Custer

[RiverguyVT]

Custer’s Last Stand

On June 25, 1876, Cheyenne and Lakota warriors annihilated a battalion of 7th Cavalry troops under the command of Gen. George Armstrong Custer. The defeat stunned the Americans, who responded by flooding the area with U.S. Army troops.
What happened at the Battle of the Little Bighorn?
Custer thought that he could divide his forces in the face of a numerically superior enemy. He was wrong.
Why would Custer rush into battle like that?
Doing things without really weighing the consequences was something of a defining character trait.
Did anyone see this coming?
Teton Dakota chief Sitting Bull prophesied that cavalry troops would fall “like grasshoppers from the sky.”
How did Little Bighorn fit into the broader context of U.S. expansion into the Great Plains?
It was the U.S. Army’s costliest defeat in the Plains Wars.
Wounded Knee
Fourteen years after Little Bighorn, 7th Cavalry troops slaughtered hundreds of Lakota civilians, including scores of women and children. Twenty Congressional Medals of Honor were awarded to the perpetrators of the massacre.