In early 1876, fighting escalated between the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne and American miners and settlers as pressure from non-Indians in the region, together with the Indians' desire to live free on the northern Great Plains, brought the two sides into conflict. After issuing an ultimatum to the tribes in late 1975, the US Army planned a three-pronged attack to trap the Indians near the Little Bighorn River, with columns converging on the Big Horn River area from the east, west, and south to defeat the tribes and return them to the reservation in Dakota Territory. Colonel John Gibbon and troops from the 5th Infantry left Fort Shaw on the Sun River in March 1876, joined elements of the Second Cavalry near Fort Ellis in the Gallatin Valley, and marched down the Yellowstone Valley, sometimes through hip-deep snow, reaching the mouth of the Stillwater River about 10 miles west of here on April 8th. Gibbon then rode with a small detachment of officers to the Crow Agency on Rosebud Creek, where he hired Crow warriors to scout ahead as the soldiers advanced downriver to the Little Bighorn. While the column camped at the mouth of the Stillwater, a company of infantry from Camp Baker joined it, the soldiers rested, and many spent their 8-day stay fishing, taking more than 500 pounds of trout from the river. Poor communication among the three columns undermined the campaign from the beginning. After several weeks of marching back and forth along the Yellowstone, the Montana Column joined General Alfred Terry's troops from the east, and the combined force marched south up the Big Horn River. On June 27, 1876, the soldiers found the remains of Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer's Seventh Cavalry after its defeat by the Indians on the Little Bighorn, and they rescued several companies of cavalrymen under Major Marcus Reno who had been besieged by the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne a few miles south of Custer's defeat. The Montana Column played an important part in the 1876-77 Centennial Campaign against the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne.