Gen. George Armstrong Custer.
From Wikipedia:
According to Grinnell's account, based on the testimony of the Cheyenne warriors who survived the fight,[20] at least part of Custer's command attempted to ford the river at the north end of the camp but were driven off by stiff resistance from the Indians and were pursued by hundreds of warriors onto a ridge north of the encampment. There, Custer was prevented from digging in by Crazy Horse, whose warriors had outflanked him and were now to his north, at the crest of the ridge.[21] Traditional white accounts attribute to Gall the attack that drove Custer up onto the ridge, but Indian witnesses have disputed that account.[22] For a time, Custer's men were deployed by company, in standard cavalry fighting formation--the skirmish line, with every fourth man holding the horses. This arrangement, however, robbed Custer of a quarter of his firepower, and as the fight intensified, many soldiers took to holding their own horses or hobbling them, further reducing their effective fire. When Crazy Horse and White Bull mounted the charge that broke through the center of Custer's lines, pandemonium broke out among the men of Calhoun's command,[23] though Keogh's men seem to have fought and died where they stood. Many of the panicking soldiers threw down their weapons[24] and either rode or ran towards the knoll where Custer, the other officers, and about 40 men were making a stand. Along the way, the Indians rode them down, counting coup by whacking the fleeing troopers with their quirts or lances.[25]
Initially, Custer had 208 officers and men under his command, with an additional 142 under Reno and just over a hundred under Benteen. The Indians fielded over 1800 warriors,[26] although historically, the numbers do seem to have been exaggerated to explain Custer's defeat, and again, to exculpate him from his numerous errors before and during the battle. As the troopers were cut down, moreover, the Indians stripped the dead of their firearms and ammunition, with the result that the return fire from the cavalry steadily decreased, while the fire from the Indians steadily increased. With Custer and the survivors shooting the remaining horses to use them as breastworks and making a final stand on the knoll at the north end of the ridge, the Indians closed in for the final attack and killed all in Custer's command. As a result, the Battle of the Little Bighorn has come to be popularly known as "Custer's Last Stand".
When the cavalry's main column did arrive three days later, they found most of the soldiers' corpses stripped, scalped, and mutilated.[27] Custer’s body had two bullet holes, one in the left temple and one just above the heart.[28] Following the recovery of Custer's body, he was given a funeral with full military honors, and was buried on the battlefield, and later reinterred in the West Point Cemetery on October 10, 1877. The site of the battle was designated a National Cemetery in 1876.
The assessment of Custer's actions during the Indian Wars has undergone substantial reconsideration in modern times[citation needed]. For many critics, Custer was the personification of the U.S. Government's ill-treatment of the Native American tribes, while others see him as a scapegoat for the Grant Indian policy, which he personally opposed.[citation needed] His testimony on behalf of the abuses sustained by the reservation Indians nearly cost him his command by the Grant administration. Custer once wrote that if he were an Indian, he would rather fight for his freedom alongside the hostile warriors "than be confined to the limits of a reservation".[citation needed]
Many criticized Custer's actions during the battle of the Little Bighorn, claiming his actions were impulsive and foolish,[citation needed] while others praised him as a fallen hero who was betrayed by the incompetence of his subordinate officers.[citation needed] The controversy over who is to blame for the disaster at Little Bighorn continues to this day. Critics at the time through the present have asserted at least three military blunders. First, Custer refused the support offered by General Terry on 21 June of an additional battalion. At the same time, he left behind at the steamer Far West on the Yellowstone a battery of Gatling guns, knowing he was facing superior numbers. Finally, on the day of the battle, he divided his 600-man command in the face of superior numbers. Certainly reducing the size of his force by at least a sixth, and rejecting the firepower offered by the Gatling guns played into the events of 25 June to the disadvantage of the 7th cavalry.[29]
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