Fighting in the Buttes

One small group got clear of the pursuit. Morning Star, the leader the army called Dull Knife, went out with a party of women and children; the Oklahoma Historical Society says they hid in a rock shelter for ten days in subzero weather before reaching the Pine Ridge Agency, and Britannica counts six who escaped, Morning Star and surviving members of his family among them. He later settled on the new Tongue River reservation in Montana and died in 1883 in the home of his son, Bull Hump. In 1917 his remains were reburied at Lame Deer.

What the plaque says

Fighting in the Buttes After escaping from Fort Robinson on January 9, 1879, the Cheyennes climbed the buttes to the south and fled through this area, pursued by Third Cavalrymen. Soldiers and Cheyennes fought sharp engagements west of here on January 11 and 13. The pursuit continued to near the Wyoming border before the Cheyennes turned northeast. On January 22 the survivors reached Antelope Creek, north of present-day Harrison. In a final charge by the soldiers, the last thirty-two Cheyennes were killed or captured. Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Robinson State Park — 3.0 mi
  The army post beside the Red Cloud Agency where Crazy Horse was bayoneted in 1877 and Morning Star's Northern Cheyenne broke out into the January cold of 1879.
• Toadstool Geologic Park — 14 mi
  A pocket of badlands in the Oglala National Grassland where sandstone caps balance on clay stems, ancient tracks cross the rock, and a trail leads on to a 10,000-year-old bison bone bed.
• Agate Fossil Beds National Monument — 20 mi
  A fossil quarry on the Niobrara that also keeps the gifts Red Cloud and other Lakota and Cheyenne visitors gave the ranching family who were their friends for thirty-five years.

More markers nearby

• The Cheyenne Outbreak — 1.7 mi
• Buffalo Soldiers at Fort Robinson — 2.7 mi
• Officers' Row, 1909 — 2.8 mi
• 1887 Barracks Row — 2.9 mi