A Digital Exhibition · 150th Anniversary
Custer and his soldiers on the road to the Little Bighorn — told through the letters they left behind.
The Frame
There is little symmetry in the unhappy history of the U.S. 7th Cavalry and the Plains Indians. Yet on a hot afternoon on June 25, 1876 along the Little Bighorn River in the Montana Territory, the balance famously shifted. As the pursued devastated the pursuer - creating the national commotion later called Custer's Last Stand - something more than the destruction of the Cavalry's celebrated commander was taking place.
The battle has been examined through many lenses: the Lakota perspective, the Cheyenne perspective, the mythologized heroism of Major General George Armstrong Custer, and the ideology of Manifest Destiny. This exhibition approaches the battle from an unexplored vantage point: that of the enlisted soldiers.
Where Custer saw adventure, the men under his command often felt dread. His dash was their duty, his hubris, their ruin, and his path to legendary fame was theirs to ignominious death. The contrast between Custer's ambitions and the lived reality of his soldiers sharpened as the 7th Cavalry advanced toward the catastrophic battle that June day, in which Custer, along with the five full companies under his command - a total of 268 men - were killed.
This exhibition explores that tension 150 years after the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
A Word from the Curator
Marching Toward Little Bighorn: What Custer and a Soldier Thought Lay Ahead
1865 — 1875
In 1876, the United States was moving aggressively to consolidate control of the Great Plains in a military effort that would become known as the Great Sioux War. Gold discoveries in the Black Hills had accelerated American settlement, and the Cheyenne, Lakota, and Sioux tribes were pushing back on the U.S. Army. George Armstrong Custer, who had entered the public's imagination over a decade earlier with his brash bravery during the Civil War, was leading his troops west. Custer, who lacked independent wealth, had few professional skills outside soldiering, and was temperamentally drawn to action and recognition, had stayed in the peacetime army long after most of his soldiers had returned to civilian life. Now, the frontier campaigns offered Custer something that resembled the intensity and mobility of his Civil War days.
Featured Manuscripts
Spring 1876
Custer approached the campaign of the Great Sioux War with a sense of urgency and personal destiny, and most of all with a strong confidence. His Civil War experience had taught him that speed, aggression, and surprise could produce dramatic victories. Custer believed that hesitation meant losing the initiative, and he feared that if the Lakota and Cheyenne encampment scattered, the Army would lose its opportunity for a decisive victory. He was willing to bring his own two brothers, his brother-in-law, and a nephew to the fight, and encouraged a friend to "don your buckskin suit" and to watch the spectacle.
"Don your buckskin suit."
Several high-ranking officers around him were far more cautious. Officers such as Marcus Reno and Frederick Benteen had serious doubts about conflicting intelligence reports, the size of the Native American force, and the wisdom of dividing the regiment. Scouts and subordinate commanders warned repeatedly that the group of waiting fighters was much larger than expected. Some officers very clearly viewed Custer's aggressiveness as recklessness; Benteen in particular had long disliked Custer personally and distrusted his judgment.
An Ill-Fated Request
It is possible he thought the Indians were running from me and that he would strike a retreating enemy, but instead he rode into an ambuscade of at least 2000 warriors - Marcus A. Reno, August 5, 1876.
Featured Manuscripts
The Men in the Saddle
Custer's 7th Cavalry enlisted men shared their private fears and trepidations with their families while on the surface showing a brave, and ultimately doomed, loyalty. Among these enlisted men, the mood was often less ideological and more practical, marked by fatigue and resignation. Many soldiers were immigrants or working-class recruits with little attachment to grand ideas of glory. They endured brutal marches, extreme heat, and poor supplies. Their letters home suggest that many of the enlisted men sensed they were entering dangerous territory against an enemy they neither fully understood nor appropriately estimated. Unlike Custer, who saw opportunity, many enlisted soldiers saw uncertainty and fear.
The enlisted men were right: all of his 268 men, poorly-equipped and roughly-used, died at the Little Bighorn. Custer had courted his fate, assiduously; but the men who died with him, did not. As may have been expected, the bodies of Custer's family members, Thomas, Boston, Autie Reed and James Calhoun, were found in the immediate vicinity of George Custer. More surprising is how many other soldiers, especially privates and officers, seemed to have come to help defend Custer as the battle reached its tragic end. The bodies of William V. Reily, William H. Sharrow and Weston Harrington were found within a few hundred feet of Custer's body.
Featured Manuscripts
After Little Bighorn
While the Battle of Little Bighorn was a tactical defeat for the U.S. Army, it triggered a massive national response that ultimately contributed to victory in the broader Great Sioux War. Public outrage over the death of George Armstrong Custer led the federal government to intensify military operations against the Plains tribes. Additional troops were sent west, and sustained campaigns eventually brought the Great Sioux War to a close.
In the decades that followed, Custer's widow, Libbie Custer, worked tirelessly to shape her husband's public image. Through her writings and lectures, she helped establish Custer as a national hero, a reputation that endured for generations. Beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, however, historians increasingly reexamined both Custer's actions and the broader story of westward expansion.
Today, the Battle of Little Bighorn stands not only as a military encounter, but as a continuing debate over leadership, memory, conquest, and the meaning of the American West.
Featured Manuscripts
The Publication
The full Shapell volume, drawn from over fifty primary source manuscripts, charting the road to June 25, 1876.
Read the Book →
The Archive
Browse every manuscript in the Shapell Foundation's Little Bighorn collection — letters, orders, telegrams, and dispatches.
Explore the Collection →
The Podcast
Host Gil Troy and leadership expert Dr. David Leitner examine the difference between command and leadership and the role of courageous followership, revealing insights that remain relevant to military institutions, businesses, governments, and democratic societies today.
Listen to the Podcast →