In 2025, nearly a century and a half after the guns fell silent on the Montana plains, the relics of the Battle of the Little Bighorn are being sold to the highest bidder. A flintlock carbine with Sitting Bull’s name carved into its wooden stock. A lock of George Armstrong Custer’s hair. A dress uniform worn by General William Tecumseh Sherman.
All of it is heading to the auction block in Dallas, where collectors are expected to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for objects soaked in the blood of one of America’s most infamous clashes. Heritage Auctions is preparing to sell hundreds of items tied to the Plains Wars and the fight that became known as Custer’s Last Stand. The sale is timed to coincide with the anniversary of the battle, which took place on June 25, 1876. But the auction is doing far more than moving historical objects from one set of hands to another.
It is reopening a painful chapter in American history, one that remains deeply contested more than a century later. The most striking item on offer is a rifle that once belonged to Sitting Bull, the Hunkpapa Lakota leader who commanded the combined Native forces that routed the U. S. Seventh Cavalry.
The weapon, a flintlock carbine purchased by Sitting Bull from a trading post, carries his name carved into the stock. It is expected to fetch around $50,000. For many, the rifle is not merely a firearm but a symbol of Native resistance, a piece of a victory that remains the most famous Native triumph in the Indian Wars. Selling it as a collectible strikes some observers as a kind of cultural robbery, a sacred object transferred not to a museum or to tribal descendants but to whatever private buyer can pay the price.
The auction also includes an artifact tied directly to the man who became the battle’s fallen icon. A . 2 caliber revolver, gifted to Custer by U. S.
volunteers in 1863, carries an estimated value of $50,000. A walking cane presented to him by actor Lawrence Barrett is appraised at $10,000. A lock of his hair is valued at $7,000. His personal inkwell, his calling card, and a family photograph are all on the block as well.
Together, they form a scattered portrait of a man whose defeat turned him into a legend, and whose legend continues to obscure the deeper meaning of the battle itself. General Sherman’s formal dress uniform, a frock coat with 24 buttons, a black silk rosette bearing a gold national eagle, 13 silver stars, and a sash, carries the same estimated value as Sitting Bull’s rifle. Sherman served as commanding general of the U. S.
Army for fifteen years during the Indian Wars and was a strong advocate of total warfare against Native populations, pushing them onto reservations through systematic destruction. To see his uniform sold alongside Sitting Bull’s rifle is to see the two sides of the conflict laid out side by side on the same auction table, colonial ambition and Native resistance reduced to price tags. Equally notable is a Springfield Model 1873 trapdoor carbine recovered from the site of the Benteen-Reno defensive position. That position, held by Major Marcus Reno and Captain Frederick Benteen, was where the surviving remnants of the Seventh Cavalry made their stand while Custer and his immediate command were being annihilated several miles away.
The carbine is projected to sell for more than $200,000, the highest estimate of any single artifact in the sale. It has been linked to three shell casings found at the same site, meaning it was almost certainly fired during the desperate defense that followed Custer’s advance into the valley. Captain Benteen’s binoculars are valued at $7,500. A set of three Sioux arrows from the battle is expected to bring $10,000.
Photographs and letters involving key figures of the battle are anticipated to sell for more than $1,000, while brass buttons recovered from the battlefield may draw bids exceeding $500. The auction house itself framed the sale in soaring terms. In the words of Heritage Auctions, among historic battle artifacts, few are more revered and collectible than weapons. It is nearly impossible to describe the awe of holding a firearm once used in one of history’s most iconic encounters.
But for many, the awe of holding the object is inseparable from the horror of what it was used to do. The Battle of the Little Bighorn was a devastating defeat for the United States. Custer, leading the Seventh Cavalry Regiment, rode toward a combined force of Sioux and Cheyenne warriors and was cut down along with nearly his entire command. Of the more than seven hundred men under his overall leadership, 273 were killed and another 49 wounded.
Native casualties numbered only in the dozens. It was the most well-known Native victory of the conflict and a moment that remains burned into American memory as Custer’s Last Stand, a name that already tells the story from the losing side. But the battle was never only about Custer. On the Native side, it was a defensive victory, a stand against the encroachment of settlers, railroads, and the U.
S. Army onto lands guaranteed by treaties that were already being broken. The victory at the Little Bighorn did not change the overall direction of the war. It did not stop the United States from pressing westward.
But it proved that Native nations could resist, that they could fight and win, and that their claim to the land could not be dismissed without a fight. That is the deeper story being sold in Dallas. Not just the story of a fallen general and his legendary last stand, but the story of a resistance that carved its place into history even as the forces arrayed against it grew stronger. The auction thus forces a difficult question to the surface.
When someone buys Sitting Bull’s rifle or a lock of Custer’s hair, are they preserving history or commodifying pain? Should these artifacts be displayed in museums, studied by historians, and returned to the descendants of the people who owned them? Or should they be allowed to pass into private hands, stored in vaults or displayed on mantelpieces, their meaning narrowed to whatever the owner decides? Heritage Auctions is not determining how these objects will be understood.
It is only determining who will own them. The auction house will take its commission, the sellers will take their profits, and the buyer will take possession of a piece of history. Whether that buyer honors the memory of the battle or simply collects it as a curiosity is beyond anyone’s control. What is certain is that the artifacts will leave Dallas and disappear into private collections, removed from public view and from public discussion.
The deeper truths of the day, the broken treaties, the struggle for survival, the meaning of the Native victory, the terrible cost of American expansion, will fade a little further with each sale. The Battle of the Little Bighorn was not just a military engagement. It was a cry of defiance from Native nations fighting for their identity, their land, and their very survival. Now, pieces of that fight are being bought and sold like trophies.
The rifle that Sitting Bull once held is expected to fetch a price. The hair of the man who led the doomed charge is on display for the highest bidder. The uniform of the general who waged total war against Native peoples sits beside the weapons of those who resisted him.
In the climate-controlled halls of a Dallas auction house, the battlefield has become a marketplace, and the question of what truly is being sold, objects or memory, remains unresolved.
