North Dakota as the "Old West" Heart of Sioux History

One of the paths I plan to explore in "The Smoke of the Sioux" is North Dakota as the "Old West" heart of Sioux history.

Large US Army columns were sent west into present-day North Dakota in 1863 and 1864 to punish the Sioux for the 1862 Dakota Uprising in Minnesota. These army columns tangled with all 3 branches of the Sioux nation. The Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota were all involved in this very confused fighting.

Sitting Bull and his Hunkpapa carried out a long war against Fort Buford which is located near the confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers in northwest North Dakota. Sitting Bull hated Fort Buford. Ironically, Fort Buford was the site of his surrender in 1881.

The struggles between the Metis, with their screeching Red River carts that could be heard for miles, and the Sioux was largely a North Dakota thing. The April 2018 issue of Wild West magazine mentions the 1848 Battle of O' Brien's Coulee (in North Dakota) "that pitted roughly 800 Metis and 200 Chippewa against 1,000 Sioux."

The Indians called the US/Canada border the "Medicine Line." I have a book called "The Arc of the Medicine Line" about the surveying of this line. I have yet to read this book, but the relationship between the Sioux and the surveying of the Medicine Line would have been, in large part, a North Dakota affair.

Cursory research into Lewis and Clarks' contacts with the Sioux indicate that the Sioux raided the Mandan with whom Lewis and Clark spent the first winter of their trek in central North Dakota. I plan to delve into the Lewis and Clark contacts with the Sioux sooner rather than later.

It is hard to find quick information on this,  but Louis L'amour's great-grandfather was killed by the Sioux and, contrary to most reports which list him as a settler, I think he was a soldier killed in 1863 at Whitestone Hill in North Dakota. Whitestone Hill was one of those tangled 1863/1864 battles referenced above.