Scout Frank LaFramboise, a mixed blood Santee,…

Scout Frank LaFramboise, a mixed blood Santee, informs Sully of the location of the large Sioux encampment ten miles ahead on the morning of July 28.

Sully’s scouts report fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred tipis in the Sioux encampment.

Sully believes he will be faced by five thousand to six thousand warriors.

The Sioux will later claim they had sixteen hundred warriors in the battle—likely closer to the truth, with a calculation of one to two adult males per tipi.

The Sioux in the encampment consist mostly of Lakota (Teton) from the Hunkpapa, Sihasapa, Miniconjou, and Sans Arc bands plus Yanktonais, and a few Santees.

The Sioux are mostly armed only with bows and arrows and a few short-range muskets and shotguns.

Many of the Sioux, especially the Tetons, had not been hostile to the U.S. before this encounter.

Sully’s crushing defeat of the large Sioux force at Killdeer Mountain breaks the back of Sioux resistance; his force then sweeps westward to the Yellowstone River, killing those of the Sioux who decide to stand and fight, before returning to the newly established Fort Rice near present-day Bismark, North Dakota.