The battle

Background

• Chiefs Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull refused to accept the peace of 1868.
• Gold was discovered in the Black Hills in 1874.
• The Sioux refused to sell their land in the Black Hills.
• The government ordered the Sioux onto small reservations. When the Sioux refused, they were declared 'hostile'.

1876 campaign, battle preparation

• General Philip Sheridan was sent to defeat the Sioux.
• In June 1876 US armies, led by the generals Alfred Terry and John Gibbon, met at the Yellowstone river.
• Gibbon was set to march up the Little Bighorn river, and Lt Colonel George Custer was ordered to march round the Wolf mountains, as part of a two-pronged attack on the Sioux camp.

To the Little Bighorn

• The Sioux had been joined by the Cheyenne and Arapaho, making an army of more than 3,000 warriors, armed with Winchester repeating rifles.
• Custer marched his men through (not round) the Wolf mountains, to arrive at the Sioux camp first.
• Custer divided his 600 men into three groups.

Custer's last stand

• Custer sent Captain Frederick Benteen scouting, and sent Major Marcus Reno to attack the Sioux village from the south.
• Custer headed north of the village with 215 men.
• The Sioux cut off both Reno and Custer. Benteen rescued Reno, but Custer and all of his troops lost their lives.
• The Sioux withdrew when Terry and Gibbon arrived.