Remembering Little Big Horn 150 Years Later as Historians, not Prosecutors or Priests

Last week, from June 25 to 27, marked the 150th anniversary of General George Custer’s disastrous defeat in a defining battle of American history in 1876. The silence around this commemoration resounded loudly. These days, it feels like every word about that moment is fraught. Too many think that history is about breast-beating or finger-pointing, while others reduce it to mindless cheerleading.  Both are wrong – and we all missed an important opportunity to learn more about the chaos of that moment, about America’s strengths and flaws and about history’s multi-dimensionality.

Today, for Americans and Jews, the Battle of Little Big Horn has relevance and resonance. Living in a society still shaped by Christian sensibilities, Americans tend to read history through the Early Christian doctrine of Original Sin. Many instinctively see America as defined by its two original sins – the enslavement of Africans and the brutalization of the natives. That wiring makes it easy to view the world through that oh-so-popular – and tedious – oppressed/oppressor lens. Such oversimplifications reduce the complex dynamics of the 1930s and 1940s, whereby the Arab world tried to annihilate the Jews, into saying, “Of course, Israel has an ‘original sin’ too … displacing the Palestinians.”

Especially as we approach America’s 250th – and we easily generate lists of “250 Reasons to Thank America” — Little Big Horn’s 150th should stretch us to approach history more maturely. Better to wield magnifying glasses, to peer closely and understand the event, instead of always, mindlessly, bringing down the hammer, without acknowledging that sensibilities develop, perspectives shift, and most human beings are neither angels nor devils but simply individuals, living history, trying to get by.

I grew up in simpler – and admittedly more callous – times. We learned that “the Indians” “massacred” General Custer and his troops. Custer to us was a hero, romantic, impulsive, brave – with flowing golden hair, a Civil War demi-god. I even had a General Custer action figure.

A Brigadier General by 23, George Armstrong Custer led the Michigan Brigade’s charge at Gettysburg, urging, “Come on you Wolverines!” He was the kind of guy who didn’t wait for the ever-cautious General George McClellan’s engineers to measure how deep the Chickahominy River was. Defying enemy fire, Custer charged into the water on horseback, hit midpoint, turned and yelled, “McClellan, that’s how deep it is, General!”

Today, honoring Custer’s contributions to freeing slaves and reuniting the Union in the 1860s doesn’t preclude struggling about how he and the American government hunted down Native Americans in the 1870s. There’s value in understanding what happened, and in assessing Custer as a leader.

Contrary to the legend his widow Elizabeth Bacon “Libby” Custer tended for 57 years until her death in 1933, most historians now view Custer’s catastrophe as self-inflicted. With his bigoted dismissal of his foes, and his egotistical quest for glory, he failed to take basic precautions.

For decades, such thoughts were heresy. Americans believed that Custer’s soldiers had fought courageously, rigorously, never breaking ranks.

By 1970, the myth was shattering. With America mired in Vietnam and rebels questioning America’s traditional, self-justifying, historical spin, Dee Brown published “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.” While detailing the broken treaties and brutal military campaigns Native Americans endured, Brown shifted perspectives,  writing about “Sitting Bull and the War for Black Hills.” Brown exposed Custer’s nickname, “Squaw Killer,” following his 1868 massacre killing women and children at Washita, a Cheyenne village. While resetting the moral dynamics, Brown framed Custer’s losing battle as a Native fight for self-defense, mounted courageously.

Thirteen years later, an August, 1983 wildfire consumed much of the thick brush that had grown in Little Bighorn National Monument, in southeastern Montana. Archaeologists led by Dr. Douglas Scott and Dr. Richard Fox started digging.

As Scott wrote in 2025 in the American Society of Arms Collectors Bulletin, the evidence confirmed much of the “Native American oral tradition” summarized in “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.” Using metal detectors, forensic technology and GPS mapping of each spent shell-casing found, researchers discovered “that Lakota and Cheyenne warriors used 47 different firearm types to completely outgun the U.S. 7th Cavalry.” The battle debris strewn far and wide suggests what Fox calls “tactical panic,” not a disciplined “Last Stand.” “Custer’s command,” Scott concluded, “was outnumbered, outgunned and simply outfought by the Lakota and Cheyenne warriors who were defending their way of life.”

Custer boasted: “There are not enough Indians in the world to defeat the 7th Cavalry.” Unaware of at least 1,800 Native warriors waiting in ambush, Custer weakened his own forces by dividing them into thirds.

Letters collected by the Shapell Manuscript Foundation also show that Custer’s soldiers – distanced from their command, overwhelmingly poor –  justifiably feared their enemy, as did many officers. On April 20, 1876, William Losee of Company F, 7th Cavalry, ended his letter to “Father and Mother,” admitting “my Eyes are dim with tears[.]  So good Bye all and a Kiss for all…”

On June 21st, Second Lieutenant William Van Wyck Reily, a 23-year-old officer, wrote to “My own darling Ma,” from the Yellowstone River in Montana, after two weeks of scouting the area. “We start tomorrow, and expect to have a fight inside of four days …” he wrote. “Much love to all. We have pretty hard times, but I will assure you that I am satisfied, and am not complaining. I may be able to go to the Centennial without asking, if so expect me in September some time, if I live through this campaign.”

Within days, Losee, Reily, and Custer were among the 268 soldiers, officers and civilians killed. Casualties included two of Custer’s younger brothers, his brother-in-law and his 18-year-old nephew. Most were stripped naked, scalped, with hands, fingers and legs slashed or dismembered. War clubs shattered heads and faces; arrows riddled most bodies.  The warriors’ ritualized killings infuriated Americans. That anger turned the Natives’ victory into an ultimate defeat, as America’s military flooded tribal areas and retaliated severely.

Historians are neither prosecutors nor defense attorneys. We’re analysts not priests, dedicated to explaining not moralizing. Custer’s battle today is a still-relevant warning to all armies against underestimating enemies. It highlights the tragic clash between Natives defending their homeland and soldiers equally convinced that their side was on the right side of history. And it shows how thorough research rather than partisan posturing can often bring us closer to the truth, in all its complexity and moral messiness.

Gil Troy, an American presidential historian and Senior Fellow at the JPPI, the Global Thinktank of the Jewish People, is the host of The Human Side of History Podcast sponsored by the Shapell Manuscript Foundation. He is the author of 18 books, including his two latest: “250 Reasons to Thank America” with David Suissa – and, with the JJPI, “The Essential Guide to the U.S-Israel Partnership, the 250th Anniversary Edition.”