According to Cheyenne elders, General George Custer visited a Cheyenne camp on the banks
of the Washita River in present-day Oklahoma just months after his men had won a decisive
victory against the Native Americans in the Battle of Washita River in 1868. At the camp,
he spoke with their chief, Stone Forehead. During their meeting, Custer promised Stone
Forehead that he and his men would never again fight the Cheyenne. To hold him to his promise,
Stone Forehead ceremonially emptied the ashes of his pipe onto Custer’s shoes while he sat under
a bundle of sacred arrows, one of the holiest symbols in Cheyenne culture. Eight years later,
Custer’s body lay lifeless on a ridge above Little Bighorn River in Montana.
As the victorious Sioux and Cheyenne were walking around dispatching survivors,
two Cheyenne women recognized the general from that meeting in Washita.
They were carrying with them long sewing needles called awls, and they took two out and the rest
is history… Custer had broken his promise. Maybe now his hearing would be better. Welcome to Nutty
History. Today, we’re taking a look at the Native American version of the Battle of Little Bighorn.
The Battle of Little Bighorn was more a series of five last stands, that played out in a little
more than two hours across the ridges and wooded landscape along the winding Little Bighorn River.
It was Sunday, June 25th, 1876. The Native American encampment along the
banks of the Little Bighorn River was huge, somewhere between 7,000 and 10,000 men,
women, and children all together, a third of them men of fighting age. The Oceti Sakowin,
or seven council fires, distinct bands within the Lakota Sioux people, were all there – the Oglala,
Sicangu, Hunkpapa, Minniconjou, Sans Arc, and Two Kettles. So were the Cheyenne. Many had come from
newly-opened reservations set up by their “new” government, which they were far from happy about.
The Oglala warrior He Dog said later that he had never seen a larger, more diverse camp in
his life. Many in the camp woke up late that day after a long night of music and dancing.
People were bathing in the river, smoking, and preparing for the day ahead. Then, at midday,
a report came back that U.S. soldiers had been spotted nearby. According to the Oglala
chief Thunder Bear, a few women who were gathering turnips a few miles away rode back on their horses
and cried that one of them had been wounded. At 3 PM, several Ree – a tribe allied with the
U.S. – were spotted near the Hunkpapa camp. There was weapon fire and then pandemonium. The Native
American encampment quickly dispersed, and the Cheyenne and Lakota warriors prepared for battle.
Weapon fire was pelting into the encampment, but very quickly the Native Americans flooded out and
beat back the white soldiers, who fled into the trees that lined the river. It was around that
time that Crazy Horse joined in, the legendary Oglala chief known for his resistance to the
encroaching colonizer presence of the plains his people had called home for centuries. He
had apparently been bathing in the river when the fighting broke out. When he heard the shots,
he sprang into action. But as others ran directly towards the fight, Crazy Horse prepared himself
for battle. Without war paint and a proper ceremony, a warrior would be weak. So he called
on a medicine man, or wicasa wakan, to invoke the spirits of the land and his people. Crazy
Horse then put on his war paint, wove some long grass into his hair, dusted his horse with earth,
picked up his war club, and with a dozen or so of his most trusted warriors, charged into battle.
At this point, the colonizer soldiers were pinned in the woods near the west bank of the river. The
Native Americans had them surrounded on all sides except the riverbank. When Crazy Horse arrived on
the scene, the battle cry “Hokahey” rang out, and what started out as a standoff quickly turned into
a retreat by the enemy and a pursuit by the Native Americans. Crazy Horse, true to his name, is said
to have ridden his horse dangerously close to the U.S. battalion, drawing fire and engaging in close
combat in a tactic known as a “brave run”. Crazy Horse and his men flushed the invaders out of the
trees, and as they fled across the river towards the ridge that ran along the eastern shore,
the soldiers were pursued relentlessly, with Crazy Horse leading the charge and yelling
“here are the soldiers after us again. Do your best, and let us finish them all off today,
that they may not trouble us anymore!” The Oglala chief Thunder Bear recounted the scene later,
saying that “right among them we rode, shooting them down as in a buffalo drive”. The soldiers
who survived managed to make it up the ridge to the safety of Reno Hill, named for Captain Reno,
who served under Custer. For a while, the U.S. Army was able to hold its defensive position. But
all that changed when Crazy Horse and his men reappeared from the north, their battle cries
echoing across the hills and valleys along the river, their hearts full of vengeance.
But before we get into the grisly finale of Little Bighorn,
it’s worth rewinding to examine the events that led up to the battle. Remember,
it was the 1800s. Manifest Destiny was in full swing, and the government was drafting
treaty after treaty with Native American tribes across the country as it pushed westward. And
there were a lot of treaties signed between 1778 and 1871. Take a guess at how many, we can wait.
What number did you come up with? Fifteen? Seventy? Try over 500. There were more than
500 treaties signed between the U.S. government and Native American tribes in less than 100 years.
And all of them were either violated or outright broken. Some are still being fought over in court
today. One of them was the Treaty of Fort Laramie. There were really two Treaties of Fort Laramie.
The first was signed in 1851. Tribes weren’t happy about the territorial lines that were drawn in the
plains region – yet another instance of colonizers cutting borders through regions with cultures and
identities they don’t understand. The shaky treaty resulted in Red Cloud’s Battle, where an alliance
between the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Northern Arapaho tribes fought the colonizers and
its Crow allies from 1866 to 1868 over territory in the Western Powder River Country in present-day
Wyoming. The war ended with the second iteration of the Treaty of Fort Laramie. This version was
even worse than the first, and many tribal chiefs refused to even sign it. Soon after,
gold was discovered in the region, and the treaty was broken entirely. Prospectors moved in, the
government forced many tribes onto reservations that they had no intention of moving to or staying
in. Blood revenge, also known as Blood Law, was pretty straightforward. Basically, if one Native
American ends the life of another, the deceased’s family had the legal right and societal obligation
to end the life of someone in the accused’s family. This often happened between clans and
between tribes, and the whole social structure revolved around the respect for retaliation. If
the blood revenge was completed, the issue was accepted and resolved, and life went on. Despite
its inherent savage nature, the law of blood revenge was deeply spiritual. It was believed that
the soul of the victim couldn’t enter the spirit world until his death was avenged. Sometimes,
the law of blood revenge could get out of hand, and lead to something called a “Mourning War”.
These were protracted conflicts between clans and tribes due to endless cycles of revenge.
So, as Crazy Horse and his men stormed Custer Hill in the waning moments of the Battle of Little
Bighorn, the tradition and the deep meaning behind Blood Revenge was coursing through
their veins. This time, though, they were taking revenge against a foreign power that had come in,
taken their land, taken their livelihoods, and the lives of many of their people. The
Sioux and Cheyenne warriors descended upon Custer and his remaining men without mercy.
It was a chaotic and deadly last stand. Piles of the deceased were strewn around Custer Hill
and Calhoun Hill and the ridge in between. Every last colonizer soldier was dispatched,
and “disrespected”. It was the Cheyenne and Sioux belief that you brought your body with
you into the afterlife, and many of the fallen soldiers were missing limbs in order to make
their journey as…uncomfortable as possible. It was an ugly scene, one that can never be justified,
but one that was understandable. There were years of trauma being released on those hills, years of
exploitation and abuse being channeled into the barrel of a weapon or the blade of a tomahawk.
It was a short-lived victory for the Native Americans, though. News of the battle reached
the ears of the white American public right around the 4th of July, and people were outraged. Custer
was a Civil War hero, after all. Soon after, the U.S. military sent in general Ranald Mackenzie,
a seasoned commander who had been fighting the Comanche and Kiowa tribes in Texas for years,
to exact their own revenge. Mackenzie and his men stormed into a large Cheyenne village along
the Powder River in Wyoming that was led by Chief Dull knife. While Chief Dull knife wasn’t
at Little Bighorn, many of the warriors from the village were, and there was no quarter given. The
entire village -and almost everyone in it – was destroyed. A year later, Crazy Horse himself would
surrender near Fort Robinson, Nebraska, saying that he wanted peace between his people and the
U.S. government. However, just four months later Crazy Horse was fatally wounded with a bayonet
after being arrested over dubious accusations that he was plotting to take out a U.S. general. And
that Treaty of Fort Laramie and the Black Hills gold rush that signaled its end? That issue is
still being fought over today. In the 1980 Supreme Court Case, The United States vs. The Sioux Nation
of Indians, the court awarded the Sioux Nation 15 million dollars for the value of the land around
Black Hills that was illegally taken from them, as well as an additional 105 million dollars-worth of
interest. But the Lakota Sioux refused the payments, and to this day continue to fight
to have their land returned to them. Today, the interest accumulated on that land is more than a
billion dollars. As always, Thanks for watching. Let us know what you think in the comments,
and don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing Nutty History content.