Crook sent Captain Anson Mills and scout Frank Grouard, with four officers and 150 men on the soundest horses, to bring back 61 pack-mules loads of food from Deadwood. Near Slim Buttes in the northeast corner of South Dakota, they stumbled on a sioux village of 37 lodges. Milles sent a messenger back to Crook and waited in a drenching rain until daylight.
The villagers were completely unprepared for Mills attack. Most scattered madly to the hills, though a few, led by Chief American Horse, fled to a box canyon and dug in. American Horse shouted warnings that Crazy Horse would soon come to rescue him. Mills appropriated the Indian food in the village and penned up the hold-outs in the dead-end gully till Crook should come to his assistance.
Crook arrived before the regrouping Sioux could counterattack against the game Mills. He posted vedettes on the hills to keep a sharp watch for Crazy Horse as rifle fire raked the ravine. Finally, American Horse gave up. He was shot, and was holding in his intestines with his hands. He died ...
Slim Buttes was hardly an answer to Little Bighorn. It was no smashing, decisive, victory. But it improved morale by ending the Army's string of reverses.(9)