Fort Robinson Sioux Nebraska United States
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Crook's forces disband after reaching Camp Robinson.
A number of diplomatic efforts are underway in an effort to end the war while military leaders begin planning a spring campaign against the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne who have refused to come in.
As the winter wears on, rumors reach Camp Robinson that the northern bands are interested in surrendering.
The commanding officer sends out a peace delegation.
About thirty young men, mostly Oglala and Northern Cheyenne, depart the Red Cloud Agency on January 16, 1877, to make the dangerous journey north.
Among the most prominent members of this delegation is a young Oglala named Enemy Bait (better known later as George Sword).
He is the son of the prominent headman Brave Bear.
The Northern Cheyenne, upon arrival at the reservation in present-day Oklahoma, had encountered inadequate rations, no buffalo left alive near the reservation, and malaria.
A portion of the Northern Cheyenne, led by Little Wolf and Dull Knife, had attempted to return to the north in the fall of 1877 in the Northern Cheyenne Exodus.
Living off the land, sometimes raiding and killing settlers and cattlemen along the way to obtain horses and food, they had succeeded in reaching the north.
After they divided into two bands, the one led by Dull Knife was captured and imprisoned in an unheated barracks at Fort Robinson without food or water.
When the Cheyenne escape on January 9, 1879, many die at US Army hands in the subsequent Fort Robinson massacre.
Eventually the U.S. government grants the Northern Cheyenne a northern reservation, the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in present-day southern Montana.