Trumpet on the Land: The Aftermath of Custer's Massacre, 1876

With war fever infecting Washington by the end of that July, Secretary of the Interior Chandler turned over to the army “control over all the agencies in the Sioux country.” Both the agents at Red Cloud and Spotted Tail were to be removed without cause and their duties assumed by the commanders of the nearby Camp Robinson (at Red Cloud) and Camp Sheridan (at Spotted Tail). The army would soon begin to demand the “unconditional surrender” of every Indian who returned to the reservations in the wake of the army’s big push. No matter that they might be coming in from a hunt, all Indians on the agencies had to surrender their weapons and ponies. They were considered prisoners of war.

So what of those who had remained on the reservations?

It made no difference to the army now in control of the agencies. Not a single penny of their appropriations, not one mouthful of flour or rancid ounce of bacon would be given out until the Sioux had first relinquished all claim to their unceded lands.

“Give back the Black Hills or starve!”

Only 40 of the 2,267 adult males required by the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 to sell their Paha Sapa eventually signed the agreement the government commissioners foisted upon them.

But by then the Battle of Slim Buttes had already taken place. And Slim Buttes was clearly the beginning of the end.

The Sioux and Cheyenne had already ridden the meteor’s tail to the zenith of their success at Rosebud Creek and the Greasy Grass. Yet within eleven weeks of their stunning victories, their demise and ultimate defeat were already sealed at what was an otherwise inconsequential fight at Slim Buttes. In a matter of months Crazy Horse would surrender in the south, and Sitting Bull would limp across the Medicine Line into the Land of the Grandmother with the last of his holdouts.

Both of them giving up the good fight.

To learn more about what took place during that dramatic summer among both the warrior villages and the army camps in the territory surrounding the Little Bighorn River country, I offer the following suggested titles I have used to write my story of this Summer of the Sioux:

Across the Continent with the Fifth Cavalry, by George F. Price

Battles and Skirmishes of the Great Sioux War, 1876-1877, the Military View, edited by Jerome A. Greene

Blood on the Moon: Valentine McGillycuddy and the Sioux, by Julia B. McGillycuddy

Campaigning with Crook, by Captain Charles King, U.S.A.

Campaigning with King: Charles King, Chronicler of the Old Army, edited by Paul L. Hedren

Centennial Campaign: The Sioux War of 1876, by John S. Gray

The Chronicles of the Yellowstone, by E. S. Topping

Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors, by Stephen E. Ambrose

Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas, by Mari Sandoz

Death on the Prairie: The Thirty Years’ Struggle for the Western Plains, by Paul I. Wellman

First Scalp for Custer: The Skirmish at Warbonnet Creek, by Paul L. Hedren

Following the Indian Wars: The Story of Newspaper Correspondents among the Indian Campaigners, by Oliver Knight

Forty Miles a Day on Beans and Hay: The Enlisted Soldier Fighting the Indian Wars, by Don Rickey, Jr.

Frank Grouard, Army Scout, edited by Margaret Brock Hanson

Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian, 1866-1891, by Robert M. Utley

General George Crook: His Autobiography, edited by Martin F. Schmitt

The Great Sioux War, 1876-77, edited by Paul L. Hedren

“I Am Looking to the North for My Life”: Sitting Bull, 18761881, by Joseph Manzione

Indian Fights and Fighters, by Cyrus Townsend Brady

Indian Fights: New Facts on Seven Encounters, by J. W. Vaughn

Indians, Infants and Infantry: Andrew and Elizabeth Burt on the Frontier, by Merrill J. Mattes

The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull, by Robert M. Utley