Jessica Crabtree

June 25, 1876: Battle of Little Big Horn

There’s not much about this event that hasn’t been said – both true and not so true. It has been studied more extensively, and become more entrenched in popular culture, than possibly any other encounter between Indians and US forces. Maybe that’s because it involved so many influential figures – General Custer, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse – or maybe because it was so shocking to Americans when it occurred that it was instantly and permanently seared into the public memory. Whatever the reasons, our understanding of the conflict and the events surrounding it have changed dramatically through time. The technologies of forensic archaeology and ballistics have reconstructed the course of events on the Greasy Grass, from the movements on the field to weapons used and the nature of the combat.

Perhaps the biggest change in perception is the shift in bias. The role of the US military, and of Custer in particular, is no longer so glorified as it once was, and the Indians not so vilified. We’ve come to understand how the hunger for gold in the forbidden Black Hills motivated the Custer Expedition of 1876. And with more Native accounts coming to light – and being heard – our understanding of the events on the ground has become more objective and comprehensive.

These changes are relatively recent, however. For most of the 20th century, discussing the legitimacy of US Indian policies was strictly taboo – and so was challenging the objectivity of “official” accounts.

This was the obstacle that Edward Curtis encountered when he released the research accompanying his photographic work among the Crow. He made detailed notes from interviews with former Crow army scouts who were present to witness the events at Little Bighorn. But political forces intervened before these reports could be published. President Theodore Roosevelt, while supportive of Curtis’s photographic work, “recommended” that he keep his research under hat. So it was years before the Crow accounts saw the light of day.

Whatever his motives, maybe Roosevelt was just riding the political currents of his day. While public attitudes towards Native Americans were beginning to change, the fact remained that the nation was still embroiled in the aftermath of the Great Indian Wars of the Plains and the Southwest. Vitriolic feelings towards the Indians, and the Lakota in particular, were still high, even a generation after Little Big Horn. The century had barely turned on one of the worst crimes committed on the Indians, the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890 – which was motivated in part by a hunger for revenge on the part of soldiers, eager to avenge their fallen compatriots at Little Big Horn.

This was the height of the boarding school era, where Indian children were being taken from their families to be “civilized” and re-educated in hopes of completing the assimilation into white culture. Distorted accounts of events such as Little Bighorn continued to fuel stereotypical images of Indians and justify the military’s reactions. Perhaps by depriving Indians of a voice at this time, it was easier to portray them as a “disappearing race”: a casualty of Manifest Destiny, a lost cause – a thing of the past – in order to whitewash the horror of an outright cultural genocide still in full swing.

See also:
History Channel documentary LITTLE BIGHORN: THE UNTOLD STORY

Wikipedia: Battle of Little Bighorn

Wild West Magazine: Ten Myths of the Little Big Horn (HistoryNet)

Library of Congress Digital Collections “This Day in History: Little Bighorn“

Library of Congress: Edward Curtis

The Curtis Collection