In March 1863 Connor was appointed Brigadier General, U.S. Volunteers, and appointed to command Utah Military District, with headquarters at Fort Douglas. He thereupon led the Powder River expedition to quell the Sioux and Comanche in 1865, an action which signalled commencement of the struggle for the Bozeman Trail which raged in the watershed of the Big Horry Mountains for the next 16 years between the frontier Army and the Indians, culminating in the shocking defeat of Custer on the Little Bighorn and, in turn, the ultimate suppression of the warring Sioux and their allies. Connor's expedition is called "on the whole a dismal failure," but it did establish a short-lived peace and it did prove that the Army could not successfully' contend with Indian warriors battling desperately on ground of their own choosing (to protect their last hunting grounds) with large, ungainly columns filled with troops anxious to get home now that the war was over. During late 1865 and in 1866 Connor ranged far and wide, from Colorado to the Dakotas, commanding regiments of Galvanized Yankees, or ex-Confederate soldiers recruited in prison camps to serve in the blue-clad army against the Indians in the
In March 1863 Connor was appointed Brigadier General, U.S. Volunteers, and appointed to command Utah Military District, with headquarters at Fort Douglas. He thereupon led the Powder River expedition to quell the Sioux and Comanche in 1865, an action which signalled commencement of the struggle for the Bozeman Trail which raged in the watershed of the Big Horry Mountains for the next 16 years between the frontier Army and the Indians, culminating in the shocking defeat of Custer on the Little Bighorn and, in turn, the ultimate suppression of the warring Sioux and their allies. Connor's expedition is called "on the whole a dismal failure," but it did establish a short-lived peace and it did prove that the Army could not successfully' contend with Indian warriors battling desperately on ground of their own choosing (to protect their last hunting grounds) with large, ungainly columns filled with troops anxious to get home now that the war was over. During late 1865 and in 1866 Connor ranged far and wide, from Colorado to the Dakotas, commanding regiments of Galvanized Yankees, or ex-Confederate soldiers recruited in prison camps to serve in the blue-clad army against the Indians in the