Meeting on Rosebud Creek

Meeting on Rosebud Creek. . , In the aftermath of the Rosebud and Little Bighorn battles, both Generals Terry and Crook withdrew to their respective base camps waiting for additional troops and supplies. Even though the commands were only about 100 miles apart, communication between the camps was limited because there were few volunteers willing take on the dangerous courier duties given the strength of the Lakota and Cheyenne. , The two commands when reinforced and resupplied, took to the field in early August 1876 following month-old Indian trails. It came as a surprise when both commands met up by accident along Rosebud Creek a few miles north of the Greenleaf Creek confluence. , On August 10,1876, Crow scouts in advance of General Terry's command, raced back to the main column alerting Terry of an enormous cloud of dust visible to the south along Rosebud Creek a sure sign of a warrior force. , As General Terry prepared his column for battle, a lone rider emerged from the approaching dust cloud waving a white hat - William F. Cody, a quartermaster scout attached to Colonel Wesley Merrit's Fifth Cavalry. Buffalo Bill advised Terry that General Crook was bivouacked just a few miles up the creek awaiting his arrival. , For the next couple of weeks, the massed command, now numbering over 1000 troopers, moved east to the Tongue and Powder Rivers before returning to the Yellowstone. Concerned that the hostiles might ford the Yellowstone and escape to the north. General Terry deployed infantry companies under the command of Colonel Nelson Miles along the lower Yellowstone at favored Indian crossing sites and on board the supply steamer. , Meanwhile, General Crook marched his poorly supplied command up the Powder River Valley on August 24th following a faint trail to the southeast. Crook engaged about thirty lodges of Lakota at Slim Buttes in the present South Dakota. The weakened command, unable to hold the field, eventually reached the Belle Fourche River in mid-September in what came to be known as the Starvation March. , The Seventh Cavalry finally reached Fort Abraham Lincoln on September 26, 1876 without ever once engaging the Lakota and Cheyenne after the Little Bighorn defeat.