Little Bighorn Battlefield

Little Bighorn Battlefield marks the site of the most famous Native American victory of the Plains Indian Wars. On June 25, 1876, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer led the U.S. 7th Cavalry into a sprawling village of Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho along the Little Bighorn River — and he and every soldier under his immediate command were killed. Remembered by the tribes as the Battle of the Greasy Grass and by the nation as 'Custer's Last Stand,' the clash was a stunning triumph for the allied tribes, even as it hastened the end of their free life on the northern plains.

The battle grew out of the Great Sioux War of 1876. After gold was discovered in the Black Hills of Dakota Territory — land guaranteed to the Lakota by the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty — prospectors poured in, and the U.S. government ordered the Lakota and their allies onto reservations. Bands led by figures such as Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse refused, gathering in a great encampment in the Montana country the Lakota called the Greasy Grass.

On June 25, 1876, Custer's 7th Cavalry located the village but badly underestimated its size — perhaps the largest gathering of Plains tribes ever assembled. Dividing his roughly 600 men, Custer sent battalions under Major Marcus Reno and Captain Frederick Benteen to attack while he led about 210 men toward the northern end of the camp. Warriors led by Gall, Crazy Horse, and others overwhelmed Custer's column on the ridges above the river; Custer and all the men with him were killed within about an hour.

Reno and Benteen's commands survived a desperate two-day siege on a nearby bluff until the village withdrew. The victory was total but short-lived: outraged by the defeat, the Army intensified its campaign, and within a year most of the allied bands had surrendered or fled to Canada. The battlefield became a national cemetery in 1879 and a national monument; long known as Custer Battlefield, it was renamed Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in 1991, and an Indian Memorial honoring the tribes was dedicated in 2003.