Build-up to the Battle: What Led Up to the Little Bighorn (and the Big Hole and Bearpaws?)

So, what really led to the debacle at the Little Bighorn? Virtually every student knows it ended in the “last stand” of George Armstrong Custer. Most folks know all members of the five cavalry troops with him that day were killed in that last stand, including “General” (Lt. Colonel) Custer.

Custer had actually divided his regiment’s 12 troops.  Many additional casualties were suffered by the separate commands under Major Marcus Reno and Captain Frederick Benteen. However, more Seventh Cavalry troopers survived the Little Bighorn than did not. The defeat they suffered that day, though, was convincing at best, and certainly demoralizing. The whole affair shocked a nation that was celebrating its first centennial.

The Little Bighorn battle was far from a stand-alone battle, however. In the end, it was truly a debacle for those on both sides of the conflict. While the Sioux, Cheyenne and other allies won an overwhelming victory that day, the battle is widely seen as a final “beginning of the end” for those tribes’ freedom. They had won a great battle but had lost a war that day. The shock of Custer’s dramatic demise merely fueled the fires of war against them. It threw kerosene onto the growing flames.

The Little Bighorn’s aftermath is a topic in itself. It encompasses many topics, in fact. Likewise, the battle’s prelude, viewed over many years, comprises countless sub-topics. In a nutshell, though, a summary of circumstances and events might serve to set the stage for those who seek to understand that historic battle’s magnitude.

Lengthy books could be, and have been, written on the Sioux conflicts alone. For background purposes I’ll try to keep this summary brief (unlike my introduction above.) Each component of it could easily fill multiple dissertations, but I’ll attempt a short summation:

It is generally believed the Sioux tribes, or bands, were pushed westward by Eastern Woodland tribes. During the time of America’s Civil War, Little Crow led an uprising of Santee Sioux in Minnesota. That uprising was quickly crushed, and it resulted in further pressure for various Sioux bands to move westward. These movements put them in territorial conflict with other Plains tribes, including the Crows and Blackfeet. Competition and fighting for homelands, hunting grounds (buffalo) and horses was much a part of every band’s existence.

It would be convenient to state that the Sioux and Cheyennes’ struggles with white settlers began with Red Cloud’s War along the Bozeman Trail, or with the opening of the Oregon Trail, or with the advance of fur trappers and fur companies from St. Louis. It would be even simpler yet to say the clashes started with Lewis and Clark’s Voyage of Discovery up the Missouri River and onward to the Pacific Coast.

While all those factors contributed, the widely diffused roots of the conflict go back, arguably, to the inevitable westward expansion from Europe. Explorers, various pilgrims, and settlers all viewed new lands as unsettled and free for the taking.

Beyond the smaller-scale conflicts of the Fur Trade era, though, the build-up to the Little Bighorn began in earnest as settlers moved in greater numbers along the Oregon Trail. It sliced through the heart of what the Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho and other tribes saw as their territorial homelands. As conflicts simmered and grew, more settlers followed that route, branching off to California goldfields (mainly on the heels of the big strike in 1848/49) or down to the Salt Lake area, or on to Oregon’s fertile and coveted lands.

The most intriguing common thread, though, might well have been gold. Besides the quest for individual wealth, national governments sought gold too. Gold discoveries in western North America were of significant interest to both the United States government or that of the upstart, rebellious Confederate States. It was nations, not just individuals, who sought gold.

That’s another large topic for another time. The fact, though, that the United States placed heavy artillery at Alcatraz, overlooking the mouth of the San Francisco Bay during its Civil War certainly speaks volumes. Fighting a war is expensive: a lot of funding is required in order to feed, clothe, arm and otherwise supply any army. Gold had the attention of both governments, and it would continue to be a factor in conflicts long after the nation’s Civil War had ended.

Soon, as gold was discovered up in Oregon and Idaho Territory, miners came not just from California but from many eastern and southern states. Treaties negotiated before the Civil War were broken (wronging Nez Perce tribes as well as the Sioux and Cheyenne) and even more gold strikes drew even more settlers.

Fort Laramie, the site of two major treaty negotiations, lay along the Oregon Trail. John Bozeman found a cut-off route from Fort Laramie northward around the Bighorn range and on to gold fields in the new Montana Territory. This route saved travelers a great deal of time and effort, which was important. Harsh weather limited travel and mining to warmer months.

Bozeman’s trail, however, cut through the heart of tribal hunting grounds. Conflict that had simmered now boiled over along the Bozeman Trail. The route is sometimes called the “Bloody Bozeman.”

Conflicts calmed somewhat after the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. The U.S. had agreed to abandon three of its five forts along the Bozeman Trail. Non-treaty tribes still harassed other forts and white settlers, but conflicts diminished until 1873.

The Panic of 1873 caused widespread economic depression in the eastern states. Nearly a fourth of men were out of work, and farmers’ crops lost value. Then came reports of gold in the Black Hills.

The resulting rush meant more intrusion onto treaty lands. The U.S. Army under President Grant ignored its treaty ceding the Black Hills to Sioux. Grant had long pursued a “Peace Policy” toward the Plains tribes, but he now turned a blind eye to his army’s entrance into that “sacred ground.” In 1874 George Armstrong Custer led his U.S. Cavalry regiment into the treaty-protected Black Hills under the pretext of trying to keep prospectors out.

If protecting the Black Hills was indeed Custer’s mission, he failed as expected. Somehow a report leaked out – deliberately, perhaps? – that gold was literally in the grass’ roots. Those words actually were spun through mass media – specifically, the Chicago Inter Ocean – rather than Custer. (Not much has changed in 150 years.) Needless to say, those reports brought a bigger stampede of gold seekers, and the U.S. military did little to stop it.

Any lid on Sioux and Cheyenne conflicts quickly blew off. Custer’s first direct conflict with Oglalla Sioux leader Crazy Horse had been along the Yellowstone River in 1873. Then, Custer was protecting a survey expedition mapping a route for the Northern Pacific Railroad. Now that the economic depression had halted railroad expansion – at least for the time – Custer’s Black Hills Expedition fueled greater fires.

Further west, the same pattern was occurring with the Nez Perce tribe and its various bands. Amidst gold rushes and other incursions onto the various tribes’ homelands, a series of treaties had been made, misunderstood, and sometimes deliberately broken. It would lead to new conflict and much more bloodshed on the heels of Custer’s demise (watch for future posts on the1877 Nez Perce conflict.)

A major source of both the Sioux and Nez Perce conflicts was that white men misunderstood, or misconstrued, tribal governments. No chief spoke for all the bands, or even for all members of his own band. When a few chiefs agreed to treaties, white men often believed that agreement applied to all the related tribes. When some chiefs and leaders openly refused, their bands or tribes became known as “non-treaty” Indians. White men still presumed all belonged on reservations, though, under agreements acknowledged by a few chiefs.

In 1875 the U.S. government tried more than once to purchase the Black Hills from the Sioux. Both treaty and non-treaty chiefs repeatedly refused to sell their sacred ground. Finally, exasperated, Grant and his military abandoned their Peace Policy. They ordered all non-treaty Indians to move to reservations in the dead of winter. They then began a campaign to converge upon and crush those tribes who failed to comply.

General Philip Sheridan’s hoped-for winter campaign failed to materialize, which I’ll discuss in more detail in future posts. He did order a convergence of three military columns on non-treaty tribes, who were now called “hostiles.” The columns were intended to close in around the Powder, Tongue, Bighorn and Little Bighorn Rivers, where most non-treaty tribes were believed to be.

The advances of the three columns will bring many more discussions. Their campaign, though –after a long series of events leading up — became the march toward the final showdown. After a long build-up, and before its dénouement, the campaign would reach its climax in Custer’s final date with destiny, his Little Bighorn debacle and demise.