48 Fun Facts About Little Bighorn

Who was U.S. president when Custer was killed at the Little Bighorn in 1876?

Grant. Weeks earlier he had stripped Custer of his command for testifying in a corruption inquiry that touched the president's own brother, then relented enough to let him ride.

By what name do the Lakota and other Plains peoples know the Battle of the Little Bighorn?

The Greasy Grass. It was their name for the river and its valley, so the fight is remembered for the place where it happened, not for the man who lost it.

Which U.S. Army regiment did Custer command at the Little Bighorn?

7th Cavalry. Custer split its twelve companies as he closed on the village, and the five that rode with him were wiped out to the last man.

What was George Armstrong Custer's actual Army rank at the Little Bighorn?

Lieutenant colonel. He had been a major general of volunteers before he turned 25, a wartime rank that lapsed when the Civil War armies disbanded, which is why he is still remembered as 'General Custer'.

In which present-day state is the Little Bighorn battlefield?

Montana. The valley lay inside the Crow reservation, so the Lakota and Cheyenne camped there were on another nation's treaty land, which is why Crow scouts rode with the Army.

Which third nation joined the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne against Custer's regiment?

Arapaho. Only a small number were present, while the Crow, Arikara and Shoshone, old enemies of the Lakota, spent that summer on the Army's side as scouts and allies.

Which Hunkpapa Lakota holy man's vision inspired the warriors at the Little Bighorn?

Sitting Bull. He took no direct part in the fighting: he acted as the camp's spiritual leader that day and saw to the safety of the women and children.

What discovery in the Black Hills in 1874 led to the Great Sioux War?

Gold. An expedition led by Custer himself confirmed it, miners poured onto land a treaty had promised to the Lakota, and the government's offer to buy the hills was refused.

Which Oglala war leader do Lakota accounts credit with the charge that broke Custer's battalion?

Crazy Horse. Lakota accounts have him leading a surprise charge from the northeast that shattered the soldiers' command; little more than a year later he was dead, bayoneted in Army custody.

Which 1868 treaty had promised the Black Hills to the Lakota?

Treaty of Fort Laramie. It set the hills aside for the Lakota's 'absolute and undisturbed use'; within a decade the government had taken them back without compensation.

Which battle on June 17, 1876 forced General Crook's column to pull back before Little Bighorn?

The Rosebud. Short of supplies and burdened with wounded, Crook fell back to his base camp and stayed there for seven weeks, so he played no part in the fight eight days later.

Which general commanded the Dakota column that Custer's regiment marched with in 1876?

Alfred Terry. A Yale-trained lawyer who had risen to general in the Civil War, he sent Custer ahead on June 22 and reached the battlefield with the relief force two days after the fight.

From which post did Custer's regiment set out on the 1876 campaign?

Fort Abraham Lincoln. Custer had commanded the Dakota post since 1873, and seven weeks after the regiment rode out a steamboat came back down the river with its wounded and the news.

Which weapons did Custer leave behind before the Little Bighorn, fearing they would slow his march?

Gatling guns. Each needed four horses to haul it and had to be dragged by hand over rough ground; the troopers also boxed up their sabers and sent them back.

From the Crow's Nest at first light, what did Custer's scouts make out in the distant valley?

A huge pony herd. With it rose the smoke of morning fires, though the village itself was hidden from view, and Custer, arriving later, could not make the herd out for himself.

Which general, commanding the Army's Division of the Missouri, devised the 1876 campaign against the Lakota?

Philip Sheridan. His plan sent three separate columns into the Lakota's hunting grounds, on the assumption that any one of them could beat whatever force it met.

At the end of the Civil War, Custer's cavalry division blocked the retreat of which Confederate general's army?

Robert E. Lee. Custer's horsemen got across the line of retreat in April 1865, he received the first flag of truce, and he was present when Lee surrendered at Appomattox.

Which captain led the battalion Custer sent scouting to the south before the fight?

Frederick Benteen. He found no one, turned back and reached the bluffs in time to join the survivors there; he had thought Custer a braggart since the day they met.

Which Irish drinking song was the marching tune of Custer's regiment?

Garryowen. Named for a district of Limerick, it began as a drinking song of the city's young roisterers; the regiment made it its march and took its nickname from it.

Nearing the Little Bighorn village, what did Custer fear most?

The village scattering. Believing his regiment had been spotted, he gave up his plan for a dawn attack the next day and went in at once, in full daylight.

What did Custer's last written message, sent back for reinforcements, say to bring?

Packs. The scribbled note said to come on, be quick and bring packs, then said 'bring packs' again in a postscript: the pack mules carried the regiment's reserve ammunition.

Who carried Custer's final written message back toward the rest of the regiment?

John Martin. An Italian immigrant bugler, he rode off with the note as Custer's battalion went on toward the village, and was billed for years as the last white man to see Custer alive.

Which Arikara scout was killed beside Reno, shaking the major badly?

Bloody Knife. Custer's favourite scout was shot through the head at the major's side, spattering him with blood; the shaken Reno gave contradictory orders and then led a headlong retreat to the bluffs.

In which standard Army formation did Reno's men dismount to fight in the valley?

A skirmish line. Every fourth trooper took charge of the horses, so only three in four could fire, and warriors soon swept round the thin line's left flank and forced it back into the timber.

What do the white marble markers scattered across the Little Bighorn battlefield show?

Where each soldier fell. The bodies themselves were gathered up in 1881 and reburied in a mass grave around the granite memorial on Last Stand Hill; the markers followed in 1890.

Red granite markers added to the Little Bighorn battlefield since 1999 honour whom?

Native warriors. Until then the official markers were for the Army's dead alone; the Park Service began adding the red stones in 1999 after consulting the Lakota and Cheyenne.

Besides two brothers and a nephew, which other relative of Custer died with him at the Little Bighorn?

A brother-in-law. Lieutenant James Calhoun had married Custer's sister Margaret, who lost her husband, three brothers and a nephew in a single afternoon.

Custer was first buried on Last Stand Hill, but where were his remains reburied in 1877?

West Point. A year after the battle what could be found of him was dug up and reburied with honours at the academy where he had graduated last in his class.

Most of the battle's Medals of Honor went to men on Reno Hill who did what?

Fetched water under fire. The wounded were suffering badly from thirst, so volunteers went down the bluffs to the river and back; of the 24 medals given for the fight on the bluffs, most went to them.

What news reached Reno Hill only with the relief column?

Custer's battalion was dead. They had heard heavy firing downstream on June 25, but spent two days besieged a few miles away without learning how his fight had ended.

Which steamboat carried the Little Bighorn's wounded, and the first news of the defeat, to Bismarck?

Far West. Her captain ran her some 710 river miles downstream in 54 hours, a record for the river, travelling night and day with the wounded aboard.

What event in 1983 opened the Little Bighorn battlefield to its first full archaeological survey?

A wildfire. It burned off the dense scrub that had covered the ground for decades, and the digs that followed mapped spent cartridges and bullets to trace how the fight had moved.

The news of Custer's defeat reached the East as the United States was celebrating what?

Its centennial. Word arrived in early July 1876, in the middle of the hundredth-birthday celebrations, and the shock turned Custer's death into a rallying point for a harder war on the Plains.

Which horse, found badly wounded on the battlefield, became famous as the survivor of Custer's command?

Comanche. Captain Keogh's mount was nursed back to health and retired with honours: orders forbade anyone to ride him again, and he was led, saddled but riderless, in the regiment's parades.

Which institution took in and preserved the body of the horse that survived Custer's last fight?

University of Kansas. When the horse died in 1891 he was given a funeral with full military honours, and his remains went to the university's natural history museum to be mounted.

Which carbine did Custer's troopers carry at the Little Bighorn?

Springfield Model 1873. The single-shot breech-loader had to be reloaded after every round, while some of the warriors facing it carried repeating rifles with a far higher rate of fire.

Which star played Custer in the 1941 film They Died with Their Boots On?

Errol Flynn. The film is a highly fictionalised life that makes Custer a dashing hero who rides knowingly to his death, an image later Westerns set out to tear down.

Who played Jack Crabb, the 121-year-old who claims to have survived Custer's Last Stand, in Little Big Man?

Dustin Hoffman. The 1970 film turned the legend inside out, with Richard Mulligan playing Custer as a ruthless megalomaniac who will not listen to anyone.

Which annual ceremony had the Lakota and Cheyenne gathered to hold weeks before the Little Bighorn?

The Sun Dance. At that summer's ceremony the camp's most revered holy man had a vision of soldiers tumbling upside down into the village, which was taken as the promise of a great victory.

What became of Major Reno's military career four years after the Little Bighorn?

He was dismissed from the Army. An 1879 inquiry he had demanded cleared him of cowardice, but a court-martial for misconduct threw him out a year later; in 1967 the Army reversed that verdict.

Whose books kept Custer's heroic image alive for decades?

His widow. Elizabeth 'Libbie' Custer never remarried, wrote three popular books in his defence and went on lecturing and lobbying for his memory until she died in 1933.

Which brewer hung prints of 'Custer's Last Fight' in saloons across America from 1896?

Anheuser-Busch. It gave the lithograph to bars as an advertisement for its beer, and the print eventually ran to more than a million copies, one of the most reproduced of its time.

Which book did Custer publish two years before the Little Bighorn?

My Life on the Plains. In it he explained why he camped close to a village: the danger to its women and children, he wrote, was 'a powerful argument in favor of peace'.

What did a 1991 law change about the Little Bighorn monument?

Its name. Custer Battlefield became Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, and the same law ordered an Indian Memorial for the site, which was dedicated in 2003.

What is the theme of the Indian Memorial at the Little Bighorn battlefield?

Peace Through Unity. The circular earthwork has a gap called the Spirit Gate facing the cavalry monument, an opening meant to welcome the dead soldiers' spirits in.

Custer's regiment attacked Black Kettle's Cheyenne camp in 1868 on which river?

Washita. The dawn attack made Custer's reputation as an Indian fighter, though most of those in the camp are thought to have been women, children and the old, and the Indian Bureau called it a massacre.

Which absent commander of Custer's regiment shares his surname with a place in South Dakota's Black Hills?

Samuel D. Sturgis. He was running a cavalry depot in St. Louis while Custer led his regiment, and his own son, a young lieutenant, rode with Custer's battalion and died with it.

Who first brought news of Custer's defeat to the Army's supply steamboat on the Bighorn?

Curley, a Crow scout. He had left Custer's column before the end and watched from a distance; aboard the boat he got the story across with signs and drawings.