Thomas Custer in the Yellowstone Expedition of 1873, where he fought in the Battle of Honsinger Bluff, and the Black Hills Expedition of 1874. Custer was appointed captain in 1875 and given command of Company C of the 7th Cavalry. In 1874, at the trading post at Standing Rock Agency, Custer participated in the arrest of chief Rain-in-the-Face (Lakota), suspected in the 1873 murder of Dr. John Honsinger. During the 1876 Little Bighorn campaign of the Black Hills War, he served as aide-de-camp to his older brother Lt. Col. George A. Custer and died with his brother on June 25, 1876. Lt.
Battle of the Little Bighorn made by several groups. Custer's remaining companies (E, F, and half of C) were soon killed. By almost all accounts, the Lakota annihilated Custer's force within an hour of engagement. David Humphreys Miller, who between 1935 and 1955 interviewed the last Lakota survivors of the battle, wrote that the Custer fight lasted less than one-half hour. Other native accounts said the fighting lasted only "as long as it takes a hungry man to eat a meal." The Lakota asserted that Crazy Horse personally led one of the large groups of warriors who overwhelmed the cavalrymen in a surprise charge from