THE BATTLE OF THE LITTLE BIGHORN
(causes and effects)

Susan Adams Morgan
History 4414-XTIA
October 3, 2015
Dr. Mickey Crews
Troy University

The Battle of the Little Bighorn

On a hot dusty June 25th day in 1876, one of the most famous battles in American history would take place along a four-mile stretch of the Little Bighorn River in the Black Hills in southeastern Montana. This battle was also known as Custer’s Last Stand by the American people and the Native Americans knew the battle as the Battle of Greasy Grass. There are many different reasons that this one battle was so famous. It is because it would be the last great battle that the Native Americans would win and it would be the last great battle that George Armstrong Custer would lose. Why did this battle even have to take place? The area where this battle took place was in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Exactly why were the Black Hills of South Dakota so important to the United States that they would violate the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 and sacrifice so many lives for? The principal antagonists were the Seventh Regiment of Cavalry of the United States Army which was under the command of Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, and a number of nomadic Indian tribes—Cheyenne, Sans Arcs, Miniconjoux Sioux, Oglala Sioux, Blackfeet, and Hunkpapa Sioux—under the general direction of Sioux Chief Sitting Bull, at least for the duration of the battle[i]. The United States Seventh Cavalry battle casualties amounted to 12 officers and 247 enlisted men. Sioux and allied tribe losses have never been accurately tabulated, but the estimates range from as little as 50 warriors up to 200 warriors. In many respects, the Battle of the Little Bighorn was a ‘last gasp’ of the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians, a final effort to prevent the large-scale white settlement of the Northern Plains that could only result in the extinction of their traditional way of life. For some of the participants, the battle amounted to a religious act, success in which would result in a miraculous reappearance of the once-great buffalo herds and the disappearance of the white man. For others, it was more likely an act of final desperation—the last act of the warrior, fighting to the death for his people and his way of life. The events leading up to the battle, the American government’s response to the slaughter, and the final outcome are described below. After the conclusion of the Civil War, the nomadic tribes of the northern plains—notably the Sioux, Cheyenne, Blackfoot, and Crow—came under increasing pressure from the government to abandon their way of life in return for a government-sponsored reservation.[ii] The passage of the Homestead Act in 1861, and especially after completion of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869, brought large numbers of settlers into what were totally Indian tribal lands, reducing them to farmsteads and, thus, reducing Native American access to the buffalo herds that were their mainstay for survival. As a practical matter, there was no place for the United States to expel these migratory peoples where they might continue their traditional existence. Numerous reservations were established throughout the west and the Army acted in many respects as a mounted police force, assuring that reservation residents did not wander from their reservation boundaries. After the completion of the first transcontinental railroad, a second, more northerly, route began construction. As the Pacific Northern Railroad crossed the Dakota Territory, the railroad laborers came into conflict with both the Sioux and Cheyenne tribes who understood, however dimly, that any such facility would surely ultimately result in an increasing white settler presence.[iii] Gold had been discovered in the Black Hills, in what is now South Dakota, bringing hundreds to thousands of anxious prospectors. The initial responsibility of detachments of the Seventh Cavalry was to prevent their entry into the area, which had been secured by treaty to Sioux, theoretically in perpetuity.[iv] These treaties were to be violated by the United States Government several times over. The United States Government had violated two treaties that it made with the Indians. Those treaties were the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 and 1868. The first treaty of 1851 made at Fort Laramie guaranteed the Lakota Sioux important land rights which included the Black Hills territory. Each Indian tribe was given its own land parcels so they would quit fighting among themselves. It did permit white travelers and railroad workers passage through the territories. However, because of the makeup of Indian politics, where not just a single person can make a decision for a whole nation, the fighting among the Indians did not stop. The United States Government seen this as a violation of the treaty. So, rather than the government addressing the issue of whites trespassing on Sioux territories, the government decided to “make another treaty” with the Sioux Indians in 1868 at Fort Laramie. The United States Government had a poor record of honoring treaties with the Indians. There was always a need for more land and resources as people moved to the western united states. Most treaties were openly violated by the government or were “modified” in the best interests of the United states. Initially, the treaties with the Indians were meant to protect everyone involved. The Indians would be allowed to keep ‘their way of life’ on a smaller stage and the United States government would get what it wanted. However, as time went on, the government used these treaties as a way to keep Indians from their ancestral lands.

After gold was discovered in the Black Hills of South Dakota, nothing was going to stop the government from taking the land from the Indians. The gold was needed to fund the Civil War. Once again, the Treaty of 1851 was going to be modified in the government’s best interests. The Sioux were upset that the treaty of 1851 was going to be changed to take the land along the Bozeman trail. The treaty talks of 1868 ended after Chief Red Cloud delivered a speech about the white man’s betrayal to the Indians. He led the Sioux out of the treaty talks vowing to fight anyone who invaded the Indian territories as they were defined in 1851.

The Sioux and Cheyenne Indians defiantly left their reservations in late 1875 because they were outraged over the intrusions of the white man into the sacred lands of the Black Hills. The Black Hills were sacred to the Indians because it was a place of rituals and ceremonies and where the Sun Dance was created. The Sun Dance evokes the forces of creation and re-creation. The Indians say that the spirits are here in this place when referring to the Black Hills. It is these myths and histories of the Native Americans and the part they play in their beliefs that makes them so sacred. When gold is discovered here the Indians were bound to lose the land. The government had to send in the troops to protect the miners. Thus we have the start of the Indian Wars of the Black Hills.

In the spring of 1875, Sioux chiefs (notably Red Cloud, Spotted Tail) were summoned to Washington to meet with President Grant to discuss the transfer of the Black Hills to direct government control. They refused to give up the land. Several months later, Grant directed the War Department to rescind orders officially hindering miners’ access to the Black Hills gold fields. An Army directive to that effect was issued in November 1875, with the added requirement that the various nomadic tribes were required to report to established agency settlement areas no later than 31 January 1876.[v] They also refused to comply with this order. Sporadic fighting began[vi] and the stage was set for the Battle of the Little Bighorn. In order to enforce compliance with the presidential directive, those components of the Seventh Cavalry still on post-Civil War occupation duty in Louisiana were transferred to the western frontier in the spring of 1876 and the entire regiment assembled at Fort Abraham Lincoln, Nebraska.[vii] The regiment was assigned a part in the larger effort to bring the Sioux to heel. In his report to the President on the Little Bighorn disaster, Secretary of War Cameron described the strategic plan. “These Indians [the Sioux and Cheyenne] occupy parts of the Departments of Dakota and Platte, commanded by Generals Terry and Crook, respectively, but the whole is immediately commanded by Lieutenant-General Sheridan, who has given the matter his special attention. Preparations were then made on a larger scale, and three columns were put in motion as early in May as possible, from Fort Abe Lincoln, on the Missouri River, under General Terry; from Fort Ellis, in Montana, under General, at the time Colonel, Gibbon; and from Fort Fetterman, Wyoming under General Crook.”[viii]
In essence, the overall operation was planned to be three columns converging on hostiles thought to be congregating in Montana’s Bighorn Valley, an intelligence estimate that proved to be correct. The strategic plan was compromised from the outset. Crook’s column came under attack in mid-June at the Rosebud River, was forced to remain in a defensive position for a number of weeks. His troops never arrived in the Little Bighorn battle area. A Seventh Cavalry scouting report indicated a large body of Sioux on the Rosebud. General Terry detached the Seventh Cavalry,[ix] with instructions to avoid direct contact with the enemy until the remainder of his and Colonel Gibbon’s infantry column had caught up to them. They column was slowed down by the presence of heavy, crew-served weapons such as cannon and Gatling guns. Specifically, Custer’s force was to arrive no sooner than the 26th of June, thus allowing Gibbon’s Gatling gun division to take up positions.[x] Custer disregarded these instructions, a decision that would lead to the destruction of almost his entire force. George Custer was commanding the expedition and he was on a mission to force Sioux and Cheyenne Indians off of the plains and back to their reservations. Gold had been found in the Black Hills and the white men wanted the land to mine the gold for themselves. The Federal Government also wanted the gold and silver coming out of the Black Hills to help fund the Civil War. Once gold and silver were discovered, the Indians never would stand a chance to keep their lands. The Battle of the Little Bighorn was in the works years before the actual battle took place. In 1876 it finally came to a head. The reports prior to the battle stated that there would be no more than 500 to 800 Sioux. However, estimates from the battle itself has stated there were around 5,000 warriors on the Indian’s side. Custer may have been a great military leader but he could not overcome those numbers. Dividing his soldiers was a major mistake and his command paid for it dearly. Upon detachment from the main body, the Seventh Cavalry conducted a series of rapid marches, day and night, arriving at the Bighorn Valley on the morning of 25 June. Both his troops and horses were exhausted and Custer initially intended to remain concealed, allowing them a day’s rest, with a prospective attack on the Indian village on the 26th of June, at dawn.[xi] However, upon receiving information that the hostiles were aware of his presence, Custer determined to attack at once, in order to prevent their escape.[xii] Expecting the Sioux to run at the first sign of a battle, Custer moved his men forward to attack. He was given reports from his Crow scouts that the village was very large and once again, he disregarded this information. Major Marcus Reno commanded the first battalion of the 7th Calvary at the Little Bighorn. He was ordered to attack on the morning of the 26th. Reno prepared to attack the southern end of the Indian village. They quickly realized that the Lakota Sioux and the Northern Cheyenne Indian’s force was much larger than they had anticipated. The Indians did not flee as it was thought they would. Major Reno sent a message to Custer but he did not hear back from Custer so he moved his troops northward. During his initial assault and subsequent retreat, Reno had to stop several times to keep his troops organized into an effective defensive fighting force. Afraid that his soldiers were be trapped, Major Reno stopped his men, dismounted and fired at the Indian Village from a distance. After about a half hour, Reno had lost only one man. Custer’s promised Reno reinforcements but they did not show up. He ordered his men into the trees and thick brush along the river. Major Reno retreated to the bluff’s east of the river and it was here he was met by a battalion commanded by Captain Frederick Benteen. Captain Benteen’s troops had been sent by Custer to prevent the Indians from escaping through the upper valley of the Little Bighorn River. Benteen’s arrival was just in the nick of time for Major Reno’s troops, for they were about to be completely wiped out by the Indians. Their combined forces did not try to meet up with Custer for over an hour later even though they could hear the heavy fighting going on to the north. This delay would later lead many to believe that Benteen had failed to march to the sound of the guns. Captain Benteen had no kind words for Custer. He was Custer’s outspoken enemy. Benteen never changed his mind about Custer, even up to his death. Custer’s had a plan to attack the northern end of the village at the same time as Reno’s attack on the southern end of the village. Custer underestimated the terrain he would have to ride over before making his attack. His troops would have to negotiate bluffs and ravines before they would arrive at a place where they could attack. By the time Custer arrived to his initial attack point, Reno had already been driven back by the Sioux and Northern Cheyenne warriors. These Indians would soon discover that Custer was attacking the other end of the village and some of them rode off to fight Custer. The Northern Cheyenne and the Sioux crossed the river and attacked the oncoming troops. Another group of Sioux Indians under the command of Chief Crazy Horse had moved downstream and they came around Custer in a sweeping arc, trapping Custer and his men. As the Sioux and Northern Cheyenne closed in on Custer and his men, Custer ordered his men to shoot their horses and use them as a wall for cover. The horses provided little protection against the overwhelming numbers of Indians in the attack. Thousands of bullets and arrows were raining down on Custer and his soldiers. After the massacre of Custer and his men, the Indians moved back to aid the other Indians that were fighting Major Reno and Captain Benteen. These two commanders had finally started making their way to where they heard the fighting coming from which was Custer being slaughtered. Over the next day, the soldiers under the command of Reno and Benteen fought a heavy battle with the Indians. Finally, General Terry’s soldiers arrived and the Indians left the battlefield. The Indians cleared the battlefield of their dead and wounded but the soldiers were found where they had perished. Many of the soldiers had been stripped of their clothing and some had been mutilated. Custer was found near the top of the hill. He had been shot twice with bullets. One of the bullets had entered his temple and the other bullet had entered his chest. His body had not been mutilated. Some say out of respect for him as a fighting man and others because he was not wearing the uniform of a calvary soldier. It is hard to imagine it was out of respect when the Indians hated Custer for the Battle of the Little Rosebud earlier where he massacred so many Indians. As a practical matter, Custer exchanged a strategic advantage[xiii] for a tactical disadvantage. Custer’s chief responsibility was to fix the enemy’s position, eventually blocking hostile movements for the main force. His troops were armed with single-shot carbines, whereas many hostiles were armed with 1873 model Winchester magazine rifles. Given the enormous disparities in numbers the outcome of the battle, once commenced, could not have been in doubt. Custer’s force was annihilated in perhaps under an hour. Custer’s blunders cost him his life, and that of his command, but it gained him everlasting fame. His defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn made the life of what would have been an obscure military figure into the subject of countless songs, books, and paintings. His life has been under a microscope from the moment of his “glorious” death at the hands of the very savages he thought he could never lose against. His wife and widow, Elizabeth Custer did what she could to make sure his legacy was one of a hero. Her writing portrayed George Custer as a military genius and also a cultivated and refined man and a solid statesman. The aftermath of the Battle of the Little Bighorn would bring upon the Native Americans the ultimate downfall of their way of life. They had their victory and as the saying goes “they won the battle, but lost the war”. While the Indians were ostensibly victorious at the Little Bighorn, the net effect was a defeat. The destruction of the Seventh Cavalry shocked both the Army and the American public. The seemingly gratuitous savagery—mutilation of corpses—muted many civilian voices that had previously expressed sympathy for the plight of Native Americans being systematically deprived of their traditional lands. Within a year, Army strength in the Dakota and Platte Departments was significantly increased. The Seventh Cavalry was reconstituted with its manpower strength augmented to 1,200 men. The Army began an efficient, if perhaps occasionally ruthless, program of enforcing reservation restrictions on both the Sioux and the Cheyenne. The post-battle government policy is discussed below. In the short term, the Sioux-Cheyenne triumph at the Little Bighorn served to encourage continued resistance. Sporadic outbreaks of violence continued for the next several years, although these were largely contained by cavalry troops acting as a rural constabulary. The death of Sitting Bull in 1890 at the hands of tribal police in the employ of the Army sparked the outbreak that resulted in the slaughter of a large group of Sioux—almost all women, children and elderly men—at Wounded Knee. As a practical matter, the Battle of the Little Bighorn was the high point of Sioux resistance. Nonetheless, the larger goal—expelling the white man from the Dakotas—was always doomed, something that at least some of the Sioux must have understood. For the United States Army, the destruction of the Seventh Cavalry at the Little Bighorn was a blot on the regimental history and their pride as soldiers. Unfortunately, at least some cavalrymen looked upon the event as something to be avenged, rather than a lost battle in what eventually proved to be a successful national policy. This may well have contributed to the outrage at Wounded Knee thirteen years later where men, women, and children were slaughtered. The events at the Little Big Horn underlined the futility of the Indian reservation system, at least as it was then construed. The Native Americans of the northern plains had been expected to give up their nomadic hunter-warrior existence—with manly self-image inherent in that way of life—in return for a sedentary existence as permanent wards of the federal government. In sum, they were expected to exchange an adult existence—admittedly a harsh one and one at odds with the interests of many whites—for one little different from dependent childhood. This state of affairs proved counterproductive, if only because the Native Americans could not survive, at least in any independent sense, while confined to reservation areas. Many chose to leave, with one result being the massacre of General Custer’s Seventh Cavalry Regiment at the Little Bighorn. Aware that continued confinement to reservations without some underlying change in life style could not be sustained, Congress passed the Dawes Act in 1887, which divided the Indian lands into separate private farm plots comparable to those granted under the 1861 Homestead Act. Indian tribes were mostly nomadic in nature but what land they did claim as theirs was usually held together by the people as a whole. Indians did not believe the land “belonged” to anyone in particular but was to be used as necessary for the whole community. It was expected that resident Indians would take up farming and, eventually, thereby join the general economy. It was an ambitious plan but one, unfortunately, that could not accommodate fundamental Native American values and sense of self. Their response to echoed that of the Sioux and their allies in the mid-1870s. In desperation, in 1890 a number of Sioux, led by chief Big Foot, left the reservation. Many of these Sioux were followers of a mystical religion—the Ghost Dance—that promised to turn enemy bullets into water and bring about the return of the buffalo. It was a belief born of desperation, even as had been that of their antecedents almost two decades before. An Army troop assigned to returning them to the reservation encountered them camped on the banks of the Wounded Knee creek. While the precise order of events remains clouded, shots were fired, initially by whom is still unknown, and the American soldiers force raked the mass of Indians with fire from their Hotchkiss guns. The Hotchkiss guns were an early automatic weapon. When the smoke had cleared from the field, over 300 Indians—almost all women, children and elderly—lay dead. With this act—be it tragedy or atrocity—the Ghost Dance movement died and the Indian Wars came to a close. The goals of the Dawes Act were never achieved to any significant extent. Many Native Americans remain wards of the Federal government, with all of the difficulties that accrue to a people kept in a situation little different from permanent legal adolescence. Many, perhaps most, of the descendants of the hardy nomadic horsemen who once fought so bravely for their traditional values and way of life now languish in conditions little better than poverty. And the sins of the past weigh heavily on the present. Alcoholism and its associated neurological deficits are rampant among reservation Indians, as, for that matter, are the spectrum of venereal diseases. These are the pathologies of despair. Whatever the Battle of the Little Bighorn was in particular is just a small dot in history when it comes to the history of the west as a whole. George Armstrong’s Custer’s total defeat at that battle only prevented the inevitable defeat of the indian nation as a whole.
Bibliography

Buller, Sonya, “Another Look at the Battle of the Little Bighorn,” Hesston College [Hesston, KS]/Department of History, 1998

“Cheyenne participants in the battle of the Little Big Horn,” Fort Peck, Assiniboine and Sioux History, Fort Peck Community College [Poplar, MT]/Department of History, [no date]

Garlington, E. A., “The Seventh Regiment of Cavalry,” William L. Haskin and Theophilus F. Rodenbough, eds., The Army of the United States: historical sketches of staff and line with portraits of generals-in-chief, (New York: Maynard and Merrill, 1896), pp. 251-267

Horn, Donald, “The Last Command: Custer and the Seventh Cavalry at the Little Big Horn,” American Historical Art [Fort Leavenworth, KS], 1999

“Major General George Armstrong Custer,” Historical Guns: historical perspectives, 2003

“Marcus A. Reno, 1834-1889,” New perspectives on the West, The West Film Project/WETA, 2001

Marcus A. Reno, “Report on the Battle of the Little Big Horn [5 July 1876],” Annual Report of the Secretary of War, 1876, 44th Congress, 1st Session, pp. 476-480

Massacre at Wounded Knee, 1890, Eyewitness to history, 1998

Schlarb, Steven, “Survey support and problems for the [Northern Pacific Railroad],” Yellowstone Genealogy Forum, rev. 12 April 2002

“The Battle of the Little Bighorn, 1876,” Eyewitness: history through the eyes of those who lived it, www.ibiscom.com, 1977

U.S., Congress, Senate, Message from the President of the United States, transmitting, in compliance with a Senate resolution of July 7, 1976, information made available in relation to the hostile demonstrations of the Sioux Indians, and the disaster to the forces under General Custer, Senate Executive Document 81 (Serial Volume 1664), 44th Congress, 1st Session, July 13, 1876

Wild, Ron, “The Battle of the Little Big Horn,” History Magazine, January 2000

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[i] To what extent Sitting Bull had any practical command authority over Cheyenne warriors is problematic. Most historians are agreed that the Cheyenne-Sioux alliance at the Little Bighorn was a temporary “marriage of convenience.” In any event, neither Cheyenne nor Sioux society was culturally organized to accommodate the vertical command structure associated with traditional field armies. Indeed, anecdotal evidence indicates that the Cheyenne placed great store on individual acts of bravery and elan rather than on the achievement of tactical objectives in support of a more encompassing effort. For details of this phenomenon, see Cheyenne participants in the battle of the Little Big Horn.

[ii] The Crow, traditional enemies of the Sioux and in constant conflict with them over access to hunting grounds, agreed to comply with the government, if only because it gave them some respite from continued Sioux (and sometimes Cheyenne) harassment.

[iii] In this, of course, they were absolutely correct. An 1868 agreement between the Sioux and the United States made no mention of any right of railroad passage through the Dakota Territory. The NPR even named one of its expanded construction camps/storage centers “Bismarck” in order to attract potential German immigrants. Bismarck is now the capital of North Dakota. During the summer of 1873, the Seventh Cavalry was assigned the responsibility of protecting an NPR survey team (373 men and 275 supply wagons). When the survey team came entered the Black Hills, “Sitting Bull attacked with full force of his Indians from the Hunkpapa, Oglala, Miniconjoux, Sans Arcs, and Cheyenne.” [Yellowstone Genealogy Forum]

[iv] This was more theory than practice. In the summer of 1874, LCOL Custer led a “large expedition consisting of about 1,000 troops, with scientists and reporters, into the Black Hills to ‘officially’ explore and set up military posts. Gold was their aim.” [Yellowstone Genealogy Forum]

[v] Horn, “The last command: Custer and the Seventh Cavalry at the Little Big Horn,” American Historical Art, 1999

[vi] The initial results were mixed. Sitting Bull’s troops scored two minor victories in the spring of 1876 which arguably emboldened them to even more ambitious efforts. Conversely, BGEN Crook’s troops had destroyed Sioux Chief Crazy Horse’s village in March 1876, an act that surely enraged the latter and may have contributed to his determination to obliterate Custer’s command when they met at the Little Bighorn five months later. Crook’s expedition was largely a failure. His column was forced to return to Fort Laramie, defeated by the bitter cold weather rather than Indian adversaries.

[vii] Custer had only recently been involved in a contretemps, having testified against former War Secretary Belknap regarding allegations of bribery in the allocation of Army post civilian contracts. He had been directed to remain in Chicago by Army Chief of Staff Sheridan. However, in early May 1876, at the behest of BGEN Terry, President Grant permitted Custer to rejoin and assume command of the Seventh Cavalry.

[viii] Cameron, “Report to the President, July 8, 1876,” Senate Executive Document 81 [Serial Vol. 1664], 44th Congress, 1st Session.

[ix] The estimated effective hostile strength was 800-1,000 men, in error by a factor of three. Each command had permission to attack the enemy on its own, in the event that they came upon them by surprise, rather than let them escape. “Custer was ordered not to use the trail discovered by Reno to avoid forewarning the Indians of their presence; otherwise he was given freedom to act as he deemed appropriate.” “Major General George Armstrong Custer,” Historical Guns: historical perspective, 2003.

[x] Wild, “The Battle of the Little Big Horn,” History Magazine, January 2000.

[xi] Garlington, “The Seventh Regiment of Cavalry,” The Army of the United States…, pp 257-258. Reading between the lines, it appears that Custer’s original tactical plan presupposed violation of Terry’s instruction to await the arrival of the remainder of the column.

[xii] Ibid., p. 258.

[xiii] Even given the absence of Crook’s column, the availability of the remainder of the Terry column, combined with Gibbon’s column and its heavy already proceeding south, would have given the Army forces a significant advantage over their Indian opponents. Available artillery--even small bore--would have allowed the troops to shell Indian civilian concentrations without effective riposte. Gatling gunfire would have blunted massed Indian attacks, as would canister broadsides. The total strength of the combined Seventh Cavalry, Terry and Gibbon columns was about 1,500 men.