Little Bighorn 1876: Custer's Split Command and Reno's Timber Rout

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In June 1876, Sitting Bull saw a vision of soldiers falling into his camp like grasshoppers, while George Armstrong Custer drove the 7th Cavalry toward the Little Bighorn River on the Crow reservation in Montana Territory. Indian agents had counted about 800 hostiles, missing the thousands of Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho who had left the agencies for the buffalo hunt and Sun Dance. Custer turned down Gatling guns and extra troops to keep his pace near 30 miles a day. Many of his men had spent 18 months on Reconstruction duty in the South, and about a fifth were recent recruits. On June 25 his Crow and Arikara scouts saw the huge pony herd from the Crow's Nest.

Fearing the village would scatter, Custer split his regiment between Major Marcus Reno, Captain Frederick Benteen and himself, aiming to seize the women and children and force the warriors to surrender. Reno's attack stalled at the Hunkpapa camp, and his men broke in a disorderly retreat across the river. Benteen received the note "Come on. Big village. Be quick. Bring packs," but joined Reno and dug in. North along the bluffs, Custer's command was overwhelmed in under an hour by warriors including a counterattack led by Crazy Horse.

• The Crow scout Half Yellow Face told Custer they would go home that day by a road they did not know.
• When Reno dismounted to form a skirmish line, every fourth man had to hold the horses, cutting his firepower by a quarter.
• Reno lost his composure after his Arikara scout Bloody Knife was shot in the head beside him; an 1879 court of inquiry cleared him.
• Native accounts said the fight lasted as long as it takes a hungry man to eat a meal.
• The cavalry horse Comanche survived and lived another 15 years, and in 1991 the site became the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument.