Rensselaer Union, Volume 11, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 July 1879 — General Miles’ Recent Fight With the Indians. [ARTICLE]

General Miles’ Recent Fight With the Indians.

A dispatch from St. Paul, received at General Sheridan’s headquarters yesterday, confirmed the .reports of yesterday’s papers in regard to the engagement between General Miles’ command and the Indians on the 17th of July. On that day the advance column under Lieutenant Clark, of the Second Cavalry, composed of Lieutenant Barden’s company, Fifth Infantry, Lieutenant Hopkins’ company, Second Cavalry, and fifty Indian scouts, mot a party of about four hundred hostile Indians between Beaver Creek and the mouth of Frenchman’s Creek, and had an engagement. The Indians were routed and pursued twelve miles to the north, where the troops became separated. The Indians crossed to the north of Milk River. The troops fought well, and the Indians with them, Cheyennes, Sioux, Crows, Assiniboines and Bannocks, acted well, fighting with the troops and killing several hostiles, and forced them to abandon much property. Two men of Company C and two Cheyenne scouts were wounded. A scouting party that had been sent to the north of Milk River, near tlie head of Porcupine Creek, reported that the main camp of Sitting Bull, composed of I, COO lodges, had removed from Frenchman’s River to the Little Rocky, and the’ report was corroborated by others who had been in the hostile camp as late as June 16, at the former place. Miles expected to move up between Frenchman’s and the Little Rocky, where he anticipated another engagement with the Indians. : The commanding officer at Custer telegraphs that Lieutenant Lapoint, of the Second Cavalry, at Terry’s Landing, reports that Wolf’s band of Crows was at the landing, with information that three hundred lodges of Sioux were south of the Missouri, on the way to the Tongue River to make friends with the whites. Dispatches received at Sheridan’s headquarters report that Major Ilges, commanding at the mouth of the Muscle Shell, says that ten Sioux, with thirty stolen horses from the Judith, crossed the Missouri, June 19, eleven miles above his station. Lieutenant Vanarsdale. commanding the Seventh Infantry, with eight men, followed and caught up with live of the Indians and killed one and drove the others into the “ badlands.” General Sheridan expressed an opinion yesterday, that the trouble between General Miles and Sitting Bull’s band was at an end. He says it was ohly a hunting party met and routed by Miles’ troops, and they probably returned to Sitting Bull’s camp, which is in British America, that night, as they were but thirty miles from the line whelf 4 they met the troops. As to their returning, he thinks it will not be until Miles has left that part of the country, for it is all humbug to talk about so many thousand Indians belonging to Sitting Bull’s command. The 1,600 lodges there number all the Indiijis, including those who went from Minnesota in 1863, and they are peaceful and will remain so until disturbed in their homes, which will never be by the United States soldiers. The hostile Indians did not number more than 700 or 800 warriors, and Miles had about 1,000 men with him. Three thousand lodges of the Indians who had been in that country had already gone south of the Tongue River, to make friepds with the whites. Chicago Inler- Ocean, July 24.