A New York Times bestseller from the author of Band of Brothers: The biography of two fighters forever linked by history and the battle at Little Bighorn. On the sparkling morning of June 25, 1876, 611 men of the United States 7th Cavalry rode toward the banks of Little Bighorn in the Montana Territory, where three thousand Indians stood waiting for battle. The lives of two great warriors would soon be forever linked throughout history: Crazy Horse, leader of the Oglala Sioux, and General George Armstrong Custer. Both were men of aggression and supreme courage. Both became leaders in their societies at very early ages. Both were stripped of power, in disgrace, and worked to earn back the respect of their people. And to both of them, the unspoiled grandeur of the Great Plains of North America was an irresistible challenge. Their parallel lives would pave the way, in a manner unknown to either, for an inevitable clash between two nations fighting for possession of the open prairie.

Winner, 2011 High Plains Book Award, Nonfiction Commonly known as Custer's Last Stand, the Battle of Little Bighorn may be the best recognized violent conflict between the indigenous peoples of North America and the government of the United States. Incorporating the voices of Native Americans, soldiers, scouts, and women, Tim Lehman's concise, compelling narrative will forever change the way we think about this familiar event in American history. On June 25, 1876, General George Armstrong Custer led the United States Army's Seventh Cavalry in an attack on a massive encampment of Sioux and Cheyenne Indians on the bank of the Little Bighorn River. What was supposed to be a large-scale military operation to force U.S. sovereignty over the tribes instead turned into a quick, brutal rout of the attackers when Custer's troops fell upon the Indians ahead of the main infantry force. By the end of the fight, the Sioux and Cheyenne had killed Custer and 210 of his men. The victory fueled hopes of freedom and encouraged further resistance among the Native Americans. For the U.S. military, the lost battle prompted a series of vicious retaliatory strikes that ultimately forced the Sioux and Cheyenne into submission and the long nightmare of reservation life. This briskly paced, vivid account puts the battle's details and characters into a rich historical context. Grounded in the most recent research, attentive to Native American perspectives, and featuring a colorful cast of characters, Bloodshed at Little Bighorn elucidates the key lessons of the conflict and draws out the less visible ones. This may not be the last book you read on Little Bighorn, but it should be the first.

With the Great Sioux War as background and context, and drawing on many new materials, Thomas Powers establishes what really happened in the dramatic final months and days of Crazy Horse’s life. He was the greatest Indian warrior of the nineteenth century, whose victory over General Custer at the battle of Little Bighorn in 1876 was the worst defeat ever inflicted on the frontier army. But after surrendering to federal troops, Crazy Horse was killed in custody for reasons which have been fiercely debated for more than a century. The Killing of Crazy Horse pieces together the story behind this official killing.

On 25 June 1876, a combined force of Lakotas and Northern Cheyennes defeated the troops of the Seventh United States Cavalry Regiment on the bluffs overlooking the Little Big Horn River in Montana. This disaster for the United States Army resulted in the deaths of 267 cavalrymen, including their famed commander, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer. Since his demise at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, Custer has been a symbol for the federal government's bloody conquest of the Great Plains. Custer's military career, however, went beyond the Indian wars of the 1870s. In the Civil War, Custer made his name as a bold and aggressive cavalry commander. After 1865, he led troops during Reconstruction in the South and explored the Black Hills for the federal government in addition to his well-documented conflicts with American Indians. George Armstrong Custer: A Military Life explores Custer's life and highlights the complex nature of his experiences and legacy. Yet as Barnard makes clear, Custer was one of many army officers and soldiers who took part in these struggles. Still, Custer's role in the Indian wars of the late nineteenth century has turned him into a notorious figure. Barnard looks beyond the myths surrounding Custer to reveal the influence he had on the frontier army and the West in addition to his symbolic legacy.

“No one survived in Custer’s immediate command, but other soldiers fighting in the Battle of the Little Big Horn on June 25-26, 1876, were doomed to remember the nightmarish scene for decades after. Their true and terrible stories are included in Troopers with Custer. Some of the veterans who corresponded with E. A. Brininstool were still alive when his book first appeared in a shortened version in 1925. It has long been recognized as classic Custeriana. “More incisively than many later writers, Brininstool considers the causes of Custer’s defeat and questions the alleged cowardice of Major Marcus A. Reno. His exciting reenactment of the Battle of the Little Big Horn sets up the reader for a series of turns by its stars and supporting and bit players. Besides the boy general with the golden locks, they include Captain Frederick W. Benteen, the scouts Lieutenant Charles A. Varnum and “Lonesome Charley” Reynolds, the trumpeter John Martin, officers and troopers in the ranks who miraculously escaped death, the only surviving surgeon and the captain of the steamboat that carried the wounded away, the newspaperman who spread the news to the world, and many others.”-Print ed.

On a hot summer day in 1876, George Armstrong Custer led the Seventh Cavalry to the most famous defeat in U.S. military history. Outnumbered and exhausted, the Seventh Cavalry lost more than half of its 400 men, and every soldier under Custer’s direct command was killed. It’s easy to understand why this tremendous defeat shocked the American public at the time. But with Custerology, Michael A. Elliott tackles the far more complicated question of why the battle still haunts the American imagination today. Weaving vivid historical accounts of Custer at Little Bighorn with contemporary commemorations that range from battle reenactments to the unfinished Crazy Horse memorial, Elliott reveals a Custer and a West whose legacies are still vigorously contested. He takes readers to each of the important places of Custer’s life, from his Civil War home in Michigan to the site of his famous demise, and introduces us to Native American activists, Park Service rangers, and devoted history buffs along the way. Elliott shows how Custer and the Indian Wars continue to be both a powerful symbol of America’s bloody past and a crucial key to understanding the nation’s multicultural present. “[Elliott] is an approachable guide as he takes readers to battlefields where Custer fought American Indians . . . to the Michigan town of Monroe that Custer called home after he moved there at age 10 . . . to the Black Hills of South Dakota where Custer led an expedition that gave birth to a gold rush."—Steve Weinberg, Atlanta Journal-Constitution “By ‘Custerology,’ Elliott means the historical interpretation and commemoration of Custer and the Indian Wars in which he fought not only by those who honor Custer but by those who celebrate the Native American resistance that defeated him. The purpose of this book is to show how Custer and the Little Bighorn can be and have been commemorated for such contradictory purposes.”—Library Journal “Michael Elliott’s Custerology is vivid, trenchant, engrossing, and important. The American soldier George Armstrong Custer has been the subject of very nearly incessant debate for almost a century and a half, and the debate is multicultural, multinational, and multimedia. Mr. Elliott's book provides by far the best overview, and no one interested in the long-haired soldier whom the Indians called Son of the Morning Star can afford to miss it.”—Larry McMurtry

The classic account of Custer\'s Last Stand that shattered themyth of the Little Bighorn and rewrote history books. This historic and personal work tells the Native American sideof Custer\'s fabled attack, poignantly revealing how disastrous theencounter was for the "victors," the last great gathering of PlainsIndians under the leadership of Sitting Bull.