The Battle of Little Bighorn: The Victory That Doomed a Nation

The air was still after the shooting stopped. Smoke from expelled bullets - too numerous to count - hung low over the grass, and the June sun beat down on the hills along the Little Bighorn River. The battle was over. Sitting Bull’s vision from the Sun Dance ceremony proved accurate as the warriors picked over the defeated white men, taking weapons and unused ammunition. Scattered across the slope lay the bodies of more than two hundred soldiers of the Seventh Cavalry. Among them was their commander, George Armstrong Custer.

For the Lakota Sioux, the Northern Cheyenne, and the Arapaho who had fought that day, it was a victory foretold by the spirits. A blow against the men who continued to encroach upon their land and over hunted the prized buffalo. What they did not know was that it was also one of the last victories they would ever know.

The Battle of Little Bighorn, fought in June 1876, pitted Plains Indian warriors against the United States military. Their victory over Custer and his men was short lived and cemented the federal government’s resolve in forcibly relocating thousands of indigenous americans onto reservations. A conflict decades in the making, the defeat of the 7th Calvary sent shockwaves across the country, creating a groundswell of support to quote unquote civilize Native Americans once and for all. But did it all mean?

So this week I am diving into the Battle of Little Bighorn. What exactly led to this deadly confrontation on the plains of Montana? Why is it called Custer’s Last Stand? And how did a single victory in the summer of 1876 become the beginning of the end for the free tribes of the Great Plains? 

Grab your cup of coffee, peeps. Let’s do this.

Understanding the Battle of the Little Bighorn requires a bit of a birds eye view to capture the context surrounding the battle. For generations, the Great Plains was the home of the Lakota Sioux, the Northern Cheyenne, and the Arapaho. Set in the middle of the United States, the Plains took up all or parts of what are now 13 states, it was a place where the horizon seemed endless and the buffalo herds still thundered across the land. For generations, indigenous Americans moved with the seasons, following the herds, living according to traditions that tied them to the land and sky. But by the 1860s, that world was changing fast.

The United States was expanding westward, building railroads, sending settlers, who were hungry for gold and land. Treaties were signed and broken in equal measure. I covered one of those treaties, the Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1868, in a previous episode which I will link in the show notes. But in short, in exchange for peace, the United States recognized that the Black Hills — an area considered sacred which the Lakota called Paha Sapa — would belong to the Sioux nation forever and that white settlers were barred from entering without permission.

That promise didn’t last long. As I covered in my episode on the treaty, an expedition led by George Custer in 1874 confirmed what prospectors had long suspected — the Black Hills were rich with gold. Word spread fast and soon, miners, settlers, and speculators poured in by the thousands - in direct violation of the established treaty. The U.S. government had two choices: enforce the terms of the treaty with the Sioux and remove the settlers who had entered the territory illegally or attempt to renegotiate with tribe officials. Unable or unwilling to stop the settlers, the government chose option two and offered to buy the Black Hills. The Lakota refused. For them, the Black Hills were not a commodity. They were the heart of their world.

As tensions grew, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs issued an ultimatum: all Lakota were to report to their reservations by January 31st, 1876 or be classified as hostile by the United States government. This order - issued during the winter of 1875, set the arbitrary deadline without considering what it would take for those targeted to comply. The winter was brutal, and many bands were hundreds of miles away. Others, led by chiefs such as Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, simply refused to go at all. In their mind, it was the United States who had - yet again - violated the terms of their agreement. Thus, they felt no desire to comply and refused to surrender their freedom. Sitting Bull captured the mood of his people when he said quote: “What treaty that the whites have kept has the red man broken? Not one” end quote.

Their defiance was one born of exhaustion. For decades, Native peoples had been pushed from one corner of the plains to another, their buffalo hunted to near extinction, their sovereignty chipped away treaty by treaty. The order to report to the reservations was not just about relocation - it was about control. And for those who still roamed free, it was the line they could not cross. Thus, the deadline for reporting to the reservation passed without tribal compliance and as the snow melted that spring, thousands of Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho gathered along the Little Bighorn River in what is now southeastern Montana. By late spring, an estimated 10,000 Native Americans had joined the camp that was established along the Little Bighorn River - which they called Greasy Grass. Despite their violation of the treaty agreements, the Lakota, Arapaho, and Northern Cheyenne did not seek to antagonize the United States. Their hope was to be left alone - and to try to live as they always had. 

But the federal government saw it differently. To the military, these bands were defying federal orders and needed to be forced into submission and so in June 1876, three separate columns of U.S. soldiers were sent into the field to find and subdue the so-called hostiles. One group was led by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer - a man already famous, or some would say infamous, for his ambition. Custer built his reputation during the Civil War and helped solidify his legendary status afterward in the wars against Native nations. He was brave, but also considered reckless, hungry for glory, and a little too used to being the center of attention.

On June 22nd, General Terry - the man in charge of the military operation aimed at forcing Native compliance and their removal to the reservation ordered Custer’s calvary to scout ahead for enemy troops. On the morning of June 25th, Custer believed he had found his golden opportunity to once again make a name for himself as he came upon Sitting Bull’s camp. In a fateful decision, Custer decided to advance instead of waiting for reinforcements. Custer divided his regiment and attacked. He didn’t realize the true size of the encampment or of the warriors present, believing their size to be in the hundreds, not thousands - with many of them veterans with years of fighting.

The first shots rang out in the late morning. What followed was chaos. While the exact details of that day remain unclear, it is believed that Custer’s troops - who were outnumbered by roughly a five to one margin - were quickly overwhelmed. Although fellow units could hear gunfire coming from Custer’s direction, troops were unable to reach Custer and his men in time to help. According to one Native witness, the fighting was up close and personal and some of the young warriors in the group decided to take a suicide pact, promising they would fight until they were killed on the field of battle. These young men, referred to as the suicide boys - engaged in hand to hand combat and followed through on their pledge as all of them either died on the field or shortly after from the wounds suffered in battle. According to the same witness, once the warriors had overpowered Custer and his men, they saw no need for continued fighting and simply left the area - outside the range of the remaining troops. 

By the afternoon, it was over. Every man with Custer was dead including 268 soldiers and scouts. The losses for the Lakota and Cheyenne were much less - totaling no more than 100. For the Native warriors, it was a moment of triumph, but also of grief. They had defended their people, their land, and their dignity, but they likely also knew what would come next. Sitting Bull had predicted victory during a sun dance ceremony, telling his people of his vision before the fight: soldiers falling into camp like grasshoppers from the sky. Yet, despite this victory, the outcome carried a heavy weight.

When news reached the rest of the country, the reaction was one of shock and outrage. While it was the most decisive Native American victory and an embarrassing failure for the United States military, the loss only further cemented Americans' perceptions of native people as savage and blood thirsty. On July 6th, 1876 the Bismarck Tribune broke the news of Custer’s defeat with the headline “Massacred: General Custer and 261 men and the victims.” Touting itself as the first account of the quote unquote Custer Massacre, the Tribune dedicated the entire front page of the newspaper to sharing the details of the battle and listing the names of those killed. Other newspapers followed suit, painting Custer as a tragic hero - a man betrayed by bad luck, cowardly subordinates, and surrounded by savage foes. Dime novels, illustrations, and patriotic retellings spread the story across the country. Custer’s name became legend and America’s desire for revenge reached a fever pitch. 

The U.S. Army responded with overwhelming force. By the spring of 1877, Crazy Horse had surrendered and Sitting Bull led his followers north into Canada for safety and negotiated a surrender in 1881. Sitting Bull would come in and be detained under the agreement that his people - some of whom had come back from Canada due to lack of sufficient supplies - would be granted amnesty. He was arrested as a prisoner of war and housed at Fort Randall in South Dakota for two years before being relocated to the Standing Rock Reservation. Sitting Bull briefly performed in Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show before he was shot and killed by an Indian police office in 1890. 

The Black Hills territory was seized outright and opened for white settlers. And so, in a cruel twist, the victory at Little Bighorn which at the time was so complete and unexpected served only quicken the downfall of the very people who had won it. The battle represented a collision of two worlds - one industrial and quickly expanding, the other ancient and deeply tied to the land. The tribes were dedicated in their fight to preserve a way of life that was antithetical to the push for American expansion. 

Thus, in defending their homes, the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho became the final warriors of a centuries-long struggle. Over the years that followed, the story of the Little Bighorn was mythologized and grew larger than the event itself. For some Americans, it became a tale of martyrdom and revenge. The noble George Custer standing tall against impossible odds, fighting the good fight and earning a hero’s death. For Native people, the battle represented something very different. It was a memory of courage and unity, but also of loss. It marked the end of the time when their people could move freely across the plains, follow the buffalo, and live under their own laws.

The land that had witnessed their greatest victory soon became a monument to their ultimate defeat. Over the decades, even the name of the site carried the bias of the old story. In 1879, a section of the battlefield was designated as a national cemetery for the men of the 7th Calvary who lost their lives. In 1940, the cemetery became part of the National Park Service who, in 1946, renamed the area as the Custer Battlefield National Monument. It wasn’t until 1991 that the name was changed to the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, thanks to the activism of indigenous groups. 

So what was the impact of the Battle of the Little Bighorn? In the short term, it was a resounding Native victory - proof that the Plains tribes could still unite and fight back. But in the long run, it sealed their fate. The U.S. government used the defeat to justify harsher campaigns, tighter control, and the confiscation of Native lands. By the 1880s, the buffalo were nearly gone, and the reservation system had become prisons of poverty and dependence. The way of life that the warriors at Little Bighorn had fought to protect was disappearing.

Yet, in another sense, the battle has endured. Not as a tragedy, but as a testament. It is evidence that resistance was possible and that nothing about the fate of the indigenous americans was guaranteed. It proved that courage and unity could stand, even for a moment, against overwhelming odds. While it may have been known for generations as “Custer’s Last Stand,” it is ultimately a story with deeper meaning and could arguably be reframed as the Plains Indians’ Last Stand - a final chapter in a long struggle for land, freedom, and dignity.

The legacy of the Little Bighorn is still felt today. As I mentioned in my episode about the Fort Laramie Treaty, the Sioux successfully sued the United States government over claims to the Black Hills and native nations across the plains continue to fight for their rights, their languages, and their connection to the land that their ancestors defended. The story of the battle reminds us that history is not a single narrative. It’s a conversation between memories. The Battle at Little Bighorn helps us see the real human cost of America’s expansion. And we see, too, the resilience of the people who refused to disappear.

The Battle of the Little Bighorn stands not as the end of a man’s ambition, but as the end of a nation’s freedom and the beginning of a new story still being written today. Those visiting the Little Bighorn National Monument will see the white marble markers indicating where each soldier fell, but scattered among them now are red granite markers, honoring the Lakota and Cheyenne warriors who also died there. It serves as a reminder that history has more than one side - and that the truth, often, lies somewhere between the legends. 

Thanks peeps. I’ll see you next time.