The nomadic tribes, especially the Sioux, did not take as kindly to the white invasion as did the agricultural groups. However, the principal disturbances involving this tribe--the Minnesota Massacre of 1862, which extended to Abercrombie within the limits of present North Dakota; Sibley's campaign to the Missouri in 1863; Sully's expeditions into Dakota in 1863-64; and the battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876, when Gen. George A. Custer and five companies of cavalry were wiped out--none of these major conflicts involved the Sioux as a whole, but rather one or more of the seven Council Fires, as they call their tribal divisions. These seven groups are the Mdewakanton, Wahpekute, Sisseton, and Wahpeton, who inhabited the region about Lake Traverse and the Big Sioux River and east to the Mississippi; the Yankton and Yanktonai, who lived along the course of the James River; and the Teton, who dwelt west of the Missouri. The four Council Fires first named were responsible for the uprising and massacre in Minnesota in 1862, in which about 400 settlers and 100 white soldiers lost their lives. Sibley and Sully were sent into Dakota Territory in 1863-64 to punish the perpetrators of this massacre, but although they punished Sioux, they probably did not punish the offending bands (_see_ HISTORY). While all the Sioux were bitter in their objection to the whites, it was the Teton, or prairie Sioux, whose seven bands constituted more than one-half the tribe, who were the most unremitting in their hostility. These bands were the Ogallala, Brulé, Hunkpapa, Blackfeet, Minneconjou, Sans Arcs, and Two Kettle. Of these the Hunkpapa and Ogallala were the most numerous. They were also probably the most inflexible in their determination not to yield to white sovereignty, and formed the backbone of the Indian opposition in the disasters at Fort Phil Kearney in Wyoming and at the Little Big Horn in Montana. The other North Dakota nomadic tribes did not give the newcomers as much trouble as did the Sioux. The Assiniboin were a wandering people, less certain of fixed habitation than the Sioux and Chippewa. In spite of the uncertainty of their lives and their constant warfare with the Sioux, in the early part of the nineteenth century they numbered about 1,200 lodges. Not long afterward they were reduced by a plague of smallpox to less than 400 lodges. The Chippewa made a treaty with the Government in 1815 after the border troubles incident to the War of 1812, and have since remained peaceful, almost all residing on reservations or allotted lands within their original territory in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota. At the close of the eighteenth century there were perhaps 25,000 Chippewa, while at the beginning of the twentieth there were in the neighborhood of 30,000, approximately 1,000 of whom were in North Dakota.