Little Bighorn Battlefield
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Custer's Last Stand (Note) |
Where Custer fell in battle |
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The Battle of Little Bighorn (1876) was the Indian/Army battle where General George Custer made his last stand - losing his life and 210 of his men, along with 50 men from the other units. The Indians lost an estimated amount of 60-100 warriors. Historical accounts of what actually happened are not exact because Custer separated from some of the other commanders and his troops were surrounded by the Indians and the battle was short and deadly. The hill in the picture is the site where Custer and his men tried to gain the high ground and then be able to protect themselves, but they had greatly underestimated the size and skill of the Indian tribes. One surviving Cheyenne, Chief Two Moon, recalled that "the shooting was quick, quick. Pop-pop-pop, very fast". Gen. Custer is now buried at West Point. When we visited the monument to Chief Crazy Horse in South Dakota, the guide there told the story that the reason for Custer's defeat was that he did not wait for all the troops to assemble and went in early, underestimating the Indian tribe size. The story told there was that Custer wanted to go defeat the Indians to make a name for himself so he could run for President of the US. He felt that if he had a glorious victory in Montana he could just coast into the Presidency. There were even some reports that said the the huge gathering of Lakota and Cheyennes was to be a peaceful gathering, not a gathering to start war as Custer convinced everyone. One interesting side note is that the scouts that worked for Custer and wore special US uniforms were mostly Crow orArikara Indians. These two tribes did not like the Lakota and Cheyenne, warring tribes that they had battled for years. After this battle, most of the Indians left and went into Canada, but in 1881, they returned to the US to go onto the reservations in Wyoming. (Back to Picture)