The land at the confluence of the Yellowstone and Powder Rivers became an important military camp in both exploration and war. The first encampment here occurred on July 30, 1805, when Captain William Clark and other members of the Corps of Discovery camped on the north bank of the Yellowstone River about a mile downstream while hurrying home to reunite with Meriwether Lewis and his party on the Missouri River, having survived this far with the friendliness and help of numerous native tribes to the West. Seventy years later, the same place became a staging ground for the U.S. government's war to subdue native cultures and transform the region. During the six-year war against the Sioux Nation in the 1870s, land downstream on both sides of the Powder River regularly served as an organizing site for troops, with tents for battalions of soldiers, civilian support teams on the fringes, and steamboats unloading cargo. On July 4, 1876, hundreds of soldiers camped here with General Terry, with wood prepared for bonfires on Sheridan Butte and a hilltop to the south, but that afternoon the steamboat Far West arrived with news of the Battle of Little Bighorn: General Armstrong Custer and the entire Seventh Cavalry, who had camped near here just days earlier, were dead. An account from Stanley's expedition reported that on the morning of August 22, 1872, as troops were going into camp near O'Fallon's Creek, Indians concealed themselves behind rough hills and on a high, rugged promontory overlooking the valley, and during the skirmish an Indian identifying himself as Sitting Bull called out from behind a rock, naming the Sioux, Arapahoes, and Cheyennes as bands he would bring against them.