No!! Not That Late 1860's Sioux War on US Army Forts. I Mean the Other One.

 Anybody with even a cursory interest in western history is likely aware of Red Cloud's War against US Army forts along the Bozeman Trail in the Powder River Country of Wyoming in the late 1860's. Famous names like Red Cloud, Crazy Horse and Fetterman and events like the Fetterman Massacre and the Hayfield and Wagon Box fights are deservedly well-known to western history buffs.

Running concurrently with the better-known Red Cloud's War, the northern Lakota and their allies fought a war against Missouri River traffic and the new forts along the Missouri River in North Dakota. These fights are much less well-known. However, the northern Sioux hated these forts as much, or more, than the southern Sioux hated the Bozeman Trail forts.

It is worth noting that there are countless books and articles dealing with Red Cloud's War in the Powder River country, but the parallel war against the Missouri River forts and river traffic barely warrants a few pages in most books on the Sioux and even is barely mentioned in biographies of participants such as Sitting Bull and Gall. 

Fort Buford, built in the summer of 1866, at the junction of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers in extreme northwest North Dakota especially aroused the ire of the Sioux. Fort Stevenson was another new fort located 150 miles downstream from Fort Buford that was not popular with the Sioux. However, Fort Stevenson was not as hated as Fort Buford and one source said the Sioux went to Fort Stevenson for trade and Fort Buford for scalps. Having said that, they certainly still raided in the vicinity of Fort Stevenson.

Note the locations of Forts Buford and Stevenson in the upper left quadrant of the North Dakota map below.

Fort Buford was the site where Sitting Bull and his band surrendered in 1881 after their four year refuge in Canada. That is a well-known fact among western history readers. Less well-known is his hatred for the fort in the first place and the attacks that took place on the fort.

It is worth noting that Fort Abraham Lincoln (in the center of the map) was the jumping off point for Custer's expedition to the Black Hills in 1874 and for his fateful trip to the Little Bighorn in 1876.

General Winfield Scott Hancock visited the river posts in the summer of 1868 and singled out Fort Buford as a post exceedingly offensive to the Sioux and made the comment that it had been under almost constant siege since its founding.

Given that the scope of this blog includes all branches of the Sioux, I was especially interested to note from a book called Forts of the Upper Missouri that the Santee (Dakota) branch of the Sioux were involved in this campaign along with the better known Hunkpapa Lakota. The Santee, or eastern Sioux had been forced to this region after being pushed west by white settlement farther east.

Forts of the Upper Missouri notes that the Santee hated Fort Buford with a passion and never lost a chance to raid the neighborhood. They ranged north of the fort and escaped across the  Canadian border when necessary. Lieutenant Colonel Henry Morrow who took command of the fort in the Spring of 1869 said "They (the Santee) are the terror of the left (north) bank of the Missouri River."

It stands to reason that many of these Santee warriors were veterans of the 1862 war in Minnesota and the War of the Columns in 1863 and 1864.

It is striking that the Fetterman Massacre of Red Cloud's War occurred on December 21, 1866, at exactly the same time that Sitting Bull was in the middle of 4 days of major raids on Fort Buford that started on December 20. On the morning of the 4th day, Lakota warriors even took over the fort's icehouse and sawmill and had to be dislodged with cannon fire.

Note the sawmill and icehouse at the south-central boundary of Fort Buford shown on the fort plan below.

There was only one company of infantry of about 100 men stationed at Fort Buford that first winter and there were repeated rumors downstream that the garrison had been wiped out. Four more companies were sent to the fort in the spring.

However, as usual in Indian warfare, attacks on fortified posts were rare and the usual mode of operation was to attack isolated parties and travelers. 

Attacks on river boats,while common, usually consisted of sniping and barrages of fire from the bank. It does not appear that there were a lot of casualties on the boats, especially as they became more heavily fortified to deal with the attacks.

I can't find the source right now, but I remember being struck by past reading that Chief Gall of the Hunkpapa had killed at least 7 whites in these attacks on the river forts and traffic. When you consider that 80 soldiers died in the well-known Fetterman Massacre and here we have just one warrior killing almost ten percent of that amount in an almost unknown conflict; it doesn't seem fair somehow that this (Sitting Bull's?) northern war is not more well-known.

The violence around Fort Buford seems to have been winding down by 1870 except for raids on isolated parties and so forth.

Lakota America, a 2019 book on Lakota history, notes that in the Fall of 1870; Sitting Bull conducted a large cattle-butchering raid against Fort Buford. After this, he moved away from the area to the Montana and Wyoming buffalo ranges.

Sitting Bull's war on the Missouri River forts was not as successful as Red Cloud's war at the same time was, but it certainly deserves more recognition than it usually receives. Hey, it even had a "Hayfield Battle" like Red Cloud's War did.