Killdeer Mountain Four Bears Scenic Byway
Killdeer Battlefield State Historic Site, ND

This site commemorates a battle fought on July 28, 1864 between troops commanded by General Alfred Sully and Sioux Indians. Sully's force had been sent into the Dakota's territory to develop routes to western gold fields and also to punish those Indians who had participated in Minnesota's Dakota Conflict of 1862. Many of the Sioux groups gathered at Killdeer Mountain had not participated in the Dakota conflict and had sought to make peace with the government.

Sully's force, equipped with several cannons, attacked and shelled the encampment. Warriors, as well as unarmed men, women, and children, fled into the Little Missouri Badlands. American Indian oral tradition says that many of these people escaped through an opening at the top of Killdeer Mountain known as the Medicine Hole. Sully estimated between 100 and 150 Sioux were killed, but the exact number is unknown. His troops suffered two deaths. The Sioux lodges and all winter supplies were destroyed by Sully's men who then moved west across the Badlands to Fort Union Trading Post at the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers near what is now Williston, ND. During this march, the soldiers skirmished with many of the warriors they had faced at Killdeer Mountain. The conflict at Killdeer Mountain further embittered relations between many Northern Plains tribes and the US government. Sully's campaign, culminating at Killdeer Mountain, was not the end of hostilities but instead, a prelude to the Sioux Wars of the 1870s.