It was a summer’s day when Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer — and the 210 troopers of the 7th Cavalry he led — met their fate. Their nemesis was a mixed band of Cheyenne and Sioux warriors, Native Americans of the Great Plains. The legendary events at the Battle of Little Bighorn that day came to represent one of America’s great legends: the story of an outstandingly brave cavalry officer and his men up against overwhelming odds.
Myth or fact?
But how much of the story is a myth and how much fact? Was Custer really a hero?
Or was his leadership of his men on that June day questionable, even entirely incompetent? Over the years history has come to see the events at Little Bighorn in a different light. Many now reject the idea of brave U.S. Cavalry troopers ranged against ruthless, even cruel, Native Americans.
Two questions
One way of looking at the events at Little Bighorn, called the Battle of Greasy Grass by the Native Americans who fought in it, is to search for the answer to two questions. Firstly, what motivated the Cheyenne and Sioux warriors in 1876 in their determination to fight the U.S.
Army? And secondly, to what extent did Lieutenant Colonel Custer’s background and character make his disastrous last stand an inevitability?
Last in the class
Let’s start by finding out more about George Armstrong Custer. He was born in 1839 in New Rumley, Ohio, and he had earned a teacher’s certificate by the end of his schooling.
But Custer never taught in a classroom, since in 1857 he started as a cadet at the West Point Military Academy. His time there was not an unqualified success. He did manage to graduate in 1861 — but only at the very bottom of his class.
Civil War
After this conspicuously inauspicious start, Custer’s military career did pick up. The Civil War broke out in the very year that he graduated from West Point, and he seems to have had no hesitation in throwing in his lot with the Union Army as a cavalry officer.
He fought with distinction in various engagements, including at Gettysburg and at the First Battle of Bull Run.
From second lieutenant to major general
Custer had what you could call a good war. At the beginning of the conflict he was a mere second lieutenant.
But by its end he had ascended to the giddy heights of major general at the head of a cavalry division. But once the civil war was over, Custer’s role, like that of other soldiers who’d fought for the Union, changed dramatically.
The Great Plains
The enemy was no longer the secessionist South. The U.S.
Army was now ranged against the warriors of the Native American people, principally those who lived on the Great Plains: the Sioux, the Cheyenne and others. By the time the Civil War ended in 1865 parts of the Great Plains were the last large enclave that Native Americans could call their own.
The Great Sioux Reservation
On paper, the Great Plains people had every right to feel secure in their lands. In 1868 they had signed an agreement with the American government, The Treaty of Fort Laramie.
This stipulated that the Black Hills in modern-day South Dakota and Wyoming were reserved for the Sioux people as part of the Great Sioux Reservation. But this security proved to be illusory.
Gold
The terms of the Laramie Treaty were thrown into disarray when gold was discovered in the Black Hills. Indeed it was Custer himself who led an expedition of prospectors into the Black Hills in 1874 to confirm that this find was actually genuine.
It was — so the U.S. government decided that it was time to renege on the terms of the Laramie Treaty that it had signed less than a decade earlier.
Approved government reservations
The authorities now told the Sioux and others living in the Black Hills that they’d have to move onto approved government reservations. The man who was tasked with overseeing this process was none other than Custer, now holding the rank of lieutenant colonel and the command of the 7th Cavalry Regiment.
Any Native American who declined to move onto the reservation would automatically be regarded as hostile.
Court-martialled
Custer’s first encounter with the Great Plains’ indigenous occupants came as early as 1866 when he took part in an expedition to western Kansas in a mission designed to intimidate the Native Americans of the Great Plains with a show of U.S Army strength. Strangely, that ended with Custer deserting his post in murky circumstances.
He was court-martialled and suspended from his command of the 7th Cavalry.
Black Kettle
Yet it seems that the U.S. Army decided that the services of Custer were essential in their fight against the peoples of the Plains, as Custer was allowed back to his command before the end of his suspension.
Then in 1866 Custer led his men in an attack on a Cheyenne village on the banks of the Washita River. The chieftain Black Kettle and about 100 others, many of them women and children, were slain in the attack.
Black Hills relocation
This attack on Black Kettle’s village while the people there slept seems to have confirmed Custer as a top fighter of Native Americans. And that was how the man was viewed by most Americans and certainly the U.S.
Army. In 1876 Custer was ordered to ensure that the Cheyenne and Sioux people living in the Black Hills relocated to the approved reservations as per the government’s new policy.
Sitting Bull
The Sioux and their Cheyenne allies now organized their resistance to the forced resettlement plan. The renowned Sioux chieftain Sitting Bull became the focus and leader of the resistance to the U.S.
government, supported by others such as Crazy Horse. Many of those who had not traveled to the reservations now joined him. Numbers of those who had already gone to the reservations now abandoned them to join the resistance movement.
Show of defiance
Those Sioux and Cheyenne who refused to give up their lands in the Black Hills now set up a large encampment in the Southern Montana Territory. This was located on the banks of the Little Bighorn River.
This show of defiance was too much for the U.S. government to stomach, so it ordered a military operation to disperse the dissidents by armed force.
A major military operation
A major military operation was now set in motion. Three columns would approach the rebels in their territory, marching on them from the south, west, and east.
The main element of the force approaching from the west would be Custer’s 7th Cavalry under the overall leadership of General Alfred H. Terry. Custer’s ill-starred column set off from Fort Abraham Lincoln in mid-May 1876.
Attack at dawn
Custer’s first job was to find Sitting Bull and his followers. With the help of his Crow and Arikara scouts he was able to do this within three days of setting out from Fort Abraham Lincoln.
With the encampment in his sights, Custer’s plan was simple. He’d bivouac for the night within striking distance of the Sioux and Cheyenne and attack at dawn the next day.
A major tactical error
But Custer modified his plan when he realized that his column had been spotted by his adversaries. Rather than putting the attack off until the next day, he now decided to mount an assault on the encampment without delay, that very afternoon.
The Lieutenant Colonel now opted to split his 600-strong cavalry force into main four elements. One group would be left to guard the regiment’s baggage, while the other three would attack. Military historians have identified that decision as a major tactical error.
Battle plan
Custer’s plan called for one of the assault groups to mount a frontal attack on the village and the second to head south so it could cut off any attempt by the Native Americans to flee. The third group, under Custer’s command, would attack the settlement from the north.
But this division of his force into three was a very poor decision: once on the move, they would be too far apart to offer one another support. And each unit was relatively weak in numbers.
Faulty intelligence
There is at least one excuse for Custer’s decision to split his men up as he did: faulty intelligence. According to the information Custer had from the Army’s intelligence service, the Sioux and Cheyenne could muster a force of no more than 800 warriors.
The truth was that their numbers were much larger, anywhere between 1,500 and 2,000, a formidable force. Many of them were armed with modern repeating rifles.
Forced to retreat
The 125-strong 7th Cavalry battalion led by Major Marcus Reno, ordered to make a frontal attack, was the first to make contact with Sitting Bull’s men. It approached the village along the Little Bighorn River, towards the southern end of the settlement.
At first the Native American warriors were taken unawares by Reno’s men, but they quickly mounted a spirited counterattack on horseback. The cavalrymen formed a defensive line but were soon forced to retreat.
Captain Benteen’s battalion
Reno’s men fell back to a line of trees along the river bank, but they then had to retreat a second time to higher ground that overlooked the river. During this retreat, the cavalrymen suffered heavy casualties.
Separately, Captain Benteen and his battalion had been looking for warriors escaping to the south of the encampment but had found none. Then they came across the remnants of Reno’s unit in their position on the ridge by the river.
“Be quick!”
In fact, before Benteen had found Reno and his hard-pressed men, a messenger had brought him a note from Custer. That had read, “Come on.
Big village. Be quick. Bring packs.” The packs would have referred to some of the baggage carried by the pack animals, including ammunition. But Benteen chose to stay with Reno and his men. As he did so, Custer’s own situation was fast becoming critical.
No survivors
Many of the fighters who had been engaging with Reno and Benteen’s men now left to confront Custer’s detachment, which was further along the river. Custer’s last stand was imminent.
Exactly what happened in the final episode of Custer and his men is not entirely clear. That’s in large part because not a single member of the Lieutenant Colonel's battalion survived the onslaught from the Cheyenne and Sioux warriors.
Battle Ridge
After he had ordered Reno to attack the settlement, Custer had led his men along high ground above the river until he came to a gully that led downwards towards the village. There seems to have been some fighting at this site, Medicine Tail Coulee.
But for reasons unknown Custer’s detachment then retreated to a position called Calhoun Hill, moving north along what is now known as Battle Ridge.
Final stand
The 210 men with Custer were divided into five companies and were separately overwhelmed on different parts of Battle Ridge. It seems that with their Winchester repeating rifles, Sitting Bull’s men were better armed than the cavalrymen.
Most of the latter were armed only with Colt .45 revolvers and single-shot rifles. In any case, the battle descended into chaos and about 40 of Custer’s men made their final stand.
Surrounded
These last surviving men of the 7th Cavalry met their fate on a peak that is now known as Last Stand Hill and is marked by a stone monument. The cavalrymen were surrounded by hundreds of Sioux and Cheyenne warriors, and the final outcome of the battle was a grim inevitability.
Among the 210 dead cavalrymen were Custer himself, his brother, and his nephew.
A grim discovery
It was not until two days later that the U.S. Army learnt the fate of those 7th Cavalry soldiers.
Private Henry Rice came across the scene of the slaughter and made his report to General Terry, in charge of one of the three main U.S. Army forces deployed in the Black Hills. As Terry’s men approached the scene of the massacre, the Cheyenne and Sioux settlement struck camp and moved off.
Allegations
While Custer and his men had made their last stand, Reno and Benteen and their men had held out against the Native Americans. They only heard about Custer’s fate when the warriors retreated as General Terry advanced.
In the following years, Reno and Benteen came under close scrutiny and were accused by some of failing in their duty. The allegations were based on the fact that they had not gone to Custer’s aid.
A great victory
The Sioux and Cheyenne warriors had won a great victory and foiled the U.S. government’s plan to force them off the Black Hills and onto reservations.
Yet their triumph was short-lived: while resistance, led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, continued for some months, the inevitable backlash from U.S. public opinion — and the outrage of the army — meant that the days of active defiance by the Cheyenne and the Sioux were numbered.
Overwhelming force
The army deployed overwhelming force against those Native Americans who continued to resist compulsory movement to the reservations. Within a year, almost all of the warriors and their families had been forced to surrender.
They were compelled to give up their lands in the Black Hills without compensation and to accept a place on the reserves. A way of life on the Great Plains was gone forever.
Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse
What of the leaders of the warriors who’d roundly defeated Custer and his men? Crazy Horse surrendered in the spring of 1877 and was held prisoner at Fort Robinson in Nebraska.
He met his end there, bayoneted by a soldier during an argument. Sitting Bull escaped to Canada, but he eventually returned to the U.S. in 1881. He spent the rest of his life on the Standing Rock Reservation, where a law officer killed him in a fracas in 1890.
An all-American hero
Custer became an all-American hero, despite the fact that he’d led his men into what was probably an avoidable massacre. Some say that his character was a contributing factor to the disaster at Little Bighorn.
He could be very abrasive on occasion and did not take kindly to contradiction. As the Sky History website put it, “Custer’s personality was an unusual combination of brashness, confidence and bravery.”
Arrogance
The History website pointed out that Custer was “often accused of arrogance for not following the original battle plan and leading his men to certain death.” But it goes on to say that the lieutenant colonel had a possible defense: it’s feasible that he thought reinforcements were on their way.
But in the end his battalion faced overwhelming odds, which led to their massacre.
Libbie Custer
One person made sure that Custer’s reputation was protected and promoted after his death. Custer had married Elizabeth “Libbie” Bacon in 1864; after his death she was determined to portray her late husband as a hero.
In her view, he should be honored for making the ultimate sacrifice in defense of his country. Custer clearly couldn’t defend his reputation but Libbie had no hesitation in doing so.
A problem that had to be solved
Of course, it wasn’t just Libbie Custer who glorified her husband’s memory. After all, Custer had been a Civil War hero, so many people admired him greatly.
And attitudes towards Native Americans were by a considerable margin less sympathetic than they are today: many Americans regarded them with great prejudice. They were a problem that had to be solved — by military means if necessary. For many, Custer’s stand against the Cheyenne and Sioux was entirely justified.
Changing attitudes
Ultimately Libbie couldn’t protect Custer from changing attitudes towards Native Americans which began to gain momentum, especially in the second half of the 20th century. Historians and the public began to question the way the U.S.
government had treated the indigenous people of North America. Many took the view that Native Americans had been the victims of much injustice.
Dubious morality
Large numbers of Americans have questioned the morality of sending the U.S. Army into territory that had been given to Native Americans by treaty.
The fact was that the authorities had reneged on their treaty with the Sioux with regard to the Black Hills. This made many people distinctly uncomfortable with the treatment of the people of the Great Plains. Over the years, Custer’s place as an all-American hero has become much less certain.
An heroic reputation began to crumble
For many years books and movies — the first film was released as early as 1909 — portrayed Custer as an unblemished and noble warrior. His image was perhaps most strongly projected in the 1941 movie They Died With Their Boots On.
In that production, legendary screen star Errol Flynn played Custer as a towering figure of great courage and determination. But as the 20th century went on, Custer’s heroic reputation began to crumble.
Little Big Man
A turning point came in 1964 with the publication of Thomas Berger’s novel Little Big Man, whose message was reinforced by the 1970 film based on the book. As Louis Kraft put it in an article published in 2006 on the History.net website, Custer was portrayed in the book and film “as a genocidal raving lunatic.”
Yet despite that, George Custer is still one of the best-known figures in U.S. history.