While the Indians were making scattered raids, ... the Army was concentrating on only one thing. The Californian, General Patrick Edward Connor, was trying to mount a major offensive, one worthy of the Civil War campaingns in the East. But the Powder River Expedition was slowed by muddy terrain, bad weather, mutinous troops, short rations and indequate forage for animals. Volunteers demanded their discharges. And some got them. Alarms from the Black Hills and Minnesota siphoned off Connor's manpower. Finally, Connor moved out three colums to randezvous at Rosebud Creek around 1 September 1865. Colonel Nelson Coe took the Right Column of 1.400 men and Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Walker the Center Colum of 600-plus men. ... Connor himself took the Left Colum, about 600 men including Captain Frank North's Pawnee Scouts, with Jim Bridger as guide. It was the biggest Army operation in the West, except perhaps for the combined Sibley-Sully punitive raids of Santee War. Connor had several skirmishes, in one of which his Pawnees bested a Cheyenne war party. Near the Bozeman Trail crossing the Powder River he built Fort Connor, then fought a bloody draw with Black Bear's Arapahos. Red Cloud's Oglala Sioux and Dull Knife's Cheyennes were harassing his two other units, but he did not know it.

"The Skirmish Line" by Charles Schreyvogel

It was now 11 September and the only information on Cole and Walker that Connor had was the discovery by his Pawnees of hundreds of their horses, dead, and their saddles burned. Finally, with the Pawnees' help, the link-up was made on 24 September. But two of the three divisions of the Powder River Expedition were complete wrecks. Most horses were dead and most men starving when Connor rescued them. Luckily for Connor, new orders arrived ... He terminated the expedition and headed for Salt Lake City. The real reason for the Army's discontinuance of Connor's campaign was its excessive cost. The Indians were bankrupting the Army! And while the former claimed to have killed or wounded from 200 to 500 Indians, the latter confessed that his men might not have killed a single warrior. But Connor fought the Arapahos to a bloody draw and his Pawnnes won a skirmish. ... the combination of hostiles, bad terrain and filthy weather beat his unwieldy army. Worst of all, his supposedly powerfull expedition, instead of chastening the Indians, only emboldened them. (9)