Nearly twenty years before the Little Bighorn the Sioux consolidated their hold upon the Plains. It started here.

The Crow tribe were deeply involved in the tribal conflicts engendered by the domino effect of European expansion from the East. Brian Keefe reveals that they were exposed on too many different fronts and hastened their own downfall as a power in the land.  Here he deals specifically with the rise of the Sioux Nation in a seminal encounter as they began to become the ascendant power in the region. Delving into Crow oral history the author discovers details of the death of Sitting Bull's father and the resultant war which brought the avenging Hunkpapa chief to the leadership of the Sioux in the days before the cavalry arrived in main force on the Plains.