Martial law would be declared and order restored by state and federal troops. When union miners had started the strike earlier in the summer, mine owners employed nonunion workers, hired armed guards to protect them, and obtained an injunction against the strikers. In 1894 and in 1899 federal troops were again used to crush strikes at the mines.

Jack Harris, born and raised in Texas, led an adventuresome life. At an early age he worked for the U.S. Army as a scout and Indian fighter. During the Civil War, Harris served in the Confederate cavalry. Following the war, he fought in Central American revolutions. Returning to the U.S., Harris was one of the last great Buffalo hunters, providing meat and skins for the railroads moving west in the late 1870s. He then moved to San Antonio where he served briefly as a policeman, later becoming a gambler and winning several small fortunes. He and another gambler, Ernest Hart, formed a partnership and opened the Green Front Saloon, which had a full theater, the Vaudeville House, on the second floor. Harris' wealth grew, and he was well liked in San Antonio. One of Harris' few enemies was Texas gunfighter Ben Thompson. Ben Thompson rode into San Antonio drunk stormed, into the Green Front Saloon, demanding that Harris get a gun and meet him in the street. Ben was still ticked over a poker dispute from 1880. Harris, who entered the saloon after Thompson had left, got a gun and waited inside the saloon for his nemesis. Thompson appeared a short time later and saw Harris waiting with a shotgun behind some Venetian blinds. Before Harris could fire, Thompson squeezed off a fatal round that smashed through the blinds and into Harris' right lung. The gambler fell to the floor and Thompson fired another round at him and left. Harris got to his feet, staggered upstairs to his apartment, and died there that night. Thompson, who was the city marshal of Austin, Texas, at the time, resigned and turned himself over to the San Antonio sheriff. He pleaded self-defense in a quick trial and was acquitted.

General Albert M. Winn, a Virginian who came to California during Gold Rush days and who was deeply impressed with the fortitude of the men and women of the period, organized the Native Sons of the Golden West in San Francisco on July 11, 1875. General Winn sought to immortalize those pioneer fathers and mothers.

In the 1870s, a number of fur trading posts were established along Battle Creek, which runs through Cypress Hills.

As the authority of the Hudson's Bay Company slowly eroded across the West in the late-1860s, the region around Cypress Hill, close to the international border, became a haven for American desperadoes seeking their fortune in an illegal whiskey trade. All too frequently, whiskey trading touched off terrible scenes of violence. "In this traffic very many Indians were killed," reported one contemporary account, "and also quite a number of white men.

In 1873, a bloody "battle" known as the Cypress Hills Massacre took place when American wolfers, who were stopped at one of the posts, lost some horses. They believed the horses had been stolen by a group of Lakoda (Assiniboine) camped nearby, and after much drinking set out to take revenge.

These "wolfers" were known to authorities in Canada. A gang of 100-300 Americans had stolen a couple of U.S. military cannon and set up a stronghold just across the border at Fort Hamilton in the Territories. Fort Hamilton was a former Hudson's Bay fort, one of many the Hudson Bay Company abandoned as they pulled out of of the territories. From this base, some 50 miles north of the U.S. border, the wolfers smuggled whisky in from Montana to sell to the Indians and hunted the fast-dwindling buffalo on the prairie. The wolfers got their name from their practice of poisoning the carcasses of buffalo left behind by robe traders, and then harvesting the furs from the dead wolves and coyotes that ate the tainted meat.

Indian dogs, and sometimes the people, too, were also killed this way.

In the ensuing battle with the wolfers, between 16 and 22 Lakoda, including women and children One wolfer was also killed.

Although it took several months for the news to filter back to the eastern press, when the story did break, the country became enraged. The slaughter was seen as a clear indication that the Canadian West was at risk of emulating the wild frontier which existed south of the border. American involvement in the incident was particularly disturbing. The free movement of Montana traders across the international border was seen both as an infringement of Canadian sovereignty, and as a blatant disregard for Canada's desire to have a peaceful frontier under British law.

The massacre convinced Sir John A. McDonald to pass a bill establishing a force known as the North West Mounted Police -- a force that would later become the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or the Mounties. Fort Walsh was established near the trading posts and served the North West Mounted Police until 1883. The duties of the NWMP was to: suppress the whiskey trade; bring law and order to Canada's North West Territories; establish a Canadian presence; and peacefully encourage the First Nations to sign treaties and settle on reserves

Although several of the murderers were later arrested and tried in Canada, none was ever convicted, and the case was officially closed in 1882.

Fort Walsh stills exists as a tourist site. The site of the massacre is marked nearby.

Tall Bull, a prominent leader of the Cheyenne Dog Soldier warrior society, is killed during the Battle of Summit Springs in Colorado. Tall Bull was the most distinguished of several Cheyenne warriors who bore this hereditary name. He was a leader of the Dog Soldiers, a fierce Cheyenne society of warriors that had initially fought against other Indian tribes. In the 1860s, though, the Dog Soldiers increasingly became one of the most implacable foes of the U.S. government in the bloody Plains Indian Wars. In October 1868, Tall Bull and his Dog Soldiers badly mauled an American cavalry force in Colorado. He confronted General Philip Sheridan's forces the following winter in Oklahoma. Near the Washita River, Sheridan's Lieutenant Colonel George Custer attacked a peaceful Cheyenne village under Chief Black Kettle.

The Cheyenne suffered more than 100 casualties, and Custer's soldiers brutally butchered more than 800 of their horses. However, Custer was forced to flee when Tall Bull and other chiefs camped in nearby villages began to mass for attack. Custer's attack had badly damaged the Cheyenne, but Tall Bull refused to surrender to the Americans. In the spring of 1869, Tall Bull and his Dog Soldiers took their revenge, staging a series of successful attacks against soldiers who were searching for him. Determined to destroy the chief, the U.S. Army formed a special expeditionary force under the command of General Eugene Carr. On this day in 1869, Carr surprised Tall Bull and his warriors in their camp at Summit Springs, Colorado. In the ensuing battle, Tall Bull was killed and the Dog Soldiers were overwhelmed. Without the dynamic leadership of their chief, the surviving Dog Soldiers' resistance was broken. Although other Cheyenne continued to fight the American military for another decade, they did so without the aid of their greatest warrior society and its leader.