![]() Over the next several years, Custer discovered that fighting Indigenous people was much different than fighting Confederate soldiers. On November 28, he led a campaign against a village of Cheyenne led by Chief Black Kettle, killing all Native American warriors present and earning himself a reputation as a ruthless fighter. In September 1868, he returned to duty before his court-martial sentence was up and resumed command of the 7th Cavalry. It also demonstrated his inclination to make rash decisions, a trait that some say would have deadly consequences later.ĭespite Custer’s now-tarnished reputation, the army still needed him to fight Native Americans. The fact that Custer-a highly-decorated and well-respected commander-deserted perplexed many of his men and his superiors. He was court-martialed in 1867 and suspended without rank and pay for one year. At the end of the campaign, Custer deserted and joined his wife at Fort Riley. Hancock carry out a shock-and-awe campaign to overwhelm the tribal nations. Army.Ĭuster’s first assignment was helping Major General Winfield S. (Photo by © CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images) Custer Goes AWOL and Is Court-Martialed by the U.S. Each of these officers was wounded during the Battle of Gettysburg. Portrait of General Winfield Scott Hancock (1824-1886), a Federal officer during the American Civil War, with members of his staff. READ MORE: How Horses Transformed Life for Plains Indians By the time Custer arrived on the scene in 1866, the war between the army and the Plains Indians was in full force. To the tribes, the railroad represented an end to their livelihood, since for millennia they’d relied on free-roaming buffalo to survive. Some staged brutal attacks on settlers and railroad workers without regard to age or gender. The more the white colonizers needlessly slaughtered buffalo, the angrier Indigenous people grew. They also urged hunters to kill as many buffalo as possible without oversight and encouraged trains to stop so passengers could massacre buffalo for sport. In the hopes of squashing the livelihood of the Native American people on the Plains, the government allowed the railroads to kill scores of buffalo herds to lay railroad tracks. Vowing to avoid the same fate, the Plains Indians settled in for a long and fierce holdout. A confrontation between the Plains Indians against the settlers and government forces was inevitable.īy the late 1860s, most Native Americans had been forced onto so-called Indian reservations or killed outright. government granted 10 percent of Plains land to settlers and railroads. As settlers colonized the far west before the Civil War, few had put down roots in the Plains due to its dry weather and large Indigenous populations.īut after the Civil War, far-west land became scarcer and the U.S. The Great Plains were the last Native American holdout in America. (Photo by Heyn/Buyenlarge/Getty Images) The Plains Indians Show Tremendous Fortitude Three young Native American men, probably Sioux, 1899. He was promoted several times and by the time the war ended, he was a Major General in charge of a Cavalry division. When the Civil War broke out in April 1861, Custer joined the Union Army’s Cavalry and soon proved himself a competent, reliable soldier in battles such as the First Battle of Bull Run and the Battle of Gettysburg. Military Academy at West Point, where he was a less-than-stellar cadet: Custer graduated dead last in his class of 1861. George Armstrong Custer, born in Ohio in 1839, earned a certificate for teaching grammar school in 1856 but had much grander goals. ![]() Custer’s Early Life Was Less Than Auspicious The battle has been ennobled as “Custer’s Last Stand”-but in truth, Custer and his men never stood a fighting chance. In less than an hour, the Sioux and Cheyenne had won the Battle of the Little Bighorn, killing Custer and every one of his men. forces over control of Western territory, collectively known as the Sioux Wars. The engagement was one in a series of battles and negotiations between Plains Indians and U.S. Colonel George Custer confronted thousands of Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne warriors on June 25, 1876, near the Little Big Horn River in present-day Montana. ![]() Under skies darkened by smoke, gunfire and flying arrows, 210 men of the U.S.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |