On June 25, 1876, George Armstrong Custer reached the crest of a ridge overlooking the Little Bighorn River in Montana and saw something that stopped him cold. Below him stretched a Native American encampment nearly three miles long, thousands of tents filling the valley floor. It was far larger than anything he had expected. Yet the general did not hesitate.
He raised his hat above his head and shouted, “Hooray, boys! We’ve got them. ” Then he rode straight down toward the camp with five companies of the Seventh Cavalry behind him. He had no reinforcements on the way.
Within an hour, every man under his immediate command would be dead. Custer was born in Ohio to a farming family, but he was never content with an ordinary life. He wanted glory, and he wanted his name written into history. He entered West Point in 1857, where he compiled an astonishing record of 726 demerits, the highest of any cadet before him.
Despite his misconduct, his instructors and fellow cadets recognized his potential as a soldier. The Civil War gave him the stage he craved. He proved to be a remarkable officer, earning victory after victory and leading from the front. He never asked his men to do anything he would not do himself, and his soldiers respected him deeply.
By the age of 23, he was one of the youngest generals in American history. The newspapers called him the Boy General, and his flamboyant style, his long golden hair, and his fearless reputation made him a household name. On July 3, 1863, at Gettysburg, Custer helped hold the Union line. Leading his troops in full officer’s uniform, he charged into Confederate forces at a critical moment and helped turn the battle in the Union’s favor.
He continued to serve with distinction until the war ended, and the table on which Robert E. Lee signed his surrender was later presented to Custer’s wife with an inscription acknowledging that no man had done more to secure that surrender than her husband. After the war, Custer was assigned to lead the Seventh Cavalry against the Plains Indians, a duty he resented because it offered little chance at the glory he sought. The nation was expanding westward, and its eyes had fallen on the Black Hills, territory already occupied by the Sioux.
In April 1868, the Sioux and the United States signed the Fort Laramie Treaty, which granted the Sioux full rights to the Black Hills in exchange for an end to attacks on settlers and confinement to a reservation. But Washington never intended to honor that treaty. The Black Hills were too valuable, and the government anticipated that an influx of settlers would provoke the Sioux into violating the agreement, providing a pretext for seizure. Most Sioux accepted the treaty in good faith.
One notable exception was Sitting Bull, a Lakota chief and spiritual leader. He rejected the agreement outright, convinced that the Americans would inevitably take their land and that resistance was the only way to preserve the Sioux way of life. Where Custer was bold and reckless, Sitting Bull was calm and deliberate, a man who thought before acting. He claimed visions from the Great Spirit guided his efforts against the Americans.
He gathered support from the Lakota and smaller factions of the Cheyenne, forming a coalition of nomadic raiders. He worked closely with his trusted ally Gall, another Lakota leader, and together they began raiding American settlements and rival tribes. When the Fort Laramie events unfolded, Sitting Bull’s coalition turned its focus toward the United States. In the fall of 1868, Custer followed the Washita River in Oklahoma and discovered a Cheyenne camp.
At dawn on November 27, he ordered a charge into the village. Many Cheyenne were killed, including women and children. His second in command, Major Joel Elliott, took twenty men to chase fleeing Cheyenne, but Custer, claiming 103 enemy dead and calling it a great victory, did not wait for Elliott to return. Weeks later, Elliott and his men were found dead.
Many in the Seventh Cavalry blamed Custer, and Captain Frederick Benteen was the loudest critic. Benteen wrote a letter blaming Custer for Elliott’s death, and when the letter leaked to the press, Custer was furious. The two men remained bound together under the same command, but forgiveness was never achieved. Custer spent years leading the Seventh Cavalry against Native American tribes.
In 1873, he was permanently stationed at Fort Abraham Lincoln in Dakota Territory. Two important figures entered his story there. Major Marcus Reno, an irritable man with a drinking problem, joined his staff and found Custer arrogant in the extreme. Benteen, likewise, made no secret of his contempt.
To counterbalance them, Custer had his brothers Tom and Boston, his brother-in-law Lieutenant James Calhoun, and even his wife, all living at Fort Lincoln. He also formed a strong friendship with Bloody Knife, a half-Sioux, half-Arikara scout who joined his unit in 1873. Bloody Knife had his own reason to hate Sitting Bull and, especially, Gall, who had bullied him as a child and later killed his brothers and son in separate raids. In 1874, Custer was the obvious choice to lead an expedition into the Black Hills.
Officially, the mission was to find a site for a fort to deter Sitting Bull. In reality, it was an effort to discover gold and generate publicity that would draw thousands of settlers into the region. The expedition faced almost no opposition. Custer spent more ammunition hunting with his brothers and Bloody Knife than he did fighting Native Americans.
Journalists and photographers traveled with him, spreading accounts of his frontier adventure and reports of gold. A gold rush followed. By late 1875, some 15,000 settlers had flooded into the Black Hills. The government claimed no responsibility, since the settlers were acting independently, and therefore maintained it had not breached the treaty.
President Ulysses S. Grant fully supported their actions, anticipating that Sitting Bull’s response would provide justification to annex the Black Hills outright. In September 1875, Washington made one final attempt to buy the Black Hills peacefully. The Sioux declined.
Grant then issued an ultimatum: any Lakota or Cheyenne who did not move to reservations by January 1876 would be deemed hostile. The demand was issued in November, when winter had already arrived. Even those who wanted to comply risked freezing to death on the journey. The expedition to pursue Sitting Bull and his so-called hostile Indians departed Fort Abraham Lincoln on May 17, 1876.
General Alfred Terry, a supporter of Custer, held overall command. Scouting reports placed Sitting Bull and his followers along the Yellowstone River, near the confluence of the Powder, Tongue, Rosebud, and Bighorn Rivers. The American plan was to trap the Indians between converging columns. Terry and Custer would advance westward along the Yellowstone.
General John Gibbon would approach from the west in Montana. General George Crook would move north from Wyoming. The goal was to seal off all escape routes and catch Sitting Bull between them. Custer treated the operation as another enjoyable expedition, frequently stopping to hunt or explore with his brothers, a habit that irritated even Terry.
When Reno returned from a reconnaissance along the Rosebud with word of Sitting Bull’s trail, Custer reprimanded him for not following it. There was little time for disputes. Terry divided his forces: he would join Gibbon and approach the Bighorn from the north, while Custer would follow the trail south across the Rosebud. Custer was instructed to maneuver south if he encountered Sitting Bull and wait for the main force.
But everyone knew Custer would not wait. The final words given to him before his departure were: “Custer, don’t be greedy. Leave some for us. ” He answered, “No, I will not.
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Sitting Bull was exactly where the Americans expected him. After Grant’s ultimatum, he had rallied thousands more warriors, knowing that their only hope lay in numbers. Roughly 8,000 people joined his camp. Gall remained his chief adviser, and new followers arrived, among them Crazy Horse, a young, fearless warrior of a different Lakota branch.
Crazy Horse claimed visions gave him great power, and he lived up to his name. On June 17, Crazy Horse struck first. General Crook’s column was camped along the Rosebud when scouts detected its position. With 1,500 Lakota and Cheyenne warriors, Crazy Horse charged at an American army of comparable size.
Native Americans normally needed numerical superiority to win in open battle, but Crazy Horse defied that expectation. He ordered his warriors to encircle the Americans, attacking from both directions and never allowing them to steady their fire. Crook managed to retreat only with the help of his Crow and Cheyenne scouts, having lost thirty men. Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull had won an extraordinary victory.
Crook reported to his superiors that it was the finest display of Native American combat he had ever seen, but he did not tell Custer or Terry. Knowing more American forces were coming, Sitting Bull moved his people to a new camp in the valley of the Greasy Grass, along the Little Bighorn River, a few miles from where it joined the Bighorn. There they held their Sun Dance, and Sitting Bull reportedly experienced another vision: hundreds of American soldiers falling into the camp. He took it as a sign that a great victory was near.
Custer, unaware of Crook’s defeat, tracked Sitting Bull’s trail across the Rosebud. His scouts, including Bloody Knife, saw signs suggesting the Indian force was far larger than expected, possibly numbering in the thousands. Bloody Knife warned that they might be outnumbered and urged Custer to wait for Terry and Gibbon. Shortly after dawn on June 25, Custer’s scouts climbed the hills east of the Little Bighorn and spotted smoke rising from Sitting Bull’s camp.
Custer was certain this was his moment. He commanded 700 men in twelve companies. One company stayed behind to guard supplies. He divided the rest into three battalions.
He would lead five companies north and attack the camp from that direction. Major Reno would take three companies south, guided by Bloody Knife. Captain Benteen would take three companies, swing farther south, and join the fight on the western flank. Custer disliked relying on two men he despised, but his brothers Tom and Boston were with him, along with his brother-in-law Calhoun.
Around 3:30 that afternoon, Custer reached the final ridge overlooking the camp. The sight from his position stunned him: thousands of tents spread across more than three miles. He wrote a hasty note to Benteen: “Benteen. Come on.
Big village. Be quick. Bring packs. ” He handed it to a rider and ordered him to deliver it.
Then, unwilling to wait, he led his men down the hill, raising his hat and shouting that they had the Indians. Reno’s troops had already crossed the river with 150 soldiers. Bloody Knife and his scouts engaged warriors at the camp’s perimeter, giving the first warning of attack. Sitting Bull and Gall held the southern section of the camp and bore the first impact of Reno’s advance.
Reno ordered his men to dismount and form a firing line. Bullets struck men, women, and children. Sitting Bull’s first concern was protecting his people. He sent his nephew and another warrior to try to negotiate, but both were shot.
Sitting Bull mounted his horse, and an American bullet brought it down beneath him. He called it to his warriors: they had shot his beloved horse, and it felt as though they had shot him. He ordered a counterattack. Gall and Crazy Horse led the response.
Reno was unprepared for organized resistance, and the Indians halted his advance. Survivors later said Reno had been drinking through the day. As Reno and Bloody Knife tried to plan their next move, a bullet struck Bloody Knife in the back of the head, killing him instantly. His blood splattered across Reno’s face.
The death of his scout shattered Reno’s nerve. He ordered a retreat: anyone who wanted to escape should follow him. Reno’s men fled across the river in disorder, abandoning horses and weapons as they climbed the steep bank. The Indians merely took positions on the opposite side and fired down into them.
Benteen, on the hills to the southeast, heard the gunfire and turned back. When Reno reached the hilltop and met him, he begged Benteen to stop his command and help, saying he had lost half his men. Benteen asked only one question: where was Custer? Reno had no answer.
Benteen shook his head. He believed he had seen this before. It was another Major Elliott incident, he said, another case of Custer abandoning his men to chase glory. Benteen and Reno stayed on the hill for two hours, listening to the sound of gunfire coming from Custer’s direction, even after receiving Custer’s written plea for support.
Benteen ignored it. What happened after Custer charged down the hill can only be reconstructed from the battlefield evidence and later accounts. Custer gathered his men on a rise later called Calhoun Hill, likely planning to seize women and children as hostages to force Sitting Bull’s surrender. His plan was to cross the river, take captives, and compel the chief to capitulate.
The charge down the hill was to begin the attack. Even Sitting Bull admitted feeling fear when he first learned Custer was attacking from the north: “We thought we were defeated,” he later said. But Cheyenne and Lakota warriors hidden on the far bank opened fire on the Americans, and Crazy Horse and his warriors, having driven off Reno, rushed north to meet them. The Americans began retreating up the hills.
Calhoun’s company set up a defensive position on what is now Calhoun Hill, while Custer and the rest of his men pulled back to what would become known as Last Stand Hill. Battlefield evidence suggests nearly half of Calhoun’s men never made it back to his position. Crazy Horse circled mounted warriors around them and cut them off from the rear. Calhoun’s men were overwhelmed and killed to the last soldier.
By the time Calhoun’s position fell, Custer must have understood that Benteen was not coming. Thousands of Indians surrounded the remaining soldiers, closing in from all sides. The end came under a storm of arrows and bullets, chaos so intense that some Indians accidentally struck their own men. Around 200 soldiers from five companies were killed.
Sitting Bull later repeated what his warriors told him of the final moments, of Custer’s long hair spread out around him, like a stalk of corn whose ears had all fallen around it. On the hill where Benteen and Reno had entrenched, their 400 men held off the Indians through the night of June 25 and into the next day. At sunset on June 26, scouts spotted Terry and Gibbon approaching from the north. Sitting Bull ordered his people to withdraw.
When Terry arrived, his first question was the same one Benteen had asked Reno: where is Custer? He was shown the battlefield where the bodies of the Seventh Cavalry lay. Some had been scalped and mutilated. It was Benteen who later identified one body, marked by two bullet wounds, one in the chest and one in the head.
“My God, it is he,” the private who summoned him reportedly said. On July 6, 1876, the Seventh Cavalry headquarters at Fort Abraham Lincoln received word of the disaster. Within days, the whole nation knew. The defeat came just after America had celebrated its centennial on July 4, at a moment of national optimism and confidence in its heroes.
The idea that Indians had killed George Armstrong Custer and 268 of his men in open battle was almost impossible for many Americans to accept. Some blamed Custer’s recklessness, his need for personal glory. Others blamed Benteen and Reno for ignoring his orders and leaving him to be destroyed. Few gave proper credit to Sitting Bull and his warriors, who had repeatedly proven their strength in battle.
America had sent its finest against them and had been beaten. Sitting Bull waited, ready, for whatever came next.