry Hastings Sibley had considered pursuing the retreating Sioux, but he realized he did not have the resources for a vigorous pursuit. Furthermore, he was aware that Chief Little Crow had been losing support and was in contact with several Mdewakanton chiefs who had signaled their opposition to further conflict.
The Dakota War of 1862, also known as the Sioux Uprising, the Dakota Uprising, the Sioux Outbreak of 1862, the Dakota Conflict, or Little Crow's War, was an armed conflict between the United States and several eastern bands of Dakota collectively known as the Santee Sioux. It began on August 18, 1862, when the Dakota, who were facing starvation and displacement, attacked white settlements at the Lower Sioux Agency along the Minnesota River valley in southwest Minnesota. The war lasted for five weeks and resulted in the deaths of hundreds of settlers and the displacement of thousands more. In the aftermath, the Dakota people were exiled from their homelands, forcibly sent to reservations in the Dakotas and Nebraska, and the State of Minnesota confiscated and sold all their remaining land in the state. The war also ended with the largest mass execution in United States history with the hanging of 38 Dakota men.
The Dakota are a Native American tribe and First Nations band government in North America. They compose two of the three main subcultures of the Sioux people, and are typically divided into the Eastern Dakota and the Western Dakota.
The 1st Dakota Cavalry was a Union battalion of two companies raised in the Dakota Territory during the American Civil War. They were deployed along the frontier, primarily to protect the settlers during the Dakota War of 1862.
The Battle of the Badlands was fought in Dakota Territory, in what is now western North Dakota, between the United States army led by General Alfred Sully and the Lakota, Yanktonai, and the Dakota Indian tribes. The battle was fought August 7–9, 1864 between what are now Medora and Sentinel Butte, North Dakota. It was an extension of the conflict begun in the Dakota War of 1862. Sully successfully marched through the badlands encountering only moderate resistance from the Sioux.
The Department of the Northwest was an U.S. Army Department created on September 6, 1862, to put down the Sioux uprising in Minnesota. Major General John Pope was made commander of the Department. At the end of the Civil War the Department was redesignated the Department of Dakota.
This timeline of South Dakota is a list of events in the history of South Dakota by year.
