On 28 July 1864 about 2,200 U.S. soldiers under Brigadier General Alfred Sully attacked a large encampment of Lakota and Dakota bands at Killdeer Mountain, in what is now western North Dakota. Sitting Bull was among the leaders in the camp. Helped by artillery, the soldiers overran the village and destroyed its lodges and food, while most of its people escaped into the Badlands of the Little Missouri. The number of Native dead is disputed, from 31 to about 150. The attack hardened the conflict between the Sioux nations and the United States.
From Minnesota to the Missouri
The campaign grew out of the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 in southern Minnesota. After it, the Army sent expeditions into Dakota Territory to hunt down the Dakota bands blamed for the war. In September 1863 Sully's troops attacked a hunting camp at Whitestone Hill, killing many Dakota, taking captives and burning the camp's tipis and food, though the people there were mostly Western Dakota, or Lakota, who had taken no part in the Minnesota war.1
In the summer of 1864 Sully returned up the Missouri, built Fort Rice near the Cannonball River and marched north with about 2,200 soldiers after learning that a great camp had gathered at Killdeer Mountain. The writer and public historian Dakota Wind, in Indian Country Today, notes that the Lakota and Dakota knew the mountain by a name meaning where they hunt deer, a place they came to regularly to hunt and to pray. He cites the historian Robert Utley's estimate of as many as 1,400 lodges of Hunkpapa, Sihasapa, Minneconjou, Itazipco, Yanktonai and Santee people, and the historian Robert Larson's view that the Santee leader Inkpaduta organized the defense.2
The attack
Sully advanced in a great square with his wagons and horses inside it, and with a detachment of Winnebago scouts, according to Dakota Wind. Warriors met the soldiers miles from the camp and fought them over some five miles of ground, at times hand to hand, and when they threatened the wagons and horses Sully ordered his mountain howitzers to open fire. The North Dakota Studies program of the State Historical Society of North Dakota says that Sully's battle plan and his artillery gave the Army the advantage, and that the soldiers overran the village.3
As the fighting reached the camp, women gathered what they could and fled with the children into the hills and ravines, and boys drove the horse herds away. Dakota Wind recounts Lakota memories of the day passed down through White Bull and others, including that of a man who had been unable to walk since birth and asked to be carried into the fight on a travois; he was shot down and afterward remembered by the name Bear's Heart. Most of the people escaped west into the Badlands. Sully had the abandoned lodges, blankets and food destroyed, and Dakota Wind writes that children left behind in the confusion were hunted down and killed by the Winnebago scouts.4
Counting the cost
The numbers are disputed. The North Dakota Studies account says that two men in Sully's command died in the battle, that Sully estimated between 100 and 150 Dakota dead, and that the Dakota claimed 31. Dakota Wind writes that over 100 Lakota and Dakota lay dead, and that Sully's reports put the figure closer to 150.5
Sully then followed the bands through the Badlands in terrible heat and drought, escorting a wagon train of emigrants bound for the Montana gold fields, while warriors attacked his column for several days. He reached the Missouri without defeating them. The North Dakota Studies account says Sully wrongly claimed to have soundly defeated the Dakota, and that by destroying their lodges, clothing and food the Army left the people in very bad condition for the winter. It counts Whitestone Hill and Killdeer Mountain among the most important battles between the Sioux and the Army: they bred more conflict and distrust, and many more battles followed before the Sioux defeated the Army at the Little Bighorn in 1876. Fought during the Civil War, they are also recorded as Civil War battles.6
