With Crook at the Rosebud

J. W. Vaughn's story of this engagement is highly readable and detailed and puts into perspective the Custer debacle that took place eight days later. The military's grand design for the campaign against the Sioux and Cheyennes is explained at length, and the book covers the preparation, march, bivouacs, and finally, the great clash of the red and blue fighting forces at the Rosebud bend that June morning, exactly one hundred years after the Battle of Bunker Hill. The strategies of the soldiers and Indians are examined and Vaughn illustrates how the Indians drew the pursuing soldiers further away from their base camp and engaged them in several isolated skirmishes that covered many miles over nearly six hours of intense fighting. This battle has often been referred to as a confrontation between Crook and Crazy Horse but it was a determined assault by the Indians to protect their villages from being plundered by the soldiers, a tactic the army had used to great success in previous campaigns, most recently during an attack in March on an encampment at Powder River. This book is a must for any student of the Custer fight and the Sioux War of 1876.

For serious students of Northern Plains Indian Wars history, this much-referenced book by J.W. Vaughn is "must reading", along with Lieutenant John G. Bourke's "On the Border With Crook". Both works focus on the June 17, 1876 clash of General George Crook's 1,000+ troops and Crow and Shoshone Indian allies with hundreds of Sioux in the lovely Valley of the Rosebud, about 40 miles south from where General Custer would meet his fate at the Little Big Horn about a week later. Crook's stalemate (at first, he claimed victory) in the face of bold opposition took his force out of the overall strategic three-pronged campaign against the people of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse and sent it limping back southward, rendering him unable to come to Custer's assistance eight days later when these very same "hostiles" overwhelmed and whipped the vaunted Seventh Cavalry. Custer, General Terry, et. al. knew nothing about Crook's debacle, or the unexpected enthusiastic and vigorous fighting spirit of the Sioux. A more recent book which homes in on this fight, and which is especially well-researched, is "Battle of the Rosebud: Prelude to the Little Bighorn" by Neil Magnum (1987), former chief historian at the Custer Battlefield National Monument (that is what it was officially called when he was there -- it was renamed in the early 1990s) and editor of the Custer Battlefield Historical & Museum Association's periodical publication, "Greasy Grass".