The Red River War 1874 1875

In the summer of 1874, Lieutenant General Philip H. Sheridan sent a large U.S. Army force against the Southern Plains Indians. Large numbers of the Cheyenne, Comanche, and Kiowa tribes fled their Indian Territory reservations that summer and headed for the sanctuary of the Staked Plains and the Texas panhandle. In what became known as The Red River War of 1874, the Army attacked and pursued the Indians for many months throughout the fall and winter of 1874 and 1875 until finally all of the remaining fugitive Indians returned to the reservations and surrendered. In what would be the largest US Army campaign against the Indians after the Civil War, Lieutenant General Sheridan and his subordinate commanders effectively planned and executed simultaneous operations which definitively ended Southern Plains Indian resistance to white expansion.