Battle of the Little Bighorn river and were captured and almost killed by the Lakota who believed the hunters were scouts for the U.S. Army. Two Moon, a Northern Cheyenne leader, interceded to save their lives. The 7th Cavalry was accompanied by a number of scouts and interpreters: Native Americans United States Army, Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer, 7th United States Cavalry Regiment, Commanding. Estimates of Native American casualties have differed widely, from as few as 36 dead (from Native American listings of the dead by name) to as many as 300. Lakota chief Red Horse told Col. W. H. Wood in 1877 that the
Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, the Lakota and the Cheyenne held a Sun Dance that was also attended by a number of "Agency Indians" who had slipped away from their reservations. During a Sun Dance around June 5, 1876, on Rosebud Creek in Montana, Sitting Bull, the spiritual leader of the Hunkpapa Lakota, reportedly had a vision of "soldiers falling into his camp like grasshoppers from the sky." At the same time US military officials were conducting a summer campaign to force the Lakota and the Cheyenne back to their reservations, using infantry and cavalry in a so-called "three-pronged approach". Col. John Gibbon's