Lighting the Fuse

On March 17, 1876, U.S. Army Col. Joseph J. Reynolds led six cavalry companies on an early morning attack against a Northern Cheyenne village on the Powder River on the border of the Montana and Wyoming Territories. The attack ignited an 18-month war that changed the course of history for the United States and the Indian nations of the Northern Plains. For over 140 years, journalists, pundits and historians have analyzed the Great Sioux War that followed Reynolds’ controversial attack, but unt