A Background to the Battle of Little Bighorn

What led to Custer’s fall?

The tributaries of the Bighorn River, which flow like veins through Wyoming and Montana, craft valleys in the land rising up into the northern Bighorn Mountains. These turbulent yet quiet plains acted as the backdrop to one of the most remarkable military defeats in American history, as the combined forces of the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne defeated George Armstrong Custer’s feared 7th Cavalry.

Why did the battle take place?

In the 70 years after Montana and much of the American interior was acquired via the Louisiana Purchase, the United States Army attempted to create a safe transport route through Native American lands. Rather than compensate the aboriginal nations in modern-day Montana, the U.S. military instead attempted to pacify the Native threat by moving the peoples of the Blackfoot, Crow, Cheyenne and others onto reservations.

However, the aboriginals became less and less “manageable” as a white population moved into the area, demanding treaties and slaughtering the Native’s primary resource, the buffalo. As a result, Natives began to abandon the reservations during 1876, a steady act that greatly disrupted white settlement of the region.

As a means to re-establish their hold over the territory and its original peoples, the U.S. military began an expedition to curtail the Natives’ flood back into the latter’s own lands. Custer’s 7th Cavalry was one of a few forces given this task.

How could such a defeat occur?

Despite the extensive military training of the mounted force under Custer, the commander himself is largely responsible for their heavy losses on June 25 and 26, 1876.

Coordinated with other companies also patrolling the Bighorn for wayward aboriginals, Custer refused all of the following in the hours before meeting Sitting Bull’s force:

Custer’s refusal to pay heed to such reports or to accept the tools and manpower necessary to overcome a Cheyenne war party proved both critical and fateful decisions. Although Custer’s cavalry and tactical training lent him the good sense to remain along the crest of a valley, Montana’s escalating landscape made it impossible for him to peer into distant basins.