Why did George Custer fail at the Battle of the Little Bighorn?

The Battle of the Little Bighorn took place on June 25, 1876, between Northern Plains Indians led by the Lakota chief Sitting Bull and U.S. federal troops led by Lieutenant Colonel George Custer. It was fought at the Little Bighorn River in what was then considered Montana Territory. Why? In 1868 the U.S. government signed the Second Treaty of Fort Laramie, guaranteeing the Sioux and Arapaho tribes exclusive possession of the Dakota territory west of the Missouri River—which included land in the Black Hills that was sacred to the Lakota Sioux. But when an 1874 expedition discovered gold in the Black Hills, the U.S. government was quick to break the treaty. Three U.S. Army columns converged on Lakota country in the spring of 1876, planning to find resisting Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho people and force them onto reservations. On the morning of June 25, the cavalry led by George Custer came upon a Native American village where Sitting Bull and his troops—as well as their families—resided. When a few scouts spotted him, Custer panicked and thought that the village would scatter, evading U.S. forces entirely. He decided to begin the attack himself, breaking his small regiment into smaller battalions to charge the village from multiple angles. His “strategy” proved incredibly foolish. The U.S. had underestimated Sitting Bull’s troops in almost every aspect, including number of warriors, quality of weapons, and tactical skill. By the end of the two-hour fight, every single U.S. soldier in Custer’s battalion—including Custer himself—was dead. For Native Americans resisting U.S. colonization, the Battle of the Little Bighorn was an incredible victory. Their triumph, though, was short-lived. Within a few years, the Native American residents of the territory had either fled to Canada, been killed, or been forced onto reservations. Today, the Battle of the Little Bighorn is sometimes known by another name: Custer’s Last Stand. To many, that title seems like an attempt to rewrite history—to make a hero out of a failed leader and to glorify the United States’ brutal treatment of Native American peoples.