"The Battle of the Little Bighorn, which took place on June 25, 1876, near the Little Bighorn River in Montana Territory, pitted Federal forces under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer (1839-1876) against a band of Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne warriors. Tensions between the two groups had been rising since the discovery of gold on Native American lands. When a number of tribes missed the federal deadline to move to reservations, the U.S. Army, including Custer and the 7th Cavalry, was sent to confront them. Custer was unaware of the number of Indians fighting under Sitting Bull (c. 1831-1890) at the Little Bighorn, and his forces were outnumbered and quickly overwhelmed in what became known as Custer's Last Stand.
Battle of the Little Bighorn: Tensions rise
Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse (c. 1840–1877), leaders of the Sioux tribe of the Great Plains, strongly resisted mid-nineteenth-century U.S. government efforts to confine their people to Indian reservations. In 1875, after gold was discovered in the Black Hills region of South Dakota, the U.S. Army ignored previous treaty agreements and invaded the region. This betrayal led many Sioux and Cheyenne tribesmen to leave their reservations and join Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse in Montana. By the late spring of 1876, more than 10,000 Native Americans had gathered at a camp along the Little Bighorn River—which they called Greasy Grass—in defiance of a U.S. War Department order to return to their reservations or risk being attacked.
Did you know? Several members of George Armstrong Custer's family were also killed at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, including two of his brothers, a brother-in-law, and a nephew.
In mid-June, three columns of American soldiers lined up facing the camp and prepared to advance. A force of 1,200 Native American soldiers returned the first column on June 17. Five days later, General Alfred Terry ordered George Custer's 7th Cavalry Division to scout enemy forces. On the morning of June 25, Custer, a West Point graduate, approached the camp and decided to move forward rather than wait for reinforcements.
Battle of the Little Bighorn: Custer's Last Stand
At midday on June 25, Custer's 600 men entered the Little Bighorn Valley. Among the Native Americans, word spread quickly about the impending attack. The older bull rallied the warriors and took care of the safety of the women and children, while Crazy Horse rode out in great force to meet the attackers head-on. Despite Custer's desperate attempts to regroup his men, they are quickly overwhelmed. Custer and about 200 men in his regiment were attacked by as many as 3,000 Native Americans. Within an hour, Custer and all his soldiers were dead.
The Battle of the Little Bighorn, also called Custer's Last Stand, marked the most decisive victory for the Native Americans and the worst defeat for the U.S. Army in the long Plains Indian War. The killing of Custer and his men angered many white Americans and confirmed their image of Indians as savage and bloodthirsty. At the same time, the US government increased its efforts to subjugate the tribes. Within five years, almost all of the Sioux and Cheyenne Islands would be confined to reservations."
