The earliest conflict came in 1854 when a fight broke out at Fort Laramie in Wyoming, when Sioux warriors killed 31 American soldiers in the Grattan Massacre, and the final came in 1890 during the Ghost Dance War.

Most of the warriors who took part in the fighting escaped to the west and north into Dakota Territory to continue the conflict, while the remaining Santees surrendered on September 26 at Camp Release to the US Army.

[10] In the aftermath, battles continued between Minnesota regiments and combined Lakota and Dakota forces through 1864 as Col. Henry Sibley's troops pursued the Sioux.

The Colorado War began in 1863 and was primarily fought by American militia while the United States Army played a minor role.

[11] The Indians at Sand Creek had been assured by the U.S. Government that they would be safe in the territory they were occupying, but anti-Indian sentiments by white settlers were running high.

In his report Colonel Collins correctly predicted that the party was en route to the Power River Country and would continue to raid along the North Platte.

[18][19] In 1865 Major General Grenville M. Dodge ordered a punitive expedition against the Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes that lived in the Black Hills region.

The second column, under Lt Col Samuel Walker, would travel north from Fort Laramie to occupy an area west of the Black Hills while the third, led by General Connor and Colonel James H. Kidd, would march up the Powder River.

Only minor skirmishing occurred until August 29, 1865, when Connor's column of about 400 men encountered about 500 Arapahos of Chief Black Bear in the Battle of the Tongue River.

A few days later a small party of soldiers and civilian surveyors was attacked by the Arapaho in what became known as the Sawyers Fight, three Americans were killed and it marked the last skirmish of the Powder River War.

At the same time Red Cloud and the other chiefs soon became aware that they were unable to defeat a fully defended fort, so they kept to raiding every wagon train and traveling party they could find along the road.

[28] The US government came to the conclusion after the Fetterman Fight that the forts along the Bozeman Trail were expensive to maintain (both in terms of supplies and manpower) and did not bring the intended security for travelers along the Road.

[34] Both forts were located in former Lakota territory, which the tribe had ceded to the United States at the same time as the establishment of the Great Sioux Reservation in 1868.

In the first major fight of the war, on March 17, 1876, about 300 men under Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds attacked 225 Northern Cheyenne and a few Oglala Sioux warriors in the Battle of Powder River, which ended with a Native American victory.

Next came the major Battle of the Rosebud on June 17, when 1,500 Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne warriors, led by Crazy Horse himself, defeated a force of 1,300 Americans under General George Crook.

Lieutenant Colonel George Custer, leading an attack on a large Indian encampment and commanding a force of over 600 troops, was badly defeated with the loss of over 300 men killed or wounded, including himself.

The next major engagement occurred at Slim Buttes on September 9 and 10, when elements of the 1st Cavalry Regiment led by Captain Anson Mills, while moving toward Deadwood to secure supplies for Crook's command, located and attacked a Sioux village.

Miles defended a ridge from a series of failed attacks led by Crazy Horse, who ultimately surrendered at Camp Robinson in May 1877, thus ending the war.

A lopsided engagement that involved almost half the infantry and cavalry of the Regular Army caused the surviving warriors to lay down their arms and retreat to their reservations.

That autumn, the Sioux were moved to a large reservation in the Dakota Territory, but the government pressured them to sign a treaty giving up much of their land.

But in the summer of 1889, the reservation agent, James McLaughlin, was able to secure the Sioux's signatures by keeping the final treaty council a secret from Sitting Bull.

He told them that in the spring, the earth would be covered with a new layer of soil that would bury the white men while the Native Americans who did the Ghost Dance would be suspended in the air.

Corporal William Wilson volunteered to take a message to the agency at Pine Ridge to get help after the Indian scouts refused to go.