On the morning of June 25, 1876, two young men from the Northern Cheyenne camp went fishing along the Little Big Horn River. A boy accompanying them wandered to higher ground to catch grasshoppers for bait. On his final climb, he saw something that stopped him cold. He hurried back to his uncle, White Shield, and reported that a man wearing a war bonnet had passed by, clearly searching for something.
White Shield rode to the top of the hill and saw distant gunfire and people scattering. The camp was under attack. He raced back to warn the others. The warning came too late to prevent the disaster that followed.
By the end of the day, General George Armstrong Custer and his immediate command lay dead on a ridge above the river, their bodies stripped and scattered across the grass. The Battle of the Little Big Horn had become the most devastating defeat ever inflicted on the United States Army by Native American forces. The Seventh Cavalry lost 265 men killed and 52 wounded. Custer had acted under orders from General Alfred H.
Terry, commander of the Department of Dakota. Terry sent Custer and the Seventh Cavalry up the Rosebud River in Montana with instructions to locate a large gathering of Sioux and Cheyenne believed to be camped somewhere to the south, possibly along the Little Big Horn. By June 22, nearly the entire regiment, about 700 soldiers and 28 officers, had set out from camp to follow the trail. Cheyenne accounts later recalled that in the spring of that year, the Sioux and Northern Cheyenne had gathered near the mouth of the Rosebud, close to the Yellowstone River, forming a massive encampment.
Word had spread that white soldiers were somewhere in the area, though no one knew exactly where. The trail had already seen blood. In March, General Reynolds had attacked a camp along the Powder River in freezing weather, capturing the Indians’ horses, though he soon retreated and the Indians recovered most of the animals. More recently, the tribes had moved from the head of Reno Creek to the Little Big Horn, and a battle had already been fought against General Crook on the Rosebud.
Two warriors wounded in that fight had died and were left behind in lodges along Reno Creek. When Custer’s troops came across those lodges, they charged, but found no survivors. On the day before Custer’s attack, the tribes had relocated to the vast bottomland of the Little Big Horn. There was a general sense among the people that an attack was imminent, though no one knew the details.
A few Sioux lodges had briefly set out for the Red Cloud Agency but quickly returned, frightened after encountering Custer’s force nearby. Their alarming report spread unease through the camp. An elder warned that soldiers were preparing to attack from both the upper and lower ends. Many began readying for battle and mounting their horses, though numerous horses were still out with the herd, leaving many warriors on foot.
From a ridge between the Rosebud and Little Big Horn rivers, Custer’s scouts had pinpointed the Indian villages near Reno Creek. Custer divided his force into three battalions. He ordered Major Marcus Reno, leading three cavalry troops and scouts, to advance above the upper part of the village. Captain Frederick Benteen, with three troops, was tasked with scouting to the south toward the river, with instructions to engage any Indians he encountered.
Custer himself planned to lead a direct assault on the village farther down the river. His scouts had cautioned him that the village was extensive and the outcome of an engagement would be highly uncertain. Reno crossed the river and soon attacked the upper village. But upon seeing the vast size of the camp, he became apprehensive and withdrew into a wooded area.
His stay there was brief. Panic quickly set in, prompting him to abandon the timber, cross the river, and seek refuge on the high bluffs along the northern side, where he established defensive entrenchments. Benteen soon joined him, followed by Captain McDougall and the pack train. The Cheyenne who watched the retreat were bewildered.
They later said the soldiers made no effort to defend themselves, focusing solely on escape. It was like chasing buffalo, one warrior recalled. We could never understand why the soldiers abandoned the timber, as staying there would have made it impossible for the Indians to kill them. Meanwhile, Custer approached the lower end of the expansive camp, where the Cheyenne, Brulé, and Oglala were situated.
Instead of crossing the river and charging into the village, he paused and took up a position on a long elevated ridge. His troops appeared to be making their way toward a ford roughly half a mile upstream from the main battlefield, seemingly intending to enter the camp. As they drew near, the Gray Horse Company suddenly stopped and dismounted, followed by the rest of the troops in view. White Shield veered to the left and followed the river’s course, while Bobtail Horse, Calf, and a few other warriors positioned themselves near the riverbank behind a low ridge and opened fire.
Soon the Sioux and Cheyenne converged, crossing the river and streaming up the gulch like ants emerging from a disturbed hill. The cavalry troops retreated to a small knoll, then crossed a deep gulch and scaled a nearby hill. Cheyenne warriors, including Yellow Nose, Contrary Belly, and Chief Comes in Sight, launched close-range charges that caused great panic among the troop horses tethered behind the lines. Yellow Nose seized a company guidon from where it had been planted and, as he carried it away, struck a soldier to count coup.
The charge sent the terrified horses stampeding. Some Indians shouted that the soldiers were running, though this was not the case. All the soldiers had retreated from the river’s edge except the Gray Horse Company, which held its position on higher ground where the monument stands today. Groups of soldiers shifted about, some heading toward the river, others moving away.
When the Indians attacked from all directions, the soldiers closed ranks. One dismounted group attempted to reach the Gray Horse Company on the hill about half a mile away, but many of the men were unarmed and had only six-shooters. They did not reach the hilltop. Every ravine descending from the ridge and every small cluster of brush was occupied by Indians who maintained a relentless and punishing fire.
The overwhelming numbers of Indians caused heavy casualties. By this time, many of the Indians were equipped with improved firearms, having seized carbines from troops during the earlier fight with Crook on the Rosebud. White Bull, also known as Ice Bear, noted that if it had not been for these captured weapons, they could not have killed the soldiers so quickly. When the battle commenced, roughly half the Indians had guns while the rest carried bows, which they had in abundance.
Their firearms varied widely, including muzzle loaders, Spencer carbines, old Henry rifles, and Sharps military rifles, the latter being their best weapons apart from those recently captured. The Gray Horse Company held onto their horses until the very end, with nearly all of them being killed. Bobtail Horse stated that some horses managed to escape, charging down through the ranks of the Indians and knocking people over. According to some Native American accounts, one man on the edge of the Gray Horse Company near the river was General Custer himself.
White Shield observed this individual while he was being stripped of his clothing. The man wore a fringed buckskin shirt and matching trousers, high-quality boots, and carried a knife in a scabbard tucked into one boot. A large red handkerchief was tied around his neck. He was equipped with a six-shooter and died with the pistol still in hand.
He had a mustache but was otherwise clean-shaven, with blue tattoos on his arms above the wrists. It is believed this man may have been Tom Custer, the general’s brother, as his body was never conclusively identified. According to the Native Americans, they did not defeat the troops through a direct charge but by shooting at them from behind hills, picking off the soldiers while they were exposed. The final charge was made only after the main body of soldiers had fallen, although some were still scattered on foot toward the river.
Once all troops on the hill were down, the Native Americans gave a victorious shout and advanced up the ridge. The soldiers near the river retreated, and the remainder of the battle concluded quickly. After the battle ended, women and children entered the battleground, and there was mutilation of the dead, as was customary. Spotted Hawk, who was seven years old at the time, recalled going with a group of slightly older children to take items from the fallen soldiers.
While trying to remove trousers, a child cut open a waistband and discovered pieces of green paper, both small and large, likely fractional currency and larger bills. Intrigued by the colorful papers and unaware of their value, the children believed the hidden items must be important and took them back to camp. Spotted Hawk remembered using a folded bill as a saddle blanket while playing with clay figures, fashioning a clay horse and rider. After Custer’s command was completely destroyed, the warriors regrouped and moved up the river to launch another assault on Reno’s forces, which included Benteen’s men and the pack train.
From Reno’s hill, thirteen men, twelve soldiers and one civilian scout who had been sheltering in the timber, managed to rejoin the main force, including George Herendeen. Four men had stayed behind hidden in the timber: Lieutenant Darado, enlisted man Tom O’Neal, William Jackson, and Fred Gerard. The indigenous warriors were aware of the group’s presence but primarily focused their attacks on the troops entrenched on the hill, maintaining a continuous barrage of gunfire. That night, the besieged troops were in desperate need of water.
According to indigenous accounts, one soldier clad only in his undergarments made a daring run down the hill to reach the river while being fired upon. He carried a quart cup in one hand and a canteen in the other. Once at the river, he lay in the water to fill both containers and drink, despite bullets splashing water around him, and managed to return to the hill unharmed. Among Reno’s scouts who perished was Bloody Knife, a prominent Ree who had been raised among the Sioux due to his father’s marriage to a Ree woman during a period of peace.
As a boy, his mother longed to return to her people, and the family moved back to the Ree village along the Missouri River. In 1874, he joined Custer’s expedition to the Black Hills and served as an effective scout. He was killed during Reno’s retreat across the Little Big Horn. Later, two young women, daughters of Bloody Knife’s Sioux sister, came down from the camp to collect war trophies.
They discovered an Indian scout and, recognizing his allegiance, decapitated him, mounted his head on a pole, and carried it back to camp. Their mother, seeing the trophy, realized it was her brother. The indigenous forces maintained their presence throughout the following day, launching several assaults. But reports from their scouts soon alerted them to the imminent approach of Terry’s forces.
Orders were issued for the camp to relocate, and the women quickly began packing. The Indians left the field before Terry arrived. The size of the camp that Custer attacked remains uncertain. Young T.
Moon later stated there were around 200 lodges in the Cheyenne village and six Sioux villages, each larger than the Cheyenne. Assuming comparable size, that would amount to roughly 1,400 lodges. Beyond those living in the lodges, numerous visitors from different reservations had gathered there. In the spring, the Sioux and Cheyenne had dispatched runners to Red Cloud, Spotted Tail, Standing Rock, and other Sioux reservations, summoning warriors to join the camp.
The call was met with a strong response, including Southern Cheyenne, Yankton Sioux, and Arapahos. Cheyenne accounts suggest there were over 1,500 lodges, each potentially sheltering three to four fighting men, totaling anywhere from 4,500 to 6,000 warriors. Eastman’s record offers a more conservative view, reporting slightly over 900 lodges and roughly 1,400 warriors. Northern Cheyenne have long maintained that if Reno had stayed in the timber, the Indians could not have confronted him effectively.
They also believed that had Custer persisted in his charge through the villages, the Indians would have fled. If the soldiers had not stopped, one prominent warrior remarked, they would have killed lots of Indians. Those familiar with Indian combat knew that Indians generally preferred to avoid close engagements, retreating when their enemy charged but rallying and countercharging the moment the enemy’s momentum weakened. Evidence suggests a portion of Custer’s command approached the ford, and if the two companies that reached that point, likely including lieutenants Crittenden and Calhoun, had crossed the river, the remainder of the command might have followed, potentially leading to a different outcome.
Custer’s strategy was a dual-sided assault on the camp, sound in concept but demanding precise timing and fearless leadership. Either Reno initiated his charge prematurely, or Custer’s journey took considerably longer than anticipated. While Reno’s path spanned only three miles, Custer’s distance extended six, seven, or possibly ten miles. By the time Custer neared the river, Reno had already been defeated and had retreated to his hill.
It is conceivable that Custer paused on the hill to search for Reno, inadvertently granting the Indian forces time to consolidate. According to the Cheyenne, initially only ten warriors were present at the ford to counter any attempted charge. The events of June 25, 1876, at the Battle of the Little Big Horn have been analyzed and debated for generations. The battle was won through overwhelming numbers, captured weapons, and tactical awareness by the Sioux and Cheyenne, who had risen to defend their land and way of life.
Custer’s defeat, shaped by complex strategies, delayed actions, and fierce resistance, marked one of the most dramatic and devastating moments of the American Indian Wars. The stories and testimonies from both sides paint a vivid and haunting picture of bravery, miscalculation, and the harsh realities of war on the American frontier.
