On June 17, the Native American encampment stood along a small tributary of the Little Big Horn River, roughly eighteen miles upstream from where General Custer’s forces would meet them eight days later. The camp held around one hundred and twenty standing lodges and four hundred wickiups, or brush shelters, and mustered an estimated three thousand five hundred warriors. These men were about to fight one of the most decisive engagements of the Plains Wars. The battle began when Colonel Reno’s troops pressed an attack against the village’s upper end.
The warriors met them with overwhelming force and drove them back across the river. Once Reno’s command had been pushed into retreat, most of the Native fighters left that part of the field and shifted their attention to General Custer’s column, which was approaching from the other side of the bluffs. Custer attempted to cross the river at the mouth of a small stream called Medicine Tail Coulee, but the crossing proved unfeasible. He turned his men up a ridge instead, then descended again when they reached the trails leading to the ford.
There the Native warriors, concentrated in the ravines, unleashed a devastating volley of gunfire from every direction. The soldiers faltered under the assault, and the fight devolved into close-quarters combat. The troops made several attempts to regroup, but they were vastly outnumbered and quickly overrun. Within moments, none remained to tell what had happened.
A brief lull in the fighting gave Reno time to gather his surviving forces on a bluff and establish partial defensive positions. The Native Americans, confident they could eventually overwhelm him, largely ceased their assault for the night. They also had many dead and wounded to tend to. If Reno had attempted to move to Custer’s aid, he would almost certainly have met the same fate.
On June 27, the advance of General Terry’s column was spotted, arriving much sooner than expected. The Native Americans hastily broke camp and abandoned much of their equipment. Terry’s timely arrival ensured the survival of Reno’s contingent. Approximately forty Native Americans were killed during the battle, and many more were wounded.
They acknowledged the courage and desperation of the white soldiers and recounted acts of individual bravery that inspired even their respect. The details they provided, however, were too vague to identify the individuals involved. Contrary to some reports, no prisoners were taken or subjected to torture. The Native Americans also noted that many of the soldiers’ carbines were found with shells jammed in the chambers, rendering the weapons temporarily inoperable.
The low number of casualties among the Native forces was remarkable. It stemmed from the ability of an Indian warrior to protect himself in combat; unless struck in the brain, heart, or spine, there was no guarantee of death. Many warriors survived wounds of all kinds to the body and later displayed excellent health. This resilience, born of constant conflict, made them extraordinary horsemen and skilled marksmen, achieving impressive accuracy both from the backs of their swift and hardy ponies and on foot.
From a young age, they learned to use every hill, rock, tree, grass tuft, and natural feature to their advantage in hunting game. Their expertise was refined through continual conflicts with other tribes and with white settlers, making each warrior highly adept at their methods of combat. They required no order to seize an opportunity, press an advantage, or protect themselves during a retreat. Each tribe was loosely divided into several bands, each led by a chief whose authority was largely constrained by the will of the group.
Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull were prominently highlighted in this conflict, and the effective fighting tactics and skillful retreats were often attributed to them. Yet they did not deserve significantly more credit or blame than many others regarding planning and decisions. They did, however, lead two of the most dangerous bands on the Plains and were among the fiercest leaders the Sioux Nation had produced in years. The accounts provided by the Indians should be approached with caution.
They often tailored their descriptions to align with what they believed their interviewer wished to hear. As for the number of Indians involved and the casualties they suffered, the accounts varied widely. What was certain was that there were enough Indians present to decisively defeat the Seventh Cavalry, which had been divided into three parts, and to completely overwhelm any one of those detachments in open combat. This was demonstrated in the destruction of one detachment along with its brave commander.
The reasoning for why Reno remained on the bluff he later fortified and defended was sound, but there were other equally compelling reasons. He could not leave behind his wounded, who would have been killed by the enemy. He was also unaware of Custer’s location or the dire circumstances he faced. It was reasonable to assume that Reno believed Custer would return to support him once he realized the overwhelming numerical advantage of the Indians, with the goal of reuniting the regiment.
The events surrounding the Battle of the Little Big Horn can be summarized concisely. The Native Americans were initially caught off guard, and in the resulting confusion, exacerbated by the efforts of women and children to flee, Custer came to believe the native forces were retreating and might escape him. Moreover, from the location where he left Major Reno, Custer could observe only a small section of the native camp and lacked an accurate sense of its full extent. As a result, he chose not to regroup his regiment to launch a coordinated attack at full strength.
Instead, he instructed Reno to strike the village’s upper end while he moved downstream on the opposite side of the bluffs, which obscured the river from his sight and concealed his movement from the native forces. With five companies of the Seventh Cavalry, Custer reached a trail descending to the river opposite the camp’s midpoint. Following this path nearly to the water, he turned back without attempting to cross, evidenced by the absence of men or horses on either bank near the ford. Retracing his steps for several hundred yards, he ascended the fatal ridge where his body and those of his command were later discovered, seemingly intending to proceed to the lower end of the village, cross, and mount an attack there.
It was on this ridge that he became entirely encircled and his forces completely destroyed. There was no evidence to suggest he attempted to retreat and reunite with Reno. Had he chosen to do so after reaching the ford, Captain Benteen, having already joined Reno by that time, would have consolidated the regiment, enabling them to stand their ground or possibly even overcome the Indians. If the Indians had been truly aware of Custer’s approach, they would likely have moved out to confront him as they had done against General Crook only eight days earlier, allowing the women, children, and the village to evacuate.
Additionally, if Custer had waited for his regiment to regroup and crossed at the location Reno used, then launched his attack on the open plain while positioning some of his men in the wooded area, the Indians present would not have been able to overpower him. His decisions were not attributed to recklessness or poor judgment, but rather to a misunderstanding of the circumstances and an overabundance of bravery.
