[1][2][3][4] In 1877 the Dull Knife and Little Wolf bands of the Northern Cheyenne surrendered to the U.S. at Fort Robinson, Nebraska.

Dull Knife and Little Wolf pleaded to be allowed to return to the northern Great Plains but were turned down.

In September 1878, the two leaders and 351 of their followers fled the reservation with the objective of journeying to rejoin other groups of Northern Cheyenne who resided mostly in Montana.

Dull Knife wanted to join the Sioux at the Red Cloud Agency near Fort Robinson, Nebraska.

On 23 October, during a blinding snowstorm, Dull Knife's band of 149 persons, after 44 days and more than 1,000 km (620 miles) of travel since leaving the reservation in Oklahoma, encountered by chance two companies of U.S. cavalry, about 100 soldiers, commanded by Captain John B. Johnson.

Initially the Cheyenne were allowed freedom of movement around and near the camp, but were required to return to the barracks by nightfall.

[8][9] Dull Knife had told the soldiers that the Cheyenne wished to remain in the north and join the Sioux in South Dakota during the surrender negotiations and in his initial talks with Major Caleb Carlton, commander of Fort Robinson.

General Phillip Sheridan said the whole reservation system...will be endangered unless every one of these Indians are taken back and made to stay."

On 22 November 1878, Secretary of the Department of Interior (which managed Indian affairs) Carl Schurz agreed that the Cheyenne should be returned.

In December, Sheridan turned down General George Crook's request that the return of the Cheyenne to Indian territory be postponed until spring.

Late in November, Bull Hump, Dull Knife's son, had borrowed a horse and left to visit relatives living with the Sioux.

The next day, Wessells confined all the Cheyenne to the barracks and cut off food and water to force their compliance.

The Cheyenne survived with a little food they had stored and drank the frost they could scrape off the windows and walls.

On 9 January Wessells arrested Wild Hog and Old Crow, two Cheyenne leaders, and shackled them in irons.

The rest of the Cheyenne fled the barracks and five warriors fought a rear guard action against soldiers pursuing them.

The Cheyenne fled west, attempting to reach limestone bluffs and Soldier Creek four miles distant.

At the creek, they broke the ice for water to drink, Doing the pursuit that night and the following day, about 27 of the Cheyenne were killed, including a daughter of Dull Knife (whose body was mutilated), and 35 were recaptured.

On 22 January the soldiers found the largest group of surviving Cheyenne, 37 persons, 60 km (37 miles) northwest of Fort Robinson on Antelope Creek in the northwestern corner of Nebraska.

He fled eastward instead of west as did the others, found refuge with a white friend in South Dakota, and was hidden by the Sioux on their reservation.

Dull Knife reached Pine Ridge Agency, Dakota Territory, where Red Cloud was being held as a prisoner.

In 1901 the U.S. Supreme Court denied any U.S. liability but called the “shocking story” “one of the most melancholy of Indian tragedies” and found that “up to the time these Cheyennes were fired upon in the Indian Territory by the pursuing troops, they had committed no atrocity and were in amity with the United States and desired to remain so.”[17] In 1994 the Northern Cheyenne reclaimed the remains of those killed and buried in Nebraska.