On this date in 1876, the Battle of the Little Bighorn commenced. It was over quickly. Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and 7th Cavalry forces met an overwhelming force of Lakota and Northern Cheyenne warriors. Custer's outfit was annihilated: 268 dead, including six Crow and Arikara scouts; 55 severely wounded, six dying soon.
General Terry and Colonel Gibbon, with infantry and cavalry, had planned to approach from the north in concert with Custer's movements toward the Little Bighorn River. The Indian camps "would be so completely enclosed as to make their escape virtually impossible." They arrived on June 26 as planned, expecting to meet Custer. On July 6, the Bismarck Tribune broke the stunning news.
Modern historians estimate the warrior force at 1,500 to 1,800 men although initial reports claimed there were 5,000. Most mentioned leaders were Crazy Horse, Gall, and Sitting Bull, a spiritual advisor and visioner. Their people had been ordered onto reservations after the Black Hills and Fort Laramie treaties were broken. Failing to comply, they were declared hostiles.
Crazy Horse was killed by a military guard in 1877 after surrendering to U.S. troops in Nebraska. Gall and Sitting Bull went to Canada but surrendered in 1881 to live on the Standing Rock reservation. Sitting Bull performed with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in 1884 and became a popular celebrity. He returned to Standing Rock and continued to live peacefully. But in 1890, the Ghost Dance movement excited needless fear among settlers. On December 15, Indian Agent McLaughlin sent 39 Indian police to arrest Sitting Bull, to prevent him from joining the ghost dancers. He was shot dead by Bull Head and by Red Tomahawk, whose profile became North Dakota's state highway symbol. His wife and children also died. Military response to the ghost dance on December 29 led to the Wounded Knee massacre of 300 men, women and children at Pine Ridge, South Dakota.
So much has been written, argued, dramatized, studied and fictionalized that I have only one new item. My grandfather related that Sitting Bull rode off to Canada with his father's underwear, but not his scalp. Mooshum was in a wintering party of buffalo hunters when Sitting Bull's people camped nearby. Invited to parley, the Chippewa thought them "too risky to associate with" after the Little Bighorn. But the women came over and obtained some goods including Mooshum's long underwear.
Dakota Datebook by Lise Erdrich
Sources:
- National Park Service. Little Bighorn Battlefield. https://www.nps.gov/libi/learn/historyculture/battle-story.htm
- 1950-1973. Pat Gourneau conversations, letters and writings.
- Battle of the Little Bighorn. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Little_Bighorn
- Viking Press. August 1, 1996. With Custer on the Little Bighorn: A Newly Discovered First-Person Account by William O. Taylor.
- Penguin Books, 1994. James Welch with Paul Stekler, Killing Custer: The Battle of the Little Bighorn and the Fate of the Plains Indians.
- Lantern Books, 1967. Erling Nicolai Rolfsrud, The Story of North Dakota.
