Day 30: Battle of the Little Big Horn

Friday
We spent most of the day visiting the Battle of the Little Big Horn. The first stop was the Visitor Center, where we watched a video about the battle. As usual with battles there was considerable confusion and one had to interpret the real truth from several versions of the truth as told by witnesses.

View of the Battlefield from our campground

Like the Nez Perce to the West, the Sioux Indians had been given the shirty end of the stick when it came to sharing with the white man, having been told they could keep about a third of the Dakota area, including the famous Black Hills (although they were really the Black Hills Of the Lakota Indians, not Dakota as in the song), however when gold was discovered in the Black Hills the treaty was 'renegotiated' except the Indians did not sign up to it. The Sioux spent time in hunting grounds outside their reservation, which gave the army reason to round them up and put them on the reservation. Custer led a regiment to enforce the treaty. He appears to have been quite arrogant in his underestimation of the Sioux fighting capability as he seemed to make every military mistake in the book. He split his forces, he sent a smaller force in offence against a larger force. He gave up high ground. He was attempting to capture women and children to hold as hostage. He separated his force from the main body, such that they could not even communicate. The two forces ended up about 4 miles apart, with the Indians holding the ridge between them.
A small force led by Reno moved down the Little Big Horn valley and fired indiscriminately into the Sioux Village, whilst Custer took his larger force along the ridge to cut off the retreat of the tribe. However the Indians fought back and forced Reno to retreat, rather turn and flee up the valley side where they were surrounded on a hill top unable to do anything except defend the hill top and wait for reinforcements.
Because this force was pinned down the bulk of the Indians were able to pursue Custers companies, Where again he split his forces hoping to overwhelm the Indians, who surrounded each group and destroyed them, killing some two hundred soldiers, including of course Custer himself. Then noticing that army reinforcements were about to arive the Sioux, keeping Reno pinned down, broke camp and disappeared over the hill to the Big Horn Mountains.
This was the only battle the Sioux Indians won. Its effect was to bring an even bigger army down on them and make sure they knew that they were the underdogs and I guess its been that way ever since.
It did make for a very interesting day and added some more to our understanding of the history of North America and the relationship between the emigrants and the indigenous people.