Americas Indian Wars

Since the Battle of the Little Bighorn, George Armstrong Custer and the 7th Cavalry have become associated with a relatively insignificant battle during America’s Indian Wars, but one that has become one of the country’s most mythologized events and continues to fascinate Americans more than 140 years later. That’s because the Battle of the Little Bighorn, fought in June 1876, was one of the US military’s biggest debacles. Eventually, Custer and the 7th Cavalry’s “Last Stand” would become a symbol for American heroism in the face of overwhelming odds.

Una guía fascinante de los conflictos que ocurrieron en América del Norte y su impacto en las tribus nativas americanas.

Most Americans have heard of the Little Bighorn, the 1876 battle in which a band of Lakota Sioux and their allies wiped out most of the 7th US Cavalry under the command of George Armstrong Custer. The movie images are of fierce warriors in long eagle feather headdresses flowing behind them as they gallop across the plains on nimble Indian ponies.

On a hot summer day in 1876, George Armstrong Custer led the Seventh Cavalry to the most famous defeat in U.S. military history. Outnumbered and exhausted, the Seventh Cavalry lost more than half of its 400 men, and every soldier under Custer's direct command was killed. It's easy to understand why this tremendous defeat shocked the American public at the time. But with Custerology, Michael A. Elliott tackles the far more complicated question of why the battle still haunts the American imagination today.