During the late 1800s, miners, traders, and homesteaders rushed west, pushing Northern Plains tribes into ever smaller remnants of their homelands as treaties with the U.S. government were made and broken and tensions rose between Native Americans and newcomers. For the Santee Lakota Sioux, tensions peaked in August 1865 after an uprising in Minnesota Territory left 450-800 settlers and soldiers dead, and Brig. Gen. Henry Sibley was sent with 1,400 soldiers to suppress it; many Santee were captured, while others fled west to join other Lakota bands. Sibley and Brig. Gen. Alfred Sully pursued the Santee into Dakota Territory, where Sibley fought several battles in July and August 1863, and Sully attacked a Sioux village at Whitestone Hill in September in the fiercest battle ever fought in North Dakota. In June 1864, Sully led the first military expedition into the badlands to further punish the Sioux and establish new military posts; he engaged the Sioux at Killdeer Mountain on July 28, and later a Sioux surprise attack in a narrow gorge began the two-day running fight called the Battle of the Badlands, which ended at Square Butte with the Sioux in retreat. From 1871 to 1873, Northern Pacific Railroad survey parties escorted by large military detachments crossed the Dakota badlands amid tensions over westward railroad expansion, with expeditions accompanied or led by Major Joseph Whistler and Colonel David Stanley, including Stanley's 1873 column of almost 2,000 men, 275 wagons, and a cattle herd retracing the Davis Creek route; these expeditions saw a few skirmishes with the Sioux but no major confrontations. In 1876, after the U.S. government sought to force the Lakota Sioux to cede the Black Hills despite an 1868 treaty, Brig. Gen. Alfred H. Terry and Custer's 7th Cavalry headed west from Fort Abraham Lincoln to enforce the order, crossed the badlands near Easy Hill on May 27, and continued into Montana toward the Battle of Little Bighorn, where Custer and more of his men died; afterward Terry's troops returned through the badlands to Ft. Abraham Lincoln, while Brig. Gen. George Crook led troops northeast from Montana through the badlands and then south into South Dakota to fight the Sioux at Slim Buttes. Between 1864 and 1876, five military expeditions crossed this country, and although only a couple of skirmishes occurred in the badlands themselves, these movements formed an important part of the history of the Great Sioux War.