Military Power

In late 1875, Sioux and Cheyenne Indians defiantly left their reservations, outraged over the continued intrusions of whites into their sacred lands in the Black Hills. They gathered in Montana with the great warrior Sitting Bull to fight for their lands. The following spring, two victories over the US Cavalry emboldened them to fight on in the summer of 1876.

To force the large Indian army back to the reservations, the Army dispatched three columns to attack in coordinated fashion, one of which contained Lt. Colonel George Custer and the Seventh Cavalry. Spotting the Sioux village about fifteen miles away along the Rosebud River on June 25, Custer also found a nearby group of about forty warriors. Ignoring orders to wait, he decided to attack before they could alert the main party. He did not realize that the number of warriors in the village numbered three times his strength. Dividing his forces in three, Custer sent troops under Captain Frederick Benteen to prevent their escape through the upper valley of the Little Bighorn River. Major Marcus Reno was to pursue the group, cross the river, and charge the Indian village in a coordinated effort with the remaining troops under his command. He hoped to strike the Indian encampment at the northern and southern ends simultaneously, but made this decision without knowing what kind of terrain he would have to cross before making his assault. He belatedly discovered that he would have to negotiate a maze of bluffs and ravines to attack.

Reno's squadron of 175 soldiers attacked the southern end. Quickly finding themselves in a desperate battle with little hope of any relief, Reno halted his charging men before they could be trapped, fought for ten minutes in dismounted formation, and then withdrew into the timber and brush along the river. When that position proved indefensible, they retreated uphill to the bluffs east of the river, pursued hotly by a mix of Cheyenne and Sioux.

Just as they finished driving the soldiers out, the Indians found roughly 210 of Custer's men coming towards the other end of the village, taking the pressure off of Reno's men. Cheyenne and Hunkpapa Sioux together crossed the river and slammed into the advancing soldiers, forcing them back to a long high ridge to the north. Meanwhile, another force, largely Oglala Sioux under Crazy Horse's command, swiftly moved downstream and then doubled back in a sweeping arc, enveloping Custer and his men in a pincer move. They began pouring in gunfire and arrows.

As the Indians closed in, Custer ordered his men to shoot their horses and stack the carcasses to form a wall, but they provided little protection against bullets. In less than an hour, Custer and his men were killed in the worst American military disaster ever. After another day's fighting, Reno and Benteen's now united forces escaped when the Indians broke off the fight. They had learned that the other two columns of soldiers were coming towards them, so they fled.

After the battle, the Indians came through and stripped the bodies and mutilated all the uniformed soldiers, believing that the soul of a mutilated body would be forced to walk the earth for all eternity and could not ascend to heaven. Inexplicably, they stripped Custer's body and cleaned it, but did not scalp or mutilate it. He had been wearing buckskins instead of a blue uniform, and some believe that the Indians thought he was not a soldier and so, thinking he was an innocent, left him alone. Because his hair was cut short for battle, others think that he did not have enough hair to allow for a very good scalping. Immediately after the battle, the myth emerged that they left him alone out of respect for his fighting ability, but few participating Indians knew who he was to have been so respectful. To this day, no one knows the real reason.

Little Bighorn was the pinnacle of the Indians' power. They had achieved their greatest victory yet, but soon their tenuous union fell apart in the face of the white onslaught. Outraged over the death of a popular Civil War hero on the eve of the Centennial, the nation demanded and received harsh retribution. The Black Hills dispute was quickly settled by redrawing the boundary lines, placing the Black Hills outside the reservation and open to white settlement. Within a year, the Sioux nation was defeated and broken. "Custer's Last Stand" was their last stand as well.

I saw a show many years back that was all about conspiracies and the like, Encounters with the Unexplained. It would give both sides and let you make your own decision (I liked that about the show, they didn't seem to be pushing their own agenda). One of the shows was on Custer and the Battle at Little Big Horn, Episode 1-18. After reviewing the evidence that was given I am inclined to think it was a conspiracy. First was that Grant was one to hold grudges and Custer had exposed one of Grant's relatives (cousin, brother, don't remember right now) in a plot to get rich off the supplies that the U.S. was supplying the Indians with. Before the Battle at Little Big Horn, Custer had done something to get him stripped of his command and therefore shouldn't have been there at all, but Grant sent word to him to take command of the 7th Cavalry. He was told that he needed to get there as soon as he could so they were to leave their battery of Gatling Guns behind. When they got there, they were to do a three-pronged attack and the two other commanders (I forget their ranks off hand) were given their orders. Both of the other commanders ended up at a specific hill (Reno Hill I believe). One of them went directly there and the other retreated to the hill after a brief skirmish with the Indians. When he was asked why he didn't continue to help Custer his response was something along the lines of "I figured he could handle them" even though Custer had half as many men as he did.

The Indians were better armed than they were told they would be, not only did they have muzzle loaders and bows and arrows which is what they were expecting, they had Sharps .45-70 rifles (which are still 100 percent accurate at 300 yards), .44-caliber Henry repeaters, Winchesters (which are almost duplicates of the Henrys), and Sharps .50-caliber weapons to name a few. On the battlefield there was evidence of at least 134 Indian firearms versus 81 for the soldiers. They were both outnumbered and outgunned.

Custers command of 210 men was completely wiped out which accounts for nearly all of the 250 losses that the army suffered at that battle and the Indians only lost between 40 and 50 men. New recruits didn't hamper Custer's command, as only about 12 percent were considered "raw". When questioned about why they didn't go to Custer's aid the typical soldier stated they were following the orders of their officers even though they could hear the battle going on. The officers on the other hand stated that they could not hear the battle and cited a ridge that was between them and the battle (upon looking at the area in question there is no ridge where the officers stated there was one). The inquiry into the battle concluded that there was no fault on the officers, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Even if that was the case they should have been punished for disobeying direct orders from Custer, but were instead given promotions or other things. Could it be that they were following orders from farther up, such as President Grant?

The people who produced this show went to the Library of Congress, which holds every telegraph sent, and logs them. Several telegraphs from that time are missing. It should also be noted that Custer, a West Point graduate, was a major general at 25, wounded several times, and never lost a battle, until his last.