The chiefs that surrendered at the fort were Dull Knife, Little Wolf, Standing Elk, and Wild Hog with nearly one thousand Cheyenne.

The Cheyenne wanted and expected to live on the reservation with the Sioux in accordance with an April 29, 1868 treaty of Fort Laramie of which both Dull Knife and Little Wolf had signed.

Following confirmation from Washington D.C., the Cheyenne started their move with 972 people; upon reaching the Cheyenne-Arapaho reservation on August 5, 1877 there were only 937.

After reaching the reservation, the Northern Cheyenne noticed how poverty-stricken it was, and began to fall sick in the late summer of 1877.

[8] When the Cheyenne attempted to hunt game they found none: by the winter of 1877–78 the territory was just a wasteland of dead buffalo remains, as the U.S. Army had sanctioned and actively endorsed the wholesale slaughter of bison herds.

[9] Through the past decade the federal government had promoted bison hunting for various reasons, to allow ranchers to range their cattle without competition from other bovines, but primarily to weaken the North American Indian population by removing their main food source and to pressure them onto the Indian reservations during times of conflict;[10][11] Unfortunately in 1878 there was also a measles outbreak that struck the Northern Cheyenne, and in August 1878 the Cheyenne chiefs began preparations to move back north.

On September 9, 1878 Little Wolf, Dull Knife, Wild Hog, and Left Hand told their people to organize to leave.

After a few hours rest there, Dull Knife and a few others led the women and children on to St. Jacob's Well and The Big Basin in what is now Clark County, Kansas where they camped.

[16] On 10 September, a veteran soldier, Captain Joseph Rendlebrock, with 85 officers and men and two Arapaho scouts had departed Fort Reno with the objective of catching and capturing the fleeing Cheyenne.

Rendlebrock reported that he was on their trail and, being well-mounted, that he hoped to catch them near the Arkansas River in Kansas near Dodge City.

He formed a skirmish line with his soldiers and sent an Arapaho scout named "Chalk" or "Ghost Man" to talk to Dull Knife and Little Wolf.

The next day they divided themselves into several different groups to confuse pursuers attempting to track them and continued their trek northward.

[citation needed] In the ensuing battle, Lewis deployed a company of infantry to block the entrance to the canyon and attacked late in the afternoon along the rim of the canyon with four troops of dismounted cavalry, advancing by bounds, pinning the Cheyenne including their families in the closed end below.

[19] A party of drovers encountered Cheyenne camped on Prairie Dog Creek in northwestern Kansas on September 29 and lost 80 cattle.

After hearing that Lakota chiefs Red Cloud and Spotted Tail had been relocated to Pine Ridge in Dakota Territory, Dull Knife decided, due to weather and his people's condition, to go to Fort Robinson.

On October 25, 1878, Dull Knife, Left Hand, Wild Hog and the rest of the Cheyenne finally reached Fort Robinson.

Dull Knife agreed to fight no more if the great father in Washington would let his people live on Pine Ridge that now held Red Cloud and his tribe.

The seven were Old Crow, Wild Hog, Strong Left Hand, Porcupine, Tangle Hair, Noisy Walker, and Blacksmith.

There they were located by scouts attached to troops from Fort Keogh commanded by Lieutenant W. P. Clark, an army officer known as White Hat to the Cheyenne and who had been friendly with Little Wolf in the past.