The Badlands of western North Dakota offer awe-inspiring views, but there’s a reason for the name: The Badlands are difficult to cross. And that’s putting it mildly.
In the summer of 1864, General Alfred Sully led a military expedition and westbound immigrant train. The military expedition was a continuation of the hostile campaign against the Lakota and Dakota people following the 1862 killings of white settlers in Minnesota. In late July of 1864, Sully’s troops attacked a huge Sioux camp in what is known as the Battle of Killdeer Mountain – an infamous event, since many of the village’s inhabitants were not involved in the events of 1862. The soldiers fired on and drove off the Native people and then destroyed their tepees, food and supplies, killed their thousands of dogs and burned the surrounding woods.
The troops returned south to the immigrant train, then continued westward. Days later they were at the edge of the Badlands. The route ahead – suggested by a young Native guide – took the expedition through the rugged landscape near present-day Medora and Sentinel Butte. The steep bluffs required a group of men to cut and dig and level the route ahead. Three days of clashes between Sully’s troops and Sioux fighters unfolded.
On this date in 1864, Corporal John Strong wrote that the Badlands were “the roughest country that ever a train of wagons was taken over.” Sully, who was sick from rheumatism and dysentery, cut rations so the food would last until the expedition could be resupplied by steamboats at the Yellowstone River. The sun and dust were terrible. Heat and thirst took hold. Wagons were wrecked on the bluffs. Animals collapsed and were shot.
Skirmishes continued, and the Native scout was wounded and temporarily could not lead the way. It was a miserable march to the Yellowstone River.
The Lakota called the landscape “mako sika,” which means “bad land.” Sully supposedly described the Badlands as “hell with the fire out.” He did write that the landscape was “grand, dismal and majestic,” and when “viewed in the distance at sunset it looked exactly like the ruins of an ancient city.” He also wrote that in the broken Badlands it’s not only easy to lose a fleeing enemy, “but even lose yourself.”
Dakota Datebook by Jack Dura
Sources:
- Clodfelter, M. (1998). The Dakota war: The United States Army versus the Sioux, 1862-1865. McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers: Jefferson, NC. Pages 178-188
- Pfaller, L. The Sully expedition of 1864 featuring the Killdeer Mountain and Badlands battles. Reprinted from North Dakota History (Vol. 31, No. 1, January 1964). State Historical Society of North Dakota: Bismarck, ND.
- Robinson, E.B. (1966). History of North Dakota. University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln, NE. Page 101
- Battle of the Badlands Interpretive Site. Dakota Prairie Grassland. U.S. Forest Service. Retrieved from: fs.usda.gov/recarea/dpg/recarea/?recid=79473
- State Historical Society of North Dakota. Killdeer Mountain Battlefield State Historic Site. Retrieved from: history.nd.gov/historicsites/kmb/index.html
- National Park Service. The US Army and the Sioux Part 2: Battle of the Badlands. Last updated 2015, April 10. Retrieved from: nps.gov/thro/learn/historyculture/the-us-army-and-the-sioux-part-2.htm
- United States War Department. (1893). The war of the rebellion: A compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate armies, Series 1, Volume 41, Part I - reports. Washington: Government Printing Office. Pages 144-155. Retrieved from: books.google.com/books?id=RXRx_S2BspYC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
