Battle of Prairie Dog Creek

Battle context

The Battle of Prairie Dog Creek, also known as the Skirmish at Tongue River Heights or the Battle of the Tongue River (1876), occurred on June 9, 1876, at the confluence of Prairie Dog Creek and the Tongue River, primarily in Wyoming Territory. The engagement formed part of the broader Great Sioux War of 1876, a campaign by United States forces to compel Lakota and allied bands onto reservations. U.S. forces under commanders including George Crook and Anson Mills were active in the Powder River country during this period, and the skirmish at Prairie Dog Creek represents one of the preliminary contacts in that operational push. The recorded outcome and casualty figures are insufficient to assess its direct effect on the campaign's trajectory, but its occurrence in early June 1876 places it in the weeks immediately preceding the larger engagements that would define the war's first summer.