Sitting Bull in their land, as specified in the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie. It was alarmed at reports of Sioux depredations (encouraged by Sitting Bull). In November 1875, President Grant ordered all Sioux bands outside the Great Sioux Reservation to move onto the reservation, knowing full well that not all would comply. As of February 1, 1876, the Interior Department certified as "hostile" those bands who continued to live off the reservation. This certification allowed the military to pursue Sitting Bull and other Lakota bands as "hostiles". Based on tribal oral histories, historian Margot Liberty theorizes many Lakota bands allied with
Sitting Bull parties against Fort Berthold, Fort Stevenson, and Fort Buford and their environs from 1865 through 1868. Sitting Bull also made guerrilla attacks on emigrant parties and smaller forts throughout the upper Missouri River region. By early 1868, the U.S. government desired a peaceful settlement to Red Cloud's War. It agreed to Red Cloud's demands that the US abandon forts Phil Kearny and C.F. Smith. Gall of the Hunkpapa (among other representatives of the Hunkpapa, Blackfeet, and Yankton Dakota) signed a form of the Treaty of Fort Laramie on July 2, 1868 at Fort Rice (near Bismarck, North Dakota). Sitting Bull