Qualla: Battle of Honsinger Bluff

Battle of Honsinger Bluff: Introduction

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Naawada2016, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Ree scout grabbed the reins of Dr. John Honsinger's horse, pointed west, and said the only English words that mattered: "Indians, Indians." Honsinger, the 7th Cavalry's senior veterinary surgeon, heard gunfire in that direction and corrected the scout with the confidence of a man who understood nothing. "Cavalry, cavalry," he replied, and rode on toward the river to water his horse. He was dead within the hour. The Battle of Honsinger Bluff on August 4, 1873, is a footnote in the Indian Wars, overshadowed by the catastrophe that would consume George Armstrong Custer three years later at Little Bighorn. Yet the cast of characters assembling along the Yellowstone River that summer day reads like a dress rehearsal for disaster: Custer, his brother Tom, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Rain in the Face. Many who survived this encounter would not survive the next.

Image: Naawada2016 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Battle of Honsinger Bluff: Treaty Lands and Contested Ground

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Naawada2016, CC BY-SA 4.0. The battlefield near present-day Miles City, Montana, occupied territory with a complicated past. The 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie had defined this as Crow country, a recognition the Lakota themselves acknowledged. But pressure from eastern tribes pushed westward by white settleme...

Image: Naawada2016 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Battle of Honsinger Bluff: The Decoy and the Siege

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Naawada2016, CC BY-SA 4.0. Custer had led 86 men ahead of Colonel David S. Stanley's 1,300-man column, which was escorting a Northern Pacific Railway survey party. By noon on August 4, his troops were resting in a cottonwood grove along the Yellowstone, their horses grazing on the floodplain, some men napp...

Image: Naawada2016 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Battle of Honsinger Bluff: The Ambush That Named a Bluff

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Naawada2016, CC BY-SA 4.0. While battle raged miles away, Dr. Honsinger and the regiment's sutler, Augustus Baliran, left the main column to water their horses, possibly to hunt for agates along the river. A New York Tribune correspondent had ridden with Honsinger that morning and described him as a portly...

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Battle of Honsinger Bluff: A Vow of Revenge

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Naawada2016, CC BY-SA 4.0. Rain in the Face kept Honsinger's gold watch and later bragged about the killings. When Custer learned of the boasts, he sent Tom to arrest the warrior at the Standing Rock Reservation. Apprehended and jailed on December 13, 1874, Rain in the Face escaped within months and swore ...

Image: Naawada2016 | CC BY-SA 4.0