Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument
| Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument | |||
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| Location: | Montana , United States | ||
| Specialty: | Site of a battle in the Indian Wars | ||
| Next city: | Hardin | ||
| Surface: | 3.1 km² | ||
| Founding: | January 29, 1879 | ||
| Visitors: | 298,518 (2006) | ||
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Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument is a memorial of the type of a National Monument in southern US state of Montana . It recalls the Battle of the Little Bighorn , in the June 25, 1876 7th US Cavalry under George A. Custer of Indians of Lakota - Sioux , Arapaho and Cheyenne under their leaders Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse at Little Bighorn River devastating was beaten.
The memorial at the site of the battle was dedicated as a National Cemetery as early as 1879 , became a National Monument in 1946 and was given its current name in 1991. It is located in the reserve of the Crow -Indianer, together with the Reno-Benteen Battlefield Memorial , which commemorates the last battle of the battle in the evening.
The battle
→ Main article: Battle of Little Bighorn
The Sioux Indians were to be moved to sell the Black Hills , a mountain range on the edge of the Rocky Mountains , sacred to them . The area was immediately west of their reservation and was guaranteed to them in the Treaty of Fort Laramie 1868 as an exclusive hunting area. A US Army expedition under Lt. Col. George A. Custer reported gold deposits in the mountains in 1874 and thousands of prospectors poured into the area. Some groups of Sioux and Cheyenne who had never recognized the treaty of 1868 and the reservation also lived and hunted there . Their chiefs Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and Gall resisted the invading whites and were declared hostile by the Bureau of Indian Affairs .
In June 1876, US Army units advanced on the area from three sides in a pincer motion . George A. Custer led the approximately 600 men of the 7th US Cavalry Regiment as the vanguard on a fact-finding mission. He had orders not to attack any Indians he might find, and he did not carry any heavy weapons, in particular no Gatling bolt-action guns . His scouts found the Indian village in the valley of the Little Bighorn River on June 25, 1876. The number of residents cannot be determined with certainty; recent estimates range from around 1,000 to 2,500 warriors. Despite the superiority and his orders, Custer attacked, probably because he thought his troops had been discovered and wanted to take advantage of the element of surprise.
The attack failed, the Hunkpapa Sioux under Chief Gall were able to repel a wing operation and roll up the troops. They took refuge on cliffs by the river. The main shaft under Custer himself was already brought to a halt between the first tents, and five companies of cavalrymen had to retreat to a hill. The Sioux and Cheyenne managed to bypass the hill and cut off the army from retreat. All soldiers in these units were killed.
The survivors of the wing operation under Major Marcus Reno and three other companies under Captain Frederick Benteen gathered on cliffs by the river and were repulsed there in the evening as they tried to approach the battlefield. A total of 268 soldiers, including 14 officers, died and 55 other soldiers remained missing. The Indian peoples suffered between a proven 64 and an estimated 300 victims.
Reception and memorial
The Battle of the Little Bighorn River was the US Army's greatest military defeat in the Indian Wars . For around a century, memories were largely shaped by the military point of view. The first memorial was a National Cemetery (Nationalfriedhof), which was established as early as 1879. In 1886 it was renamed the National Cemetery of Custer's Battlefield Reservation , and soldiers from other wars were also buried there. Custer's body is not here; it was transferred to the United States Military Academy cemetery in West Point in 1877 . The site of the last battle between Reno and Benteen, about five kilometers away, was integrated into the memorial in 1926 as the Reno-Benteen Battlefield . In 1940 it was transferred to the National Park Service , and in 1946 the status was reassigned to that of a National Monument under the new name Custer Battlefield National Monument .
In December 1991, President George HW Bush renamed the memorial to its current name Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument and ordered that in future the Indian victims should be commemorated to the same extent and that their role and culture should be better recognized. To this end, the Indian Memorial was erected in the following years , a memorial with three wire mesh figures, which commemorate the three peoples involved, Sioux , Cheyenne and Arapaho .
