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 the Cheyenne during the Plains Wars because they thought the other nation was under attack by the US. Given this connection, she suggests the major war should have been called "The Great Cheyenne War". Since 1860, the Northern Cheyenne had led several battles among the Plains Indians. Before 1876, the U.S. Army had destroyed seven Cheyenne camps, more than those of any other nation. Other historians, such as Robert M. Utley and Jerome Greene, also use Lakota oral testimony, but they have concluded that the Lakota coalition, of which Sitting Bull was the ostensible head, was the primary target of