Battle of the Rosebud on the reservation by January 31, 1876 to negotiate the sale. A few bands did not comply and when the deadline of January 31 passed the US undertook to force Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and their followers onto the reservation. The first military expedition against the recalcitrant Indians in March 1876 was a failure, ending in the Battle of Powder River. In June 1876, the US military renewed the fight with a three-pronged invasion of the Bighorn and Powder river country. Colonel John Gibbon led a force from the west; General Alfred Terry (with Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer) came
Battle of the Little Bighorn relieve pressure on Reno's detachment (according to the Crow scout Curley, possibly viewed by both Mitch Bouyer and Custer) by withdrawing the skirmish line into the timber on the edge of the Little Bighorn River. Had the U.S. troops come straight down Medicine Tail Coulee, their approach to the Minneconjou Crossing and the northern area of the village would have been masked by the high ridges running on the northwest side of the Little Bighorn River. That they might have come southeast, from the center of Nye-Cartwright Ridge, seems to be supported by Northern Cheyenne accounts of seeing the approach