The Great Sioux War 1876-1877

It was the greatest of all Indian wars and it involved far more than the annihilation of George Armstrong Custer's command on a summer's day in 1876.

The Great Sioux War of 1876-77 was a confrontation of two flowering cultures.

It involved not one, but more than a dozen battles, played out over the vast landscape of the northern plains.

The stakes were high - gold in the Black Hills, rights to the great Yellowstone Basin, and two ways of life.

For the Sioux and Cheyenne peoples it was, as Black Elk later put it, "all our own country," and they defended it fiercely against the army columns of Gibbon, Crook, Terry, Miles and Custer and against the railroads, town builders, cattlemen, and gold seekers.

The Great Sioux War has reverberated in the destinies and the imaginations of the two cultures down to the present day.

This collection brings together 15 classic articles - many now difficult to obtain - on the Great Sioux War.

All originally appeared in "Montana: The Magazine of Western History", which has for more than 40 years distinguished itself with its publications on the subject. From prelude to aftermath, highlights to sidelights, the war is discussed here by leading scholars of the subject - Robert M.Utley, Paul Andrew Hutton, Brian W.Dippie, Paul L.Hedren, Edgar I.Stewart, Robert G.Athearn, Mark H.

Brown, Don Rickey, Jr., Peter J.Powell, William E.Lass, Harry H.Anderson, Michael P.Malone Richard B.Roeder, Rex C.Myers, Thomas R.Buecker, and Minnie Dubbs Millbrook.