Great Sioux War of 1876 Col. George Armstrong Custer and the Seventh Cavalry were ordered out from the main Dakota Column to scout the Rosebud and Big Horn river valleys. On June 25, 1876, they encountered a large village on the west bank of the Little Bighorn. The US troops were seriously beaten in the Battle of the Little Bighorn and nearly 270 men were killed, including Custer. Custer split his forces just prior to the battle and his immediate command of five cavalry companies was annihilated without any survivors. Two days later, a combined force consisting of Colonel Gibbon's column, along with Terry's headquarters
Little Bighorn River The Lakota Sioux, who began to contest control of this area with the Crow in the 1840s to 1860s as they pushed westward, continued to call the river the "Greasy Grass". Native Americans called the river the Greasy Grass before the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876, and Lakota people still commonly refer to the Battle of the Little Bighorn as the Battle of the Greasy Grass. In historical references in Wikipedia articles, the Battle of the Little Bighorn is also referred to as the Battle of the Greasy Grass, as it is in the discussions of the