Little Big Horn 135 Years on

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It is exactly 135 years ago now, the fateful days of June 25/26th, 1876, when Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer, impatient to sort out the Indian problem and unwilling to wait for reinforcement troops to arrive, foolishly the 7th Cavalry charged into battle against Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne Indian tribesmen.

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He deliberately ignored orders to hold, at the mouth of the Little Big Horn River for reinforcements to arrive before attacking, but he was desperate to get Chief Sitting Bull, and would not wait. An earlier treaty, giving Sioux Indians exclusive rights to the Black Hills had been ignored in a gold rush, the U.S. government ordering Indians back to their reservations, away from the invading miners. 

Forcing the tribes back was the job of Custer and his men, but some Indians refused to leave what to them was sacred land, others camped too far away ever to find out about the ruling, but U.S. Army still got ready for a fight

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The plan was to attack, from three sides, but Chief Sitting Bull had seen this coming. Captains Benteen and Major Reno,leading groups one and two were forced back the river, trying to fight on, but Custer and his group were cut off. Charging the Indians from the north, Custer found his men encircled by thousands of angry Indian warriors, thirsty for blood.

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Within 60 minutes of the start, the massacre was over, Custer and 265 soldiers killed, and the most humiliating defeat in American military history forever burned into the history books. The extra troops, for whom Custer had been ordered to wait, arrived two days too late, and the Indian tribes melted away back into the Black Hills

 http://squatlo-rant.blogspot.com/2010/06/today-in-history-custers-last-stand.html

Even if this historic moment represented a short-lived victory for Native Americans Indians, ruthlessly persecuted afterward by federal troops sent in droves to the Black Hills, Sitting Bull escaped to Canada, there to tell his tale, and render General George Armstrong Custer, reckless idiot and mass murderer of his own men, the unlikeliest of American heroes. History can be so perverse, sometimes. 

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All images used with permission