Early in 1870 citizens of Cheyenne and the territory of Wyoming organized a mining and prospecting company that professed an intention to explore the Big Horn country in northern Wyoming, but was believed by the Sioux to contemplate a visit to the Black Hills within their reserve. The local Sioux agent remonstrated against this, and General C. C. Augur was sent to Cheyenne to confer with the leaders of the expedition. He found Wyoming in a state of irritation against the Sioux treaty, which left the Indians in control of their Powder River country--the best third of the territory. He sympathized with the frontiersmen, but finally was forced by orders from Washington to prevent the expedition from starting into the field. Four years later this deferred reconnoissance took place as an official expedition under General Custer, with "great excitement among the whole Sioux." The approach from the northeast of the Northern Pacific, which had reached a landing at Bismarck on the Missouri before the panic of 1873, still further increased the apprehension of the tribes that they were to be dispossessed. The Indian Commissioner, in the end of 1874, believed that no harm would come of the expedition since no great gold finds had been made, but the Montana historian was nearer the truth when he wrote: "The whole Sioux nation was successfully defied." It was a clear violation of the tribal right, and necessarily emboldened the frontiersmen to prospect on their own account. [Illustration: POSITION OF RENO ON THE LITTLE BIG HORN From a photograph made by Mr. W. R. Bowlin, of Chicago, and reproduced by his permission]