Cultural depictions of George Armstrong Custer Cultural depictions of George Armstrong Custer George Armstrong Custer (1839–1876) was a United States Army cavalry commander in the American Civil War and the Indian Wars. He was defeated and killed by the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. More than 30 movies and countless television shows have featured him as a character. He was portrayed by future U.S. president, Ronald Reagan in "Santa Fe Trail" (1940), as well as by Errol Flynn in "They Died With Their Boots On" (1941). In 1896, Anheuser-Busch commissioned from Otto Becker a lithographed, modified version of
Battle of the Little Bighorn size of cavalry companies to 100 enlisted men on July 24. The committee temporarily lifted the ceiling on the size of the Army by 2,500 on August 15. As a result of the defeat in June 1876, Congress responded by attaching what the Sioux call the "sell or starve" rider () to the Indian Appropriations Act of 1876 (enacted August 15, 1876), which cut off all rations for the Sioux until they terminated hostilities and ceded the Black Hills to the United States. The Agreement of 1877 (, enacted February 28, 1877) officially took away Sioux land and permanently established