Battle of Pease Bottom

The main combatants were units of the 7th U.S. Cavalry under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, and Native Americans from the village of the Hunkpapa medicine man, Sitting Bull, many of whom would clash with Custer again approximately three years later at the Battle of the Little Big Horn in the Crow Indian Reservation.

[5][6] Custer and ten companies of the 7th Cavalry were part of the Yellowstone Expedition of 1873, a military column commanded by Colonel David S. Stanley accompanying the Northern Pacific Railway survey party surveying the north side of the Yellowstone River west of the Powder River in eastern Montana.

Stanley's column consisted of a 1,300 man force of cavalry, infantry, and two artillery pieces (3" ordnance rifles).

The Battle of Pease Bottom was fought primarily by 8 companies of the 7th Cavalry under command of General Custer, numbering roughly 450 men.

In the early morning hours warriors from the village of Sitting Bull started firing at Custer's camp from across the river, and by dawn skirmishing had broken out in several locations.

Braden's thigh was shattered by an Indian bullet and he remained on permanent sick leave until his retirement from the Army in 1878.

Map with the battlefield of Pease Bottom (1873), Montana, and relevant Indian territories. The site of the battlefield had been U.S. territory for five years. The conflict between the United States and the buffalo seeking Lakotas was a collision between two growing empires. [ 11 ] Most battles took place in areas the Lakotas recently had taken from the Crows. Between the battles of Honsinger Bluff (August 4) and Pease Bottom (August 11), a force of Lakotas attacked a Crow camp on Pryor Creek in the Crow reservation in a day long battle. [ 12 ] [ 13 ] Note that the line for the 1868 unceded Lakota territory "east of the summits of the Big Horn Mountains" [ 14 ] may be disputed.