Little Big Horn: The Battle That Changed The American West

 

General George Armstrong Custer

July 4, 1876. The United States was throwing the biggest birthday party it had ever seen.

 

Then the telegraph started clicking.

 

The reports drifted east from the Montana Territory. At first, they sounded like rumors. Then more dispatches arrived.

 

Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer was dead. So were over 260 officers and men of the 7th Cavalry.

 

The New York Herald called it “the most appalling disaster that has ever befallen our arms upon the Plains.” The Chicago Tribune told readers that Custer and his command had been massacred. 

 

Newspaper extras sold almost as fast as the presses could print them. Crowds gathered outside newspaper offices, waiting for every new dispatch.

 

Nobody could quite believe it. George Armstrong Custer never lost a battle. Especially to Indians.

 

By 1876, Custer was one of the most famous soldiers in America. He’d graduated dead last at West Point. After the Civil War started, none of that mattered. Custer had a knack for charging straight at the enemy.

The newspapers couldn’t get enough of him. He couldn’t get enough of them.

 

Custer knew how to put on a show. Long blond hair. Buckskin jackets. A flashy necktie. He rode where everyone could see him and reveled in telling reporters about his latest victory.

 

It all helped build the legend. It also convinced Custer that he could get away with almost anything.

 

To most Americans, Custer wasn’t just another cavalry officer.

President grant reading about Custer's Last Stand

He was the cavalry.

 

Custer trusted his own instincts more than anyone else’s. He believed speed won battles. Hesitation lost them. Most of all, he believed that if he hit first and hit hard, the other side would break.

 

That philosophy had carried him through the Civil War. On the northern plains, it would carry him into disaster.

 

The trouble had been brewing for years. The Treaty of Fort Laramie had guaranteed the Black Hills to the Lakota forever. After gold was discovered in 1874. Prospectors ignored the treaty and poured into the hills. The government could’ve stopped them.

 

It didn’t.

 

Instead, Washington tried to buy the Black Hills. Lakota leaders refused. They considered the hills sacred and refused to sell them at any price.

 

That’s when the government changed the rules.

 

Every band living off the reservations was ordered to report to an agency by January 31, 1876. Many Indians never received the order. Others saw no reason to obey it. Washington declared them hostile anyway and sent the Army after them.

 

Army commanders came up with what looked like a foolproof plan. Three separate columns would march toward southeastern Montana and squeeze the Lakota and Cheyenne between them. General Alfred Terry would move west from Dakota Territory. Colonel John Gibbon would march east from Montana. General George Crook would come north from Wyoming. With any luck, the tribes would have nowhere to run.

 

On paper, it looked easy.

 

Wars usually do.

In the heat of the battle. Custer on horse back leading his troops.

Terry’s orders to Custer were simple enough. Find the village. Keep it from slipping away. Wait until the other columns closed in.

 

Custer had something else in mind.

 

By late June, Custer had picked up the trail.

 

His Crow and Arikara scouts knew something wasn’t right.

 

The tracks just kept coming. More ponies. More tipis. More signs that they weren’t following a few scattered bands. They were closing in on something enormous.

 

The scouts tried to warn him.

 

One later said the village stretched “as thick as grasshoppers.” Another told Custer it was the biggest Indian camp he’d ever seen. They urged him to wait for General Alfred Terry and the rest of the Army.

 

Custer wasn’t interested in waiting.

 

He’d spent his entire career attacking before the other fellow was ready. He figured the Indians would do what they’d always done—scatter as soon as the soldiers showed up.

 

This time, he was dead wrong.

 

On the morning of June 25, 1876, Custer climbed a ridge overlooking the Little Bighorn Valley.

 

Below him wasn’t a village.

 

It was a city.

 

The village stretched nearly three miles along the Little Bighorn River.

 

Custer expected another Indian camp. Instead, he found a city.

 

Somewhere around 7,000 to 10,000 Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho filled the valley. Nearly 2,000 warriors stood ready to fight. Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and Gall were all there.

 

It was the largest gathering of Plains Indians that the Army had ever seen.

 

Custer was looking at the largest concentration of Plains Indians the Army had ever faced.

 

He attacked anyway.

Another look at Custer's Last Stand

His orders gave him room to use his own judgment, but General Terry expected him to locate the village and keep it from escaping until the other columns arrived. Instead, Custer decided to finish the fight himself.

 

Then he made things worse.

 

He split the 7th Cavalry into four separate commands.

 

Major Marcus Reno would attack the south end of the village. Captain Frederick Benteen was sent off on a wide sweep to cut off any escape. Captain Thomas McDougall stayed behind with the pack train. Custer kept about 210 men and rode toward the north end of the village.

 

If everything worked, the Indians would have been trapped.

 

Nothing worked.

 

Reno charged first.

 

For a few minutes, it looked like the attack might succeed. Then warriors came pouring out of the village. Gall reportedly urged them forward after learning members of his own family had been killed during Reno’s assault. The soldiers were quickly outnumbered.

 

Reno lost his nerve.

 

He ordered a retreat into the timber, then another retreat across the Little Bighorn River. What followed was chaos. Horses crashed into one another. Soldiers threw away equipment to ride faster. Some drowned trying to cross the river. Others were shot before they reached the bluffs.

 

Dozens never made it.

 

Benteen heard Reno’s gunfire and eventually found the battered survivors, but by then it was too late to help Custer.

 

The firing to the north grew louder.

 

Then it stopped.

 

Exactly what happened during Custer’s Last Stand will never be known. There were no Army survivors from his command. Everything historians know comes from Indian accounts, archaeology, and the soldiers who later found the battlefield.

 

What seems clear is that Custer never had much of a chance.

 

Crazy Horse is believed to have led a powerful charge that overwhelmed the soldiers before they could establish a strong defensive position. Warriors attacked from several directions at once, using the folds in the ground for cover while the cavalry horses became easy targets.

 

Cheyenne warrior Wooden Leg remembered seeing soldiers “falling all the time.” Another Lakota warrior said the Army’s gunfire gradually slowed until, in his words, “all was still.”

 

When the shooting ended, Custer was dead.

 

So were his two brothers, Tom and Boston. His nephew, Henry Reed, died beside him. So did his brother-in-law, Lieutenant James Calhoun.

Custer, Red Cloud, and Sitting Bull

Every soldier with Custer was gone.

 

Two days later, General Terry’s column reached the battlefield.

 

The sight was almost beyond belief.

 

Bodies lay scattered across the ridges where the last fighting had taken place. Dead horses covered the slopes. The smell of gunpowder still hung in the air. Army surgeons buried the dead where they fell, and Custer himself was laid to rest on the battlefield before his remains were later moved east.

 

The final count was staggering.

 

The Army lost 268 men killed, and another 55 wounded.

 

It was one of the worst defeats the United States Army had ever suffered.

 

And the country still didn’t know about it.

 

The first reports reached the East just as Americans were celebrating the Fourth of July.

 

Church bells were ringing. Brass bands were playing. Politicians were praising the country’s first hundred years. Then the telegraph wires brought news that nobody wanted to believe.

 

George Armstrong Custer was dead.

 

At first, many people thought the reports had to be wrong. Custer had escaped impossible situations before. Surely this was another rumor that would be corrected in the next dispatch.

 

It wasn’t.

 

As more details arrived, the headlines grew bigger.

 

The New York Herald called it “the most appalling disaster that has ever befallen our arms upon the Plains.” The Chicago Tribune announced, “Custer and His Entire Command Massacred.” Papers across the country printed special editions. People crowded around bulletin boards outside newspaper offices, reading every word as fresh dispatches came over the telegraph.

 

The story dominated the news for weeks.

 

Americans wanted answers.

 

How could one of the Army’s best-known officers lose an entire battalion?

 

Why hadn’t reinforcements reached him?

 

Why hadn’t anyone known there were so many Indians gathered along the Little Bighorn?

 

The blame game started almost immediately.

 

Some newspapers accused Major Marcus Reno of abandoning Custer. Others questioned Captain Frederick Benteen for failing to ride to the sound of the guns. A few blamed General Alfred Terry’s battle plan.

 

President Ulysses S. Grant pointed somewhere else.

 

Grant privately called the battle “a sacrifice of troops.” In his opinion, Custer had ignored the spirit of Terry’s orders, attacked too soon, and paid for it with his life. It wasn’t the first time Custer had gambled.

 

It was the first time he’d lost.

 

General William Tecumseh Sherman wasn’t interested in arguing over who was at fault.

 

He wanted the war finished.

 

Sherman promised the Army would hunt down the tribes responsible and break their resistance once and for all. Most Americans agreed. Any sympathy for the Lakota and Cheyenne disappeared almost overnight. Calls for compromise faded. Editorial writers demanded action instead.

 

Congress listened.

 

Lawmakers approved more money for the Army. Fresh cavalry regiments headed west. Experienced scouts were hired. Supply lines improved. Army commanders were told to stay in the field until every band either surrendered or was captured.

 

The campaign became relentless.

 

The Army never let up.

 

Villages were burned. Horses captured. Families stayed on the move. Meanwhile, buffalo hunters wiped out the great herds that had sustained the Plains tribes for generations.

 

Before long, hunger was doing what the Army couldn’t. It became the Army’s strongest ally.

 

Little Bighorn had been a stunning Indian victory. It also guaranteed that the government would commit far more men, money, and determination than ever before.

 

The Lakota and Cheyenne had beaten Custer. Now they had to face the full weight of the United States.

 

For a few hours on June 25, 1876, the Lakota and Cheyenne had done what many Americans thought was impossible. They destroyed five companies of the 7th Cavalry and killed one of the Army’s most famous officers.

 

It was a remarkable victory.

 

It also turned out to be the high-water mark of Plains Indian resistance.

 

The Army didn’t quit after Little Bighorn.

 

It came back stronger.

 

More cavalry poured onto the northern plains. Scouts tracked every trail. Soldiers stayed in the field through the fall and winter, refusing to give the tribes time to recover. Villages were attacked. Horses were captured. Food stores were destroyed. Families already struggling to survive found themselves on the run with fewer places to hide.

 

Then came hunger.

 

The Army never let up.

 

Villages were burned. Horses were captured. The buffalo disappeared. Before long, hunger became the Army’s greatest weapon.

 

One by one, the influential leaders gave in.

 

Crazy Horse surrendered in the spring of 1877. Four months later he was dead, killed during a struggle at Fort Robinson.

 

Sitting Bull fled to Canada, but hunger finally drove him home. He surrendered in 1881.

 

Gall surrendered, too.

 

The war was over. The government got what it wanted.

 

The Black Hills were taken despite the promises made in the Treaty of Fort Laramie. Reservation lands continued to shrink. More settlers poured west. Railroads pushed across the plains. The days when the Lakota and Cheyenne could roam freely were over.

 

George Custer saw none of it.

 

For years, Americans argued about who was responsible for the disaster at Little Bighorn. Some blamed Reno. Others blamed Benteen. President Grant blamed Custer’s reckless decision to attack before the rest of the Army arrived.

 

The debate has never really ended.

 

One thing, however, isn’t open to debate.

 

The Battle of the Little Bighorn changed the course of the Indian Wars. Before Custer’s Last Stand, many Americans still believed the Plains tribes could hold on to at least part of their traditional way of life. After Little Bighorn, the government was determined to end armed Indian resistance once and for all.

 

The Lakota and Cheyenne won one of the greatest battlefield victories in American history. In the months and years that followed, they lost the Black Hills, the buffalo, their freedom to roam the plains, and much of the world they’d fought so hard to protect.

 

It’s one of history’s cruel ironies.

 

Custer lost the battle. The Indians won it. But in the end, they lost the war.

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