Monument preserves the site of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, and serves as a memorial to those who fought in the battle: George Armstrong Custer's 7th Cavalry and a combined Lakota-Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho force

How to Get There

From Billings (61 miles): Get on I-90 E in Lockwood from 1st Ave N and I-90BL E. Follow I-90 E to US-212 E in Crow Agency. Take exit 510 from I-90 E. Continue on US-212 E to your destination in Garryowen.

Overview

Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument preserves the site of the June 25 and 26, 1876, Battle of the Little Bighorn, near Crow Agency, Montana. It also serves as a memorial to those who fought in the battle: George Armstrong Custer's 7th Cavalry and a combined Lakota-Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho force. Custer National Cemetery, on the battlefield, is part of the national monument. The site of a related military action led by Marcus Reno and Frederick Benteen is also part of the national monument, but is about 3 miles (5 km) southeast of the Little Bighorn battlefield.

Winkelvi, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Image Size Adjusted

History of site:

• 25 and 26 June 1876: Battle of the Little Bighorn
• 1877: Custer, who had been buried there, was reinterred in West Point Cemetery.
• 29 January 1879: The Secretary of War first preserved the site as a U.S. National Cemetery, to protect graves of the 7th Cavalry troopers buried there.
• 7 December 1886: The site was proclaimed National Cemetery of Custer's Battlefield Reservation to include burials of other campaigns and wars. The name has been shortened to "Custer National Cemetery."
• 5 November 1887: Battle of Crow Agency, three miles north of Custer battlefield
• 14 April 1926: Reno-Benteen Battlefield was added
• 1 July 1940: The site was transferred from the United States Department of War to the National Park Service
• 22 March 1946: The site was redesignated "Custer Battlefield National Monument."
• 15 October 1966: The site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
• 1976, The American Indian Movement (AIM) protested the centennial commemoration of the site, arguing that the site revered Custer and the Battle of Little Big Horn as a part of a heroic saga of American history and expansion into the American West while those who revered it had been truly "celebrating an act of genocide."
• 11 August 1983: A wildfire destroyed dense thorn scrub which over the years had seeded itself about and covered the site. This allowed archaeologists access to the site.
• 1984, 1985: Archaeological digging on site.
• 10 December 1991: The site was renamed Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument by a law signed by President George H. W. Bush.

Memorials

The first memorial on the site was assembled by Captain George K. Sanderson and the 11th Infantry. They buried soldiers' bodies where they were found and removed animal bones. In his official report dated April 7, 1879, Sanderson wrote:

I accordingly built a mound out of cord wood filled in the center with all the horse bones I could find on the field. In the center of the mound I dug a grave and interred all the human bones that could be found, in all, parts of four or five different bodies. This grave was then built up with wood for four feet above ground. The mound is ten feet square and about eleven feet high; is built on the highest point immediately in rear of where Gen'l Custer's body was found ...

Lieutenant Charles F. Roe and the 2nd Cavalry built the granite memorial in July 1881 that stands today on the top of Last Stand Hill. They also reinterred soldiers' remains near the new memorial, but left stakes in the ground to mark where they had fallen. In 1890 these stakes were replaced with marble markers.

Winkelvi, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Image Size Adjusted

The bill that changed the name of the national monument also called for an "Indian Memorial" to be built near Last Stand Hill.

Markers honoring the Indians who fought at Little Big Horn, including Crazy Horse, have been added to those of the U.S. troops. On Memorial Day, 1999, the first of five red granite markers denoting where warriors fell during the battle were placed on the battlefield for Cheyenne warriors Lame White Man and Noisy Walking.

The warriors' red speckled granite memorial markers dot the ravines and hillsides just as do the white marble markers representing where soldiers fell. Since then, markers have been added for the Sans Arc Lakota warrior Long Road and the Minniconjou Lakota Dog's Back Bone.

On June 25, 2003, an "unknown Lakota warrior marker" was placed on Wooden Leg Hill, east of Last Stand Hill to honor a warrior who was killed during the battle, as witnessed and reported by the Northern Cheyenne warrior Wooden Leg.

The battlefield is the final resting place of the western historian and author Stanley Vestal, a professor at the University of Oklahoma.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0