Battle of the Little Bighorn (1876): Custer's Last Stand

The Battle of the Little Bighorn, fought on 25-26 June 1876 beside the Little Bighorn River in Montana Territory, was the most famous Native American victory of the American Indian Wars. Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors, gathered under leaders such as Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, destroyed the five companies of the US 7th Cavalry led directly by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer. Remembered by Americans as “Custer’s Last Stand” and by the Lakota and Cheyenne as the Battle of the Greasy Grass, it became a national myth, yet it also triggered the campaign that ended the independent life of the northern Plains peoples.

Background: the Black Hills and the Great Sioux War

The 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie had created the Great Sioux Reservation, covering what is now western South Dakota, including the Black Hills, sacred to the Lakota. It also recognised a wider “unceded” hunting territory in Wyoming and Montana where bands that rejected reservation life still roamed.

In 1874 Custer led an army expedition into the Black Hills that confirmed the presence of gold. Thousands of miners poured in illegally. The government of President Ulysses S. Grant tried to buy the Hills in 1875, but Lakota leaders refused. Washington then ordered all “non-treaty” bands to report to their agencies by 31 January 1876, a deadline that was almost impossible to meet in the northern winter. Those who stayed out were declared hostile and turned over to the army.

The decision reflected broader pressures. Railways, mining and settlement, encouraged by laws such as the Homestead Act of 1862 and the completion of the first transcontinental railroad, were pushing deeper into the Plains, while the buffalo herds on which Plains life depended were being destroyed.

The 1876 campaign

The army planned to trap the bands between three converging columns. General George Crook advanced north from Wyoming, Colonel John Gibbon marched east from western Montana, and General Alfred Terry moved west from Fort Abraham Lincoln in Dakota Territory with the 7th Cavalry, commanded in the field by Custer.

The plan went wrong from the start. On 17 June 1876, at the Battle of the Rosebud, warriors led by Crazy Horse and others fought Crook’s column of more than 1,000 men to a standstill and forced it to withdraw to resupply. The other commanders did not know this.

Meanwhile the bands had come together in an unusually large summer camp. Earlier in June, at a Sun Dance on Rosebud Creek, the Hunkpapa holy man Sitting Bull described a vision of soldiers falling upside down into the camp, which his people understood as a promise of victory. By late June the village along the Little Bighorn may have held some 6,000 to 8,000 people, with perhaps 1,500 to 2,000 fighting men; estimates vary considerably.

On 22 June Terry sent Custer with the 7th Cavalry, around 600 soldiers plus scouts and civilians, up the Rosebud to find the village, while Terry and Gibbon approached from the north. Custer declined the offer of Gatling guns and of additional cavalry, preferring speed.

What happened on 25-26 June

On the morning of 25 June, Custer’s Crow and Arikara scouts saw signs of the huge village from a high point known as the Crow’s Nest. Believing his regiment had been discovered and that the people would scatter, Custer decided to attack at once rather than wait. He divided his regiment into several battalions.

Captain Frederick Benteen was sent with three companies to scout to the south-west. Major Marcus Reno, with three companies of about 140 men, was ordered to cross the river and charge the southern end of the village, where the Hunkpapa camp stood. Custer himself took five companies, about 210 men, along the bluffs to the north, apparently intending to strike the village from another direction. One company escorted the slow pack train.

Reno’s attack began in mid-afternoon. Facing rapidly growing numbers of warriors, he halted, formed a dismounted skirmish line, then fell back into the timber by the river. His retreat across the river and up the bluffs turned into a rout, and dozens of his men were killed. The survivors dug in on high ground now called Reno Hill, where Benteen joined them.

Custer, meanwhile, had sent a last written message, carried by trumpeter John Martin: “Benteen. Come on. Big village. Be quick. Bring packs.” Benteen did not come directly to Custer but joined Reno. A company under Captain Thomas Weir later advanced north to a high point, now Weir Point, from where the men saw dust and smoke in the distance, but were driven back.

What happened to Custer’s battalion is reconstructed from Lakota and Cheyenne accounts, the positions of bodies and archaeological finds. Warriors led by Gall, Crazy Horse, Two Moons, Lame White Man and many others swarmed across the river and around the ridges. Custer’s companies were split up and overwhelmed, probably in little more than an hour. The last group of soldiers, including Custer, his brother Tom and other officers, died on the knoll now called Last Stand Hill.

Reno and Benteen’s men, about 350 strong, were besieged through the night and the next day, suffering from heat and thirst. On the evening of 26 June the great village packed up and moved away. Terry and Gibbon’s column arrived on 27 June and found the bodies of Custer’s command.

By the numbers

Key people

• Sitting Bull (Tatanka Iyotake): Hunkpapa Lakota holy man and leader whose influence drew the bands together. He did not lead the fighting directly but was its spiritual centre.
• Crazy Horse (Tasunke Witko): Oglala Lakota war leader who played a major role at the Rosebud and in the encirclement of Custer.
• Gall (Pizi): Hunkpapa war leader prominent in the counter-attack against Reno and then Custer.
• Two Moons and Lame White Man: Northern Cheyenne leaders; Lame White Man was killed in the fighting.
• George Armstrong Custer: a celebrated Civil War cavalry officer, then lieutenant colonel of the 7th Cavalry. His brothers Tom and Boston, nephew Autie Reed and brother-in-law James Calhoun also died.
• Marcus Reno and Frederick Benteen: the surviving senior officers, whose conduct was debated for decades; a court of inquiry in 1879 cleared Reno of cowardice.

Myths and facts

“Custer’s Last Stand” was a heroic, orderly final defence. Popular paintings showed soldiers fighting back to back to the end. Archaeological work after a grass fire in 1983, led by Douglas Scott and Richard Fox, suggested instead that Custer’s units broke apart under pressure, with fighting spread across the ridges and resistance collapsing piece by piece.

The soldiers were simply outgunned. The troopers carried single-shot Springfield carbines and Colt revolvers. Excavated cartridge cases show that a significant number of warriors used repeating rifles such as Henrys and Winchesters, but bows, arrows and clubs were also heavily used. Numbers, terrain and the splitting of the regiment mattered at least as much as firepower.

Custer was a general. He was a lieutenant colonel; “General” was a courtesy from his Civil War brevet rank.

Consequences

News of the defeat reached the eastern cities in early July 1876, as the United States celebrated its centennial, and caused shock and anger. Congress expanded the army, and soldiers pursued the bands through the following winter.

The victory could not be followed up. The great camp had to split into smaller groups to find game and grass, and they were worn down one by one. In 1877 Congress passed an act taking the Black Hills without the consent required by the 1868 treaty. Crazy Horse surrendered at Camp Robinson in May 1877 and was killed there in September while being taken into custody. Sitting Bull led his followers into Canada and surrendered at Fort Buford in July 1881.

Timeline

• 1868, April-November: Treaty of Fort Laramie signed, creating the Great Sioux Reservation.
• 1874, July-August: Custer’s Black Hills expedition reports gold.
• 1876, 31 January: Deadline for non-treaty bands to report to agencies passes.
• 1876, 17 June: Battle of the Rosebud halts Crook’s column.
• 1876, 22 June: Custer leads the 7th Cavalry up the Rosebud.
• 1876, 25 June: Reno’s attack fails; Custer’s battalion is destroyed.
• 1876, 26 June: Siege of Reno Hill; the village moves away in the evening.
• 1877, 28 February: Act of Congress takes the Black Hills.
• 1877, 5 September: Crazy Horse is killed at Camp Robinson.
• 1881, 19 July: Sitting Bull surrenders at Fort Buford.

Legacy

For white Americans, Custer’s death became a story of sacrifice, retold in countless paintings, dime novels, Wild West shows and films. A popular print of Custer’s Last Fight, distributed by the Anheuser-Busch brewery from 1896, hung in saloons across the country. For the Lakota and Cheyenne, the Greasy Grass was a proud defence of their families and way of life.

The site became a national cemetery in 1879 and was later named Custer Battlefield National Monument. In 1991 Congress renamed it Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, and an Indian Memorial honouring the Native fighters was dedicated in 2003. In 1980 the US Supreme Court, in United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, ruled that the Black Hills had been taken unlawfully and awarded compensation; the Lakota have refused the money, seeking return of the land instead. Fourteen years after the battle, the 7th Cavalry would be at the centre of the Wounded Knee Massacre.

Why it matters

The Little Bighorn was a stunning military victory for the northern Plains peoples, but it hastened the loss of the Black Hills and the end of their independence. It remains a central moment in how the United States remembers its westward expansion, and the shift in how the site is named and memorialised mirrors a wider rethinking of that history.