Battle of Little Bighorn
On 25–26 June 1876, beside the Little Bighorn River in Montana Territory, a large encampment of Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho — led by figures including Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse — annihilated five companies of the US 7th Cavalry under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, killing Custer and over 260 of his men. 'Custer's Last Stand' was the greatest Native victory of the Plains wars, won by warriors resisting the army's effort to force them onto reservations after gold was found in the Black Hills. Yet the triumph hastened the very defeat it answered: a shocked United States poured troops into the campaign, and within a year the great encampments were broken up, the bison on which the Plains peoples depended were being exterminated, and the survivors were driven onto reservations. The battle became an enduring American legend even as it marked the closing of Native military resistance on the northern plains.
- Year: 1876 CE
- Category: Military
