150 Years On: How Broken Treaties Fueled the Battle of the Little Bighorn
On the 150th anniversary of the 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn, Heather Cox Richardson links Custer’s defeat to a long history of broken treaties, massacres, and westward expansion—from the 1862 Santee uprising and Sand Creek to the Bozeman Trail and the Black Hills gold rush—dramatizing how federal aims to subdue Indigenous lands and protect rails and mines culminated in Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse’s rally and the Lakota defeat of a divided U.S. force (263 U.S. dead vs. about 40 Lakota).