The subsequent events in a paper this year from the University of Oklahoma College of Law. Mears said that the conflict moved to a ravine after around 20 minutes of “bitter,
Close quarters fighting,” when the cavalry “used M1875 Hotchkiss mountain guns (breech-loading cannons) to fire into the locations where Natives were seeking shelter.”
Approximately two dozen Army casualties and 200 to 300 Lakota people were among the dead, depending on the source.
After lying in the snow for a few days, several remains were finally collected by the soldiers and interred in a mass grave.
According to Mears, preliminary enquiries into the incident revealed that noncombatants had been killed, but they disregarded evidence to the contrary and justified the fatalities as accidental.
