History of the United States Army of the Little Bighorn, in which combined Sioux and Cheyenne forces defeated the 7th Cavalry, led by General George Armstrong Custer. The West was largely pacified by 1890, apart from small Indian raids along the Mexican border. Combat in the Indian wars resulted in the deaths of about 4,340 people, including soldiers, civilians and Native Americans. In all the Indian wars combined from 1790 to 1910, regular cavalry units fought in about 1000 engagements and suffered more than 2000 total killed and wounded. Disease and accidents caused far more Army casualties than combat; annually, eight soldiers per 1000 died from
Battle of the Little Bighorn in a series of conflicts known as the Sioux Wars, which took place from 1854-90. While some of the indigenous people eventually agreed to relocate to ever-shrinking reservations, a number of them resisted, at times fiercely. On May 7, 1868, the valley of the Little Bighorn became a tract in the eastern part of the new Crow Indian Reservation in the center of the old Crow country. There were numerous skirmishes between the Sioux and Crow tribes so when the Sioux were in the valley in 1876 without the consent of the Crow tribe, the Crow supported the US Army