History of North America

Little Bighorn, the swan song of the Indian Wars

On June 25, 1876, the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the most famous of the so-called "Indian Wars," took place between the United States Army and the country's ancestral Indian tribes.

Before the United States gained its independence, the Indians were used by France and Great Britain as allies in their colonial struggles. In fact, the custom of cutting the scalps of their deceased enemies comes from this time; the French paid the Indians for the dead enemies and demanded that they present the scalps as proof.

In the 19th century, and as the white man spread to the West and South of the American continent, conflicts with the natives became more general. The whites indiscriminately killed herds of buffalo and cut down entire forests of trees to build their houses, thus putting at risk the livelihood that the Indians had been developing for centuries.

The construction of railway lines that crossed the traditional hunting territories of the Indians and, above all, the invasion of gold prospectors who desecrated sacred lands for the natives such as Las Colinas Negras, ignited the conflict between them.

It was a losing battle for the Indians, by number and by technology, and some of the most significant chiefs of the Sioux, such as Sitting Bull and Red Cloud, began to consider accepting the transfer of the Indian tribes to the reservations to deal with the Americans. Crazy Horse, younger and more impulsive, refused at all times to consider the possibility.

The sending by the Americans of arrogant officers unaware of the situation was complicating the relationship between them. The infamous Colonel Chivington indiscriminately murdered almost two hundred peaceful Arapaho and Cheyenne men, women and children in the town of Sand Creek, despite the fact that Chief Caldera Negra had raised a white flag and an American flag in his tent.

In retaliation, Red Cloud set up an ambush against Colonel Fetterman and his eighty men; none survived.

Therefore, when another arrogant and ignorant American officer, General Custer, began a punitive task against the Sioux, an alliance of all the tribes and Custer and all his men (except a small contingent under the command of Commander Reno who were sent looking for reinforcements) were ambushed at the Little Bighorn and died, according to Hollywood, "with their boots on."

It was the swan song of the Indian wars; Red Cloud and Sitting Bull settled in the reservations and the latter ended up participating in the show organized by Buffalo Bill. Crazy Horse was killed a year later at Fort Robinson in an ambush involving men from his own tribe.

There is an exceptional book, written by Dee Brown and called "Bury my heart at Wounded Knee" that tells these and many other stories of the contentious relationship between whites and redskins.