The Little Bighorn

The drive from Alberta to Nebraska took us past another national monument site. If you take Interstate 90 southeast of Billings Montana, you'll drive right past the historic location of the Battle of the Little Bighorn. In the 1870s, the US cavalry had declared war on several rogue Indian tribes who refused to abandon their culture and settle on the reservations. Foremost among them were Sioux tribes led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.

In 1876, General Armstrong Custer led the US Seventh Cavalry along the Little Bighorn river in the hopes of ambushing the Sioux. He expected to find only a few hundred Sioux, and instead found an encampment of close to ten thousand. What followed was one of the most one-sided clashes in the history of the Indians wars. Armstrong and all his men perished in a battled celebrated among Native Americans to this day.



The visitor's center has displays on frontier life in the 1870s, weapons and dress of the Sioux Indians, and this display on the life of George Armstrong Custer.

Vistors to the Little Bighorn can take a walking or driving tour of the battlefield. This spot informs visitors about the skirmish between cavalry and Sioux on Calhoun's hill.

As you walk through the battlefield, there are small headstones that commemorate the place where cavalry were killed by Sioux warriors.

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