The Little Bighorn: Fighting in the Valley and the Struggle over the Black Hills

The Battle of the Little Bighorn took place beside the Little Bighorn River in present-day Montana, against a background of conflict over land, minerals, and treaty rights. The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 included the Black Hills within the Sioux reservation. News of gold following George Armstrong Custer's military expedition in 1874 drew miners into the area. The army initially expelled trespassers, but in 1875 the Grant administration decided to stop preventing their intrusion. Negotiations to purchase the land also failed over disputed terms.

That winter, Indian affairs officials ordered people hunting outside the reservation to return to the agencies by the end of January 1876. Severe cold prevented many from arriving on time, yet they were classified as hostile and placed under the War Department's responsibility. In spring, U.S. forces organized three converging columns under John Gibbon, Alfred Terry, and George Crook. Crook withdrew after meeting resistance on the Rosebud; Terry and Gibbon did not know that the southern advance had been checked.

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On June 22, Custer left Terry's force with the Seventh Cavalry to follow trails toward the camp. On June 25, scouts located a large Native encampment in the valley. Fearing its inhabitants would leave, Custer decided to act immediately and split the cavalry. Frederick Benteen took three companies to scout southwest, Marcus Reno took three across the river to attack the southern end of the camp, and Custer advanced with five along the eastern heights. One further company guarded the mule pack train.

This deployment made rapid mutual support difficult. After crossing, Reno dismounted his men to fight, but growing numbers of warriors forced them to remount, recross the river, and retreat toward the steep bluffs. The river channel and slopes further scattered the formation. Benteen and the pack train subsequently joined Reno. Ammunition reached the surviving force's defensive area but not Custer's already separated command.

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In 1881, Lakota participant Red Horse recounted events from the other side to army surgeon Charles McChesney; the account later appeared in Garrick Mallery's ethnological report. He listed groups of lodges along the river, showing that the encampment contained several Sioux groups and Cheyenne people, including women and children, rather than only warriors assembled for battle.

Red Horse recalled gathering wild roots with several women, then hurrying back after seeing dust. The sudden attack left no time for a council: warriors took guns and mounted, while women and children sought escape routes. He also described reports that another cavalry force threatened families, prompting warriors to turn toward Custer. His account reveals motives of camp defense, but its rumors, identifications, and casualty estimates cannot all be treated as verified battlefield facts.

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Custer's five companies were surrounded in the hills east of the river and ultimately destroyed. Their precise sequence of movements still requires reconstruction from artifacts, terrain, and differing participants' accounts. Terry's report of June 27 explicitly acknowledged how little direct information was available about their movements. Much of its route reconstruction rested on bodies, horses, and battlefield traces. Treating later complete battle maps as facts already established at the time obscures these gaps.

Reno and Benteen's men dug firing shelters and resisted fire from surrounding heights. Terry reported that fighting there continued until the evening of June 26, when the Native camp withdrew. His and Gibbon's column did not reach the survivors' position until June 27. Custer's destruction therefore does not describe the fate of the entire Seventh Cavalry; the annihilation on June 25 and subsequent defense of the heights should be narrated separately.

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The battle did not end U.S. military operations. Native people who surrendered and were disarmed and deprived of their horses became increasingly dependent on government rations. In August 1876, Congress tied continued ration funding to surrender of the Black Hills and abandonment of hunting rights outside the reservation. A commission led by George Manypenny then traveled to the agencies with a prepared agreement and demanded that chiefs accept it.

The 1868 treaty required the assent of three-quarters of adult men for a land cession, a threshold these signatures did not meet. Congress nevertheless passed legislation on February 28, 1877, implementing the agreement and reducing reservation lands and associated hunting rights. Local communities experienced the aftermath through control of land, mobile hunting, and subsistence supplies. In its 1980 consideration of the Black Hills taking, the Supreme Court reviewed in detail this combination of military pressure, ration conditions, and legislation.

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A grass fire in 1983 removed some surface vegetation, and subsequent systematic archaeology supplied ways to test older narratives. Researchers used metal detectors along survey lines, recorded the positions of cartridge cases, bullets, and other artifacts, and compared firing-pin and rifling marks to connect individual weapons with spatial patterns. This helped identify cavalry positions and Native firing locations poorly documented in written sources.

Douglas Scott's official 2010 report also tested the claim that widespread military carbine jamming caused defeat. Artifacts do show some extraction failures, but both sides experienced similar problems, and the evidence does not support treating them as decisive. Archaeology cannot automatically recover every order, but it constrains imaginative reconstructions of a last stand, requiring battle studies to engage military reports, Native memories, and physical evidence together.

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