Massacre at Little Big Horn – 1876
 Portrait of Gen. Custer |
Gen. Custer was head of the 7th Calvary and charged with a scouting mission in South Dakota. He was to explore the area, protect any new settlers, and to form relationships with the local Sioux Indians.
On June 25th he and 210 of his men were ambushed by a savage band of Sioux and Cheyenne Indians. This group was on a warpath to exterminate every white man from their sacred Black Hills. Custer and his men were out numbered, under armed, and taken by surprise. All of them were killed, with their bodies scalped and desecrated. (The savages thought that the soul of a mutilated body would be forced to walk the earth for all eternity and could not ascend to heaven.)
Public backlash from the event spelled the doom for the Red Man. It was
decided that they were too wild to tame, and that they would either need
to be rounded up and placed on a reservation, or exterminated.