Battle of the Badlands

An important impetus to another military campaign against the Sioux was the desire to protect lines of communication with recently discovered goldfields in Montana and Idaho.

The lifeline for the American gold miners were steamboats plying the Missouri River through the heart of Sioux territory.

Sully's army was the largest ever assembled to combat the Plains Indians, comprising more than 4,000 men, many of them in support and supply roles along the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers.

After the battle the Sioux, along with their women and children, scattered into the Badlands west of Killdeer Mountain, near where the present-day South Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park is located.

[6] His objective was to continue to pursue the Sioux through the Badlands and then resupply his expedition by marching north to the Yellowstone River where two steamboats full of rations awaited him.

"One minute they were rolling along on what seemed like limitless prairie; the next men and horses were lost in a maze of narrow gullies and malevolent steeps."

The next morning a small group of Sioux opened hostilities by raiding the horse herd of the Seventh Iowa Cavalry, and ambushing one company of the regiment.

The Indians showered arrows on the soldiers, and attempted to creep close enough to do serious harm to Sully's army, strung out over three or four miles in the rugged terrain.

That strategy came close to working after the end of hostilities as Sully and his men struggled across parched desert to reach the Yellowstone River, some 50 miles (80 km) distant.

The men were on short rations and only a pint of coffee each, made with alkaline water, per day; the livestock of the expedition died of thirst in large numbers.