The 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie gave the Sioux and Cheyenne Indian tribes control over a wide region, covering Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, and part of the Dakotas. But in the 1870s, gold was discovered in the Black Hills, and white settlers invaded Indian Territory in desperate search for the precious mineral. Clashes between miners and Indian erupted, and the U.S. government decreed that all Indians in the northwest should be living on reservations by January 1876. The Sioux and the Cheyenne refused to obey, so the Bureau of Indian Affairs called in the military to enforce the order. 

Brigadier General George Crook led the Big Horn and Yellowstone expeditionary forces into Southern Montana against rebellious Sioux. But Crazy Horse, leading a party of Sioux and Cheyenne, defeated a portion of Crook's command at Powder River in March 1876. In his chagrin and determination for revenge, Crook led his troops to the Rosebud Canyon to destroy Crazy Horse's village.

The two powerful forces, each numbering more than one thousand men, met at the Rosebud River on June 17. At the end of the fierce, day-long battle, Crook returned to his base nearly forty miles away, convinced that he had won. However, time would prove differently.

Though the Battle of the Rosebud had a significant impact on the rest of the campaign against the Sioux, it had often been eclipsed by the Battle of the Little Big Horn. It was not until With Crook at the Rosebud was first published that a clear history of the battle emerged.