Travel the Historic Trail Along U.S. Highway 212 from Belle Fourche, SD to Crow Agency, MT

Crow Buttes

The struggles began centuries ago with the native people and their intra-tribal and territorial battles.  Early in the 1800s, the Crow were chased out of western South Dakota by the Sioux who left Minnesota and eastern South Dakota because of the encroachment of the white man from the east.

One such notable battle happened in what is now called “Crow Buttes” located in Harding County, South Dakota, about 40 miles north of Belle Fourche, SD along US Highway 85.

In the summer of 1822, the Sioux ravaged a Crow Camp near Crow Buttes and warfare soon ensued.   Wanting revenge against the Sioux after the attack, a Crow war party hastily left their women and children and old folks at Sand Creek north of the Buttes, looking for a better vantage point on top of the Crow Buttes.  Because of their hasty departure, the Crow had no water with them and there was no chance of rain in sight in the arid high plains of South Dakota.  The Sioux encircled the Crow war party atop the Crow Buttes and waited patiently until the trapped warriors died from thirst.  

Battle of Powder River / Reynold’s Battle

In 1874 George Armstrong Custer led the 7th Cavalry from Ft. Lincoln near Bismarck, N.D. over to the Little Missouri River and down to the Black Hills where they discovered gold. They crossed what would be Highway 212 just east of Colony, Wyoming as they traveled near current Aladdin, Wyoming. There are still wagon tracks just west of Aladdin marked with a historical marker.

Reynold’s Battlefield Monument is located about 28 miles southwest of Broadus on the Powder River down County Road 391 towards Moorhead Road. The battle on March 17, 1876 was a forerunner to the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The original purpose of the expedition was to force the Sioux Indians to return to the reservation.

On March 16, scout Frank Grouard saw two Indian warriors observing the soldiers. He identified them as Oglala Lakota and believed that the camp of Crazy Horse might be nearby. This was reported to General George Crook, and at 5 p.m. he divided his command and sent Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds (a West Point classmate of President Ulysses S. Grant, and a combat veteran of both the Mexican–American War, and Civil War) on a night march with about 383 men, with rations for one day, following the trail of the two Oglalas southeast toward Powder River. Crook kept with him about 300 men. That night Frank Grouard and the other scouts followed the two Oglala Sioux’s trail in the snow. It led right to what they were looking for, an Indian village, which they described as containing more than 100 lodges on the west bank of Powder River. The scouts immediately reported this information back to Colonel Reynolds.

Battle of Little Bighorn

​The Battle of the Little Bighorn, known to the Lakota and other Plains Indians as the Battle of the Greasy Grass and also commonly referred to as Custer’s Last Stand, was an armed engagement between combined forces of the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes and the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army. The battle, which resulted in the defeat of U.S. forces, was the most significant action of the Great Sioux War of 1876. It took place on June 25–26, 1876, along the Little Bighorn River in the Crow Indian Reservation in southeastern Montana Territory.

The Army’s coordination and planning began to go awry on June 17, 1876, when Crook’s column retreated after the Battle of the Rosebud, just 30 miles (48 km) to the southeast of the eventual Little Bighorn battlefield. Surprised and according to some accounts astonished by the unusually large numbers of Native Americans, Crook held the field at the end of the battle but felt compelled by his losses to pull back, regroup, and wait for reinforcements. Unaware of Crook’s battle, Gibbon and Terry proceeded, joining forces in early June near the mouth of Rosebud Creek. They reviewed Terry’s plan calling for Custer’s regiment to proceed south along the Rosebud while Terry and Gibbon’s united forces would move in a westerly direction toward the Bighorn and Little Bighorn rivers. As this was the likely location of Native encampments, all army elements had been instructed to converge there around June 26 or 27 in an attempt to engulf the Native Americans. On June 22, Terry ordered the 7th Cavalry, composed of 31 officers and 566 enlisted men under Custer, to begin a reconnaissance in force and pursuit along the Rosebud, with the prerogative to “depart” from orders if Custer saw “sufficient reason”. Custer had been offered the use of Gatling guns but declined, believing they would slow his rate of march.