In 1870 the Pawnee scouts were still working to protect the railroad but eventually they were disbanded. With the outbreak of the Great Sioux War in 1876, Major North was ordered by General Philip Sheridan to travel to Indian Territory, where the Pawnee now lived, to organize another company for General George Crook's Little Bighorn Campaign. Living in poverty, the Pawnee men were willing to enlist for pay. North recruited 100 of the Pawnees and headed back north, to Fort Robinson, Nebraska where the Sioux chiefs Sitting Bull and Red Cloud were active in fighting the army. Major North and his men arrived at the fort on October 22 and immediately thereafter began a march to the camp of Chief Red Cloud with a regiment of cavalry. On the following morning, North's command advanced on the camp and took it, capturing Red Cloud and over 700 ponies which were later sold. The chief and his band were then marched to Fort Robinson and imprisoned there until the end of the war in 1877. In November, 1876, General Ranald S. Mackenzie led seventy Pawnee scouts and 800 cavalrymen into the Big Horn Mountains to attack a "well concealed" Cheyenne camp. When General Mackenzie launched his attack most fled, leaving their provisions and lodges to be piled up and burnt by the soldiers. Some 650 ponies were also captured and over forty natives died from exposure of starvation in the following weeks. The attack left the Cheyenne destitute.