The United States government wanted the Black Hills. The 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie had guaranteed the Hills to the Lakota “in perpetuity.” Then gold was discovered. Perpetuity lasted six years. [1]
In 1876, the Army launched a campaign to force the Lakota and their Cheyenne and Arapaho allies onto reservations and open the land. Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer led the 7th Cavalry Regiment into the valley of the Little Bighorn River — the Greasy Grass, in Lakota — on June 25. [1]
He expected to find a village of perhaps 800 warriors. He found between 1,500 and 2,500, led by Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Gall, Lame White Man, and Two Moons. It was one of the largest gatherings of Native peoples on the Great Plains in living memory. They were there because they had nowhere left to go. [1]
Custer divided his command into three battalions and attacked without reconnaissance. His battalion of roughly 210 men was surrounded on a ridge above the river. The fight lasted less than an hour. There were no survivors. [1]
The Army called it a massacre. The Lakota and Cheyenne called it a victory — the most decisive defeat of the U.S. military by Native forces in American history. The United States responded with overwhelming force, pouring troops into the region. Within a year, most of the bands had been forced onto reservations or had fled to Canada. [1]
The victory at the Greasy Grass did not save the Lakota homeland. But it shattered the myth that the frontier was there for the taking, that the people on it would simply move aside. For one afternoon in a river valley, they did not move aside.
Bibliography
[1] Wikipedia. “Battle of the Little Bighorn.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Little_Bighorn