The years and decades after the Civil War witnessed tremendous westward expansion — expansion that was fundamentally incompatible with the traditional lifestyle of the Indians. A final showdown was inevitable and it came in a series of Indian Wars between the so-called “hostiles” — tribes or tribal factions who resisted expropriation of their lands and refused to live on reservations — and the U.S. Army. Between 1865 and 1890, the Army battled many tribes in many places. It fought Apaches in the Southwest, Bannocks, Modocs, Utes and Nez Perce in the Northwest; and on the Plains, Kiowas, Comanches, Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and largest and most powerful of the Indian tribes, Sioux. With their superior horsemanship and knowledge of terrain, the Indians were not without victories. In 1868, Chief Red Cloud won his two-year campaign to oust the Army from forts along the Bozeman Trail, a route which passed through Sioux hunting grounds in the Powder River country of Wyoming. And, in 1876, Sioux and Cheyenne warriors defeated U.S. troops in battles at the Rosebud and the famous Little Big Horn. But in the end, the Army — superior in numbers and technology — prevailed, aided in part by the destruction of the buffalo, the Plains Indians’ primary source of food.

Tags: Cheyenne, Chief Red Cloud, Civil War, Little Big Horn, Sioux