Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
2004
Abstract
In November 1876, Colonel Ranald Mackenzie led a successful attack on a Northern Cheyenne village in the Bighorn Mountains. In military historian Jerome Greene's rendering, this often overlooked battle and the ephemeral Powder River Expedition became a seminal event in ending the Sioux Wars of 1876-77. "The attack on the encampment and its subsequent destruction," Greene writes, "not only compelled the Cheyennes' eventual surrender but also influenced many of their Lakota compatriots, including the war leader Crazy Horse, to do likewise."
Comments
Published in Great Plains Quarterly 24:3 (Summer 2004). Copyright © 2004 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.