The Battle of Little Big Horn

George Armstrong Custer was an American military administrator and commandant who ascended to prominence at a younger age during the American Civil War. He achieved new fame following his post-battle abuses against the West’s Native Americans. Custer’s birthday was on the 5th of December 1839 in New Rumley, Ohio, and expended the fraction of his early life in Michigan while staying with his half-sister, and would deem the state his home of adoption. His parents, Emanuel Custer and Maria Ward were farmers; however, he enjoyed fishing, hunting, and also cherished the romantic novels more than his academics. Custer attended the Michigan schools and even taught there for a short time before securing a position at the United States Military Academy at West Point while only 18 years through the Michigan Congressman irrespective of his modest background and youthful recklessness. He entered the academy in June 1857, and four years later, graduated just at the outbreak of the Civil War. Even though Custer’s record both academically and conduct wise at West Point was miserable, he had an outstanding career as regards the combat arts. Graduating at the bottom of the class that comprises 34 individuals, they commissioned him as the second lieutenant in the Second United States Calvary just in time to participate in the initial combat of Manassas.[1]

Wars against Native Americans

            Custer regressed to the position of captain in the regular military upon the conclusion of the Civil War and received a promotion to a deputy colonel and became the acting commandant of the newly created 7th U.S Calvary Regiment. In the year 1866, Custer and his troop reported to western Kansas to participate in the mission of the Maj. Gen. Winfield S. Hancock to awe the antagonistic Plain Indians. As an Indian fighter on the Great Plains, Custer established an original name for himself, one that obscured even his figure as the Civil War’s Boy General. He started his current profession ominously with an inept performance in the 1867’s movement of Gen Hancock against the Cheyennes in Kansas that even concluded in a court-bellicose.

Found guilty of a sequence of accusations arising from the field transgression, they suspended him from the grade and payment for a year.[2] However, on the appliance of General Sheridan, he went back before the completion of the punishment and swiftly gained a remarkable triumph over Black Kettles of the Cheyennes at the Washita’s conflict in 1868 of November. Consigned to the northern Plains in the year 1873, Custer partook in the Yellowstone Expedition, which fortified the Northern Pacific Railroad surveyors. Two extra wins, against the Sioux, again added luster into Cluster’s record, and in the year 1874, he directed the Seventh in an investigation of the Dakota’s the Black Hills. The miners with the column uncovered gold, and the resulting gold hurry set the foundation for the ultimate episode of his existence.

Battle of Little Bighorn

June 25, 1876, became a day of fable and mystery as Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and his 7th Calvary battle conceivably the largest coalition of Plains Indians unfriendly to the administration that had ever grouped as a team.[3]

The 7th Calvary lost the war, and approximately 210 troops of Custer’s particular command perished. That morning Custer received the information from his scouts regarding the large camp of the hostile Indians from the separation between the Little Bighorn River and the Rosebud Creek, and they were mostly Cheyenne and Sioux. Furthermore, they also notified him that the 7th Calvary was under surveillance by the antagonistic scouts. Custer ordered for an immediate forward assault by his force given that the camping Indians might flee yet that was the utmost apprehension to the frontier militia while on the operation. He did so with confidence for there was no history until then of the Plains Indians ever confronting an entire regime of the United States Calvary leave alone defeating them.

Grouping the regimen into four clusters, Custer instigated the progress into the Little Bighorn gorge where the Indians grouped just a few kilometers away. Custer controlled two brigades of five bands whereas Reno had one regiment of three parties, and they were the significant forces while Benteen with three companies went to the controversial south of the main advance. As the two central militaries came close to the valley, they could observe the hostile warfare festivities and the rise of dust an indication of some activity in the village. There is a report that the Sitting Bull, the Indians spiritual leader, had a vision of defeating the White Army. Reno’s assault within the valley was to be a diversion whereas Custer schemed for a strike.

While Custer was at the Crows Nest confirming the report of the scouts of seeing the villagers, he got into an intense quarrel with Corporal Half Yellow Face; He insisted that the Sioux scouts saw them while Custer believed no one had seen them and wanted to go ahead with his plans of attack. Custer only thought the compromising of his unit on getting back to the main body when Captain Tom Custer claimed they had seen a cluster of hostiles behind the column.[4] Following months of confrontation in 1876, the grand accolade, the opportunity to attack the large gathering of Sioux, was about to vanish; however, with Custer’s experience academically and campaign experience, he swung his 7th

Calvary into action. At the call of the hurriedly amassed bureaucrats, Custer explained the scrapping off of the Washita-like strategy of surrounding the area and assaulting at daybreak given that the Indians had discovered their hideouts. The new attack policy comprised of the troop to protect the left flank, a direct assault battalion into the village, and Custer’s flanking attack from the right. Whereas Custer planned to scatter the opponent, in reality, the gathered mass of about 2000 Cheyenne and Sioux combatants did the contrary by catching their ponies and uniformly meeting the assault.

Custer had his initial view of the real dimension of the large village from the West Point, and it is from there that he realized that the Indians by no means had a plan of escape. Indeed, it was from that vantage position that he informed Captain Benteen to accompany the group, prepare and rejoin the regime as all the corporations and ammo supplies would be in demand. Still operating to assail along the west border of the community he divided the battalion to try the traversing the village through the Medicine Tail Coulee and to protect his force’s right side. Eventually, the irresistible pressure mandated Custer’s hastily disintegrating force to amass in an ultimate protective boundary also called the Last Stand Hill. All the United States army perished in the Custer’s Last Stand as they stood their ground in the determination to either survive or die in sovereignty.[5]

Two days later, a scouting party from the column of General Terry revealed the nude body of Custer among a band of deceased cavalry horses.

Bibliography

HISTORYNET. "George Custer."HistoryNet. Last modified 2018. http://www.historynet.com/george-custer.

Neumann, Jonathan T. "The Military Decision Making Process and the Battle of the Little Bighorn."DTIC Online. Last modified April 25, 2001. http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a401568.pdf.

Nightengale, Robert. "Battle of Little Bighorn."HISTORYNET (n.d.). http://www.historynet.com/battle-of-little-bighorn#articles.

Utley, Robert M. "Custer, George Armstrong (1839-1876), Civil War General and Indian Fighter."American National Biography. Last modified June 16, 2017. http://www.anb.org/view/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.001.0001/anb-9780198606697-e-0400290.

1. Robert M. Utley, "Custer, George Armstrong (1839-1876), Civil War General and Indian Fighter,"American National Biography, last modified June 16, 2017, http://www.anb.org/view/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.001.0001/anb-9780198606697-e-0400290. p. 1

2. Robert M. Utley, "Custer, George Armstrong (1839-1876), Civil War General and Indian Fighter,"American National Biography, last modified June 16, 2017, http://www.anb.org/view/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.001.0001/anb-9780198606697-e-0400290. p.5

3. Robert Nightengale, "Battle of Little Bighorn,"HISTORYNET (n.d.), xx, http://www.historynet.com/battle-of-little-bighorn#articles. P.4

4. Jonathan T. Neumann, "The Military Decision Making Process and the Battle of the Little Bighorn,"DTIC Online, last modified April 25, 2001, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a401568.pdf. 46

5. HISTORYNET, "George Custer,"HistoryNet, last modified 2018, http://www.historynet.com/george-custer. p.7