The Battle of the Little Big Horn

Podcast Transcript

One of the most famous battles in the history of the American West took place in June 1876.

An alliance of the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes faced off against the United States cavalry.

The battle was a route and one of the most devastating losses for the American military, as well as one of the greatest victories for Plains Indians.

The victory, however, was only temporary as the victory led to an even bigger response, and the loss was actually glorified in the United States for decades.

Learn more about the Battle of the Little Bighorn and its legacy on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

The topic of this episode goes by several different names. The most commonly used one is the Battle of the Little Big Horn. However, if you are a member of the Lakota Nation, you might refer to it as the Battle of the Greasy Grass.

Many people have heard of it referred to as Custer’s Last Stand; however, as you’ll soon see, Custer was not the hero of the story.

The battle was a major point in the larger conflict known as the Great Sixou War of 1876.

The events of 1876 actually can be traced back to the 1850s.

The land in question is the Black Hills of what is today western South Dakota.

When the events of the episode transpired, they were the home of the Sioux Nation. However, this was not traditional Sioux land.

It was the traditional land of the Crow people in the first half of the 19th century and before. The Black Hills were sacred to the Crow, who considered them an essential part of their spiritual and cultural identity.

The Lakota Sioux originally lived in the woodlands of the upper Mississippi River region. However, during the 17th and 18th centuries, pressures from other Native American tribes—especially the Ojibwe, who were armed with European guns—forced the Sioux to move westward onto the Great Plains.

This was like a domino effect with European settlers in the east arming and pushing the tribes there westward. At the end of this chain reaction were the Crow people.

The Sioux were not acting alone in their struggle against the Crow. They formed alliances with other tribes, particularly the Cheyenne and Arapaho, who also had territorial disputes with the Crow. These alliances allowed the Sioux to coordinate large-scale military campaigns that overwhelmed their enemies. In contrast, the Crow, though fierce warriors, were often outnumbered and lacked the same level of alliances that the Sioux had cultivated.

By the early to mid-19th century, after decades of raids and battles, the Crow were forced to abandon the Black Hills region. They retreated westward into what is now modern-day Montana and Wyoming.

I bring this up because the events of this episode involved the Sioux, not the Crow, who were the people who lived there just decades before.

Fast forward to 1868. After years of conflict, the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 was signed, following the Red Cloud’s War which was a period where in which the Lakota and their allies successfully fought to halt the construction of the Bozeman Trail and U.S. military forts in their territory.

This treaty established the Great Sioux Reservation, which included the Black Hills, and promised that the area would remain under Native American control and that white settlers would be prohibited from entering. In return, the Lakota agreed to cease hostilities.

However, everything changed in 1874 with the discovery of gold in the Black Hills.

A United States Army expedition sent to the Black Hills led by 34-year-old Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer discovered gold in “them thar hills.”

Officially, the expedition was supposed to assess the region’s geography, resources, and potential for establishing military outposts. It included scientists, geologists, journalists, and miners.

When members of the expedition discovered gold in the Black Hills, news quickly spread, triggering a gold rush and a massive influx of settlers and miners into the area. This violated the treaty and sparked tensions with the Sioux.

The leader of the expedition, George Armstrong Custer, is one reason these events are still remembered and why they happened in the first place.

Custer was a flamboyant and ambitious U.S. Army officer and cavalry commander. He was born in Ohio and graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1861, finishing dead last in his class.

Despite his academic standing, Custer quickly rose to prominence during the Civil War due to his aggressive leadership, notably in cavalry battles at Gettysburg and the Shenandoah Valley, where he earned the rank of brevet major general at the age of just 23

He was known for his distinctive appearance and bold style. With long, curly blonde hair, he often courted media attention, which made him a polarizing figure.

He was probably planning a run for President at some point. His plan was to go out west, win military glory against the Indians, and then parlay that into a nomination by one of the two major parties.

This was the same playbook used by previous US presidents, including Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, and Ulysses S. Grant.

With miners and settlers encroaching on Sioux land in the Black Hills, the Sioux began moving west, once again into Crow land. In addition to attacks on the miners and settlers taking their land, they were also fighting with the Crow who appealed to the US government for help.

In late 1875, the U.S. government issued an ultimatum to the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho, demanding that they return to their reservations by January 31, 1876, or be considered hostile. The leaders in this Native American alliance refused, resulting in the U.S. military launching a campaign to remove them from the unceded territories forcibly.

There were several leaders of the Sioux who led the fight against the United States.

Sitting Bull was a Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux holy man. He was a key figure in uniting the Native American tribes through his spiritual leadership and resistance to U.S. encroachment.

Crazy Horse was a brilliant Oglala Lakota war leader. Crazy Horse played a central role in the tribes’ military efforts during the war.

Finally, Chief Gall, another important Hunkpapa leader, who was a strong military strategist and leader.

The Sioux, along with their allies, the Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho, ignored the US government’s ultimatum and prepared for the wrath of the American army.

The US sent multiple cavalry and infantry units to the region, including the 7th Cavalry Regiment, led by Custer, which is the unit relevant to this episode.

The total number of US soldiers was around 2500, and the number of native warriors has been debated, but the average is usually given somewhere between 1000 and 4000.

There were a few skirmishes that took place in the first half of 1876.

The Battle of Powder River took place on March 17, 1876. This early engagement in the war occurred when Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds led a surprise attack on a Northern Cheyenne village along the Powder River. While the attack destroyed the village, it did little to weaken the Native American resolve, and Reynolds’ force was criticized for poor execution and retreat. Four Americans were killed, and three Cheyenne.

On June 17, 1876, the Battle of the Rosebud was fought. The battle was a key battle in which General George Crook’s forces engaged a large group of Sioux and Cheyenne warriors led by Crazy Horse. While the battle was technically a stalemate, it prevented Crook from reinforcing Custer’s column, which would play a crucial role in the subsequent Battle of the Little Bighorn.

The Great Sioux War’s most famous event, the Little Bighorn Battle, took place on June 25.

Custer divided his force of around 600 men into three battalions, hoping to surround a large Native encampment near the Little Bighorn River.

His plan was to capture the non-combatants in the camp, primarily women, children, and the elderly, and use them as leverage to negotiate an end to the conflict.

According to John Martin, one of the only survivors of the battle, Custer wasn’t even concerned with fighting so much as preventing the people in camp from fleeing.

The battalion of approximately 200 men led by Custer went straight into the camp.

However, he underestimated the number of Native warriors, believing he would face only a few hundred. In reality, there were around 1,800 to 2,500 warriors in the camp.

His men were very quickly surrounded and overwhelmed by the warriors, who cut them off from the other two battalions.

Two of Custer’s subordinate commanders, Major Marcus Reno and Captain Frederick Benteen, had been tasked with separate assaults but became bogged down in the fighting. They eventually managed to regroup and form a defensive perimeter, surviving until reinforcements arrived 36 hours later.

As for Custer’s men, they were slaughtered. Within an hour, the battalion he led was utterly defeated. Total losses of the 7th Cavalry from all three battalions were 268 killed and 55 wounded, 6 of whom later died of their wounds.

If it sounds like I’m glossing over the actual battle, it is because we know little about it. There were no witnesses from the Custer’s battalion who survived. The aforementioned John Martin was a member of the unit, but was sent to one of the other battalions with a message and missed the entire affair.

The warriors had no clue who Custer was, and it wasn’t until years later that they recounted tails of the battle, with often conflicting testimony.

One story holds that he fell in a stream, but his body wasn’t found in a stream. Another holds that a Chyeanne woman named Buffalo Calf Road Woman knocked Custer off his horse with a club.

Multiple warriors later claimed to have been the ones to have killed Custer.

When reinforcements arrived two days later, Custer’s body was found shot once in the chest and once in the head. According to some Sioux accounts, he and other soldiers killed themselves when it was clear the end was near.

Yet another theory holds that Custer was one of the first to be killed, as his death would have caused his unit to fall apart without leadership.

Native casualties are harder to estimate but were likely much lower, with reports of between 36 and 100 dead.

The defeat at Little Bighorn shocked the nation and led to a massive military response. The U.S. government sent more troops into the region and ramped up its campaign against the Lakota and their allies.

In the years following the battle, many Native Americans were forced onto reservations. Crazy Horse surrendered to U.S. forces in 1877 and was killed later that year under controversial circumstances. Sitting Bull fled to Canada but eventually returned and surrendered in 1881.

The U.S. government formally confiscated the Black Hills in 1877 in violation of the 1868 treaty. Despite multiple legal challenges over the years, the U.S. has retained control of the Black Hills, though the Lakota and their descendants continue to demand its return.

What is most interesting is the legend that surrounded Custer after his death.

The story of Custer’s Last Stand was told in newspaper stories, books, and later movies. In American media, it was portrayed as a heroic tragedy.

The leader of one of the other battalions that survived, Frederick Benteen, later went public and said Custer was actually a poor tactician, reckless, and endangered the troops under his command.

The reason for the legend of George Armstrong Custer was largely due to one person: his widow, “Libbie” Bacon Custer.

For years, she kept the myth of Custer alive. She wrote the 1876 bestseller A Popular Life of General Custer with Frederick Whittaker soon after his death and a memoir Boots and Saddles in 1885.

For years, she contacted journalists to encourage stories about her late husband and was available herself for interviews.

She was supported by various veterans groups from the Indian Wars who used the story of Custer’s Last Stand to advocate for increased pensions.

The story of Custer became so prevalent that in the 1920s, one history textbook omitted the story of Custer because the authors didn’t find it to be consequential to the settlement of the West. After a backlash, they included the story in the textbook.

“Libbie” Bacon Custer served as an advocate for her husband all her life, which was quite long. She died at the age of 90 in 1933. That same year, after her death, the book “Glory Hunter – The Life of General Custer” by Frederic F. Van de Water was published, which was the first book to provide a more honest portrail.

The narrative surrounding Custer and the Battle of the Little Big Horn has taken almost a century to change in popular American culture.

The truth surrounding the Battle of the Little Big Horn is that Custer was seeking military glory for personal advancement and made a gross tactical error regarding the size of his enemy, which resulted in the deaths of himself and the men under his command.