132 years ago

Courtesy of Wyatt Earp:

June 25, 1876 - The Battle of Little Bighorn. Commonly known as Custer’s Last Stand, American military engagement fought on June 25, 1876, in what is now Montana, between a regiment of the Seventh U.S. Cavalry led by Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and a force of Sioux and Northern Cheyenne Indians. The discovery of gold in the nearby Black Hills in 1874 had led to an influx of white prospectors into Indian territory and to attacks on the prospectors by the Sioux, under Chiefs Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and Gall.
In 1876 the army planned a campaign against the hostile Indians, then centered in southeastern Montana Territory. Custer’s regiment of 655 men formed the advance guard of a force under Gen. Alfred Howe Terry (1827–90). On June 25 Custer’s scouts located the Sioux on the Little Bighorn River. Unaware of the Indian strength, between 2500 and 4000 men, Custer disregarded arrangements to join Terry at the junction of the Bighorn and Little Bighorn rivers and prepared to attack at once.
In the hope of surrounding the Indians, he formed his troops into a frontal-assault force of about 260 men under his personal command and two flanking columns. The center column encountered the numerically superior Indians. Cut off from the flanking columns and completely surrounded, Custer and his men fought desperately but all were killed. Later Terry’s troops relieved the remainder of the regiment. The battlefield, now known as the Little Bighorn National Monument, was established as a national monument in 1886 and was known, until 1991, as the Custer Battlefield National Monument.