Battle of Wolf Mountain

Battle context

The Battle of Wolf Mountain, fought along the Tongue River in southern Montana Territory, was an engagement between United States Army forces under Nelson A. Miles and Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne warriors led by Crazy Horse and Two Moon during the winter phase of the Great Sioux War of 1876. The battle represented part of the sustained winter campaign that the U.S. Army prosecuted following the reverses of 1876, pressing Indigenous forces through the cold season rather than suspending operations. By bringing pressure on Crazy Horse and Two Moon's bands in the Tongue River country, engagements of this kind contributed to the attrition and exhaustion of holdout groups that had not yet submitted to reservation confinement, forming one link in the sequence of operations that ultimately ended organized Lakota and Cheyenne resistance in the spring of 1877.