Reshared post from Dave Lamberson:

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Original Post from Dave Lamberson:

Today in Old West History – On today’s date 141 years ago, Sunday, June 25, 1876, Custer’s Last Stand concluded the Battle of the Little Bighorn, which was fought in Big Horn County of Montana Territory between Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, & Arapaho warriors & the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the U.S. Army led by General George Armstrong Custer (1839-1876).

Also on the same date 140 years ago in Wyoming Territory, it was reported that a freight wagon driven by noted crossdressing frontierswoman & professional scout Martha Jane Canary (1852-1903), better-known as Calamity Jane, arrived at Fort Russell, but Calamity was “so blind drunk she couldn’t see” & she continued on past Fort Russell to Chugwater – 50 miles north of the Little Bighorn where Custer’s Last Stand was taking place on the very same day.

Also on this same date 140 years ago in Dakota Territory, noted African-American cowboy Nat Love (1854-1921), a.k.a. Deadwood Dick, was on a cattle drive with 2,000 longhorns en route to the town of Deadwood in Dakota Territory, sixty miles from the Little Bighorn. He later wrote, “We did not know at the time or we would have gone to Custer’s assistance.”

The Battle of the Little Bighorn was the Plains Indians’ greatest victory & the U.S. Army’s worst defeat in the long & bloody Plains Indian War, but the battle was not only Custer’s Last Stand, it was the Plains Indians’ “Last Stand” as well.

The situation for the Plains Indians after their great victory at the 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn was somewhat similar to the situation of the Japanese following their great victory at the 1941 Battle of Pearl Harbor, after which Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto (1884-1943) famously stated: “I fear that all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant & fill him with a terrible resolve.”

The massacre of Custer & his 7th Cavalry outraged a great many Americans & only confirmed in their minds the image of the bloodthirsty Indians, & thereafter the U.S. government became more determined than ever to destroy or to tame the hostile Indians. The Army redoubled its efforts & drove home the War with a vengeful fury, so that within the year following the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the great majority of the surviving Plains Indians were back on the reservations.

The photograph depicts an 1890 painting entitled “The Last Stand” by noted American painter, illustrator, sculptor, & author Frederic Sackrider Remington (1861-1909). Remington’s painting is now in the collection of the Woolaroc Museum at Bartlesville, Oklahoma.

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