Following the Little Bighorn debacle, Lieutenant General Philip H. Sheridan, commanding the Department of Missouri, ordered the U.S. Army to convince the hostile Indians to return to their reservations.

A column under Captain Anson Mills was dispatched to Deadwood, a Black Hills mining town, to find supplies, and en route stumbled onto the Miniconjou Sioux village of American Horse.

On the evening of September 8, 1876, near the present town of Reva, South Dakota, Captain Mills with his 150 troopers from the 3rd U.S. Cavalry surrounded the village of thirty-seven lodges and attacked it the next morning, shooting anyone who resisted.

Those Sioux who escaped spread the word to neighboring Sans Arc, Brulé and Cheyenne villages, telling Crazy Horse and other leaders that they had encountered 100-150 soldiers.

From their positions atop the bluffs, the warriors opened fire, causing Crook to immediately form a defensive perimeter around his horses and mules.

Of emotional interest to the cavalrymen, they recovered a number of artifacts of the Battle of Little Bighorn, including a 7th Cavalry guidon from Company I, the bloody gauntlets of slain Capt.

The fighting at Slim Buttes cost the lives of two cavalrymen and one of Crook's civilian scouts, Charles "Buffalo Chips" White, as well as those of at least 10 Sioux.