Linking up with Tuesday Treasures
September 2017 - Montana
I thought the park service did a great job of honouring the dead from both sides while acknowledging that the Native Americans in the battle were fighting to preserve their way of life against white settler encroachment and broken treaties.
Custer National Cemetery at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument was established on January 29, 1879, to protect the original shallow graves of the 7th Cavalry troopers who fell during the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
Key Historical Milestones
- June 1876: Soldiers were originally buried in shallow graves where they fell on the battlefield.
- 1877–1881: Many officer remains, including Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer, were exhumed and reinterred in eastern cemeteries. Remaining soldier bones were gathered into a mass grave beneath a granite obelisk on Last Stand Hill.
- January 29, 1879: The Secretary of War officially designated the site a U.S. National Cemetery.
- December 7, 1886: The site expanded into the National Cemetery of Custer’s Battlefield Reservation to accept burials from other regional military campaigns and wars.
- 1890: Over 240 white marble headstones were erected across the field to mark where individual soldiers died.
- July 1, 1940: Management transferred from the War Department to the National Park Service.
- 1991: The entire area was renamed Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument to broadly honor all participants, separating the name of the military graveyard as Custer National Cemetery
The Battle of the Little Bighorn, known to the Lakota and other Plains Indians as the Battle of the Greasy Grass and commonly referred to among white Americans as Custer's Last Stand, was an armed engagement between combined forces of the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes and the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army. The battle, which resulted in the defeat of US forces, was the most significant action of the Great Sioux War of 1876. It took place on June 25–26, 1876, along the Little Bighorn River in the Crow Indian Reservation in southeastern Montana Territory.
Like many other national cemeteries, Custer National Cemetery was created after those killed in battle were already buried here. Between 1877 and 1881, troops garrisoned at nearby Fort Custer (modern-day town of Hardin, Montana) regularly gathered remains for reburial, recovered graves, and policed the battlefield for exposed bones. The first of these details disinterred and collected all identified officers, except Lieutenant John Crittenden. Lt. John Crittenden was left where he fell at the request of his family until 1932. General Custer was reinterred at West Point while most of the others were shipped to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas and other private cemeteries back east at the request of their families.
Congress passed the first National Cemetery Act in 1867. It provided funds to purchase land, outlined common features, and defined appropriate, acceptable behaviors within the cemetery walls. In National Cemeteries, all rest as equals. This is opposite to the rigid caste system that defined day-to-day military operations. Here in the Custer National Cemetery, for example, Brevet Brigadier General Marcus Reno is buried directly beside Private Dale Hepler, conferring to each soldier an equal honor in death regardless of their military rank or socioeconomic status in life.
7th Cavalry Memorial located atop Last Stand Hill within the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument.
Erected in 1881, this granite obelisk stands directly over the mass grave where the remains of most of the 7th Cavalry soldiers and civilians killed in the battle were reinterred.
The Inscriptions: The face of the monument visible in the photo is divided into distinct sections commemorating those who fell:
Soldiers: Lists the names of the enlisted men and non-commissioned officers.
Arikaree Indian Scouts: Specifically honors scouts like Bloody Knife, Bobtailed Bull, and Little Soldier who fought alongside Custer's forces.
Civilians: Lists attached personnel, including Custer's brother Boston Custer, his nephew Arthur Reed, the newspaper correspondent Mark Kellogg, and guides/interpreters like Mitch Bouyer and Charley Reynolds.
The Inscriptions: The face of the monument visible in the photo is divided into distinct sections commemorating those who fell:
Soldiers: Lists the names of the enlisted men and non-commissioned officers.
Arikaree Indian Scouts: Specifically honors scouts like Bloody Knife, Bobtailed Bull, and Little Soldier who fought alongside Custer's forces.
Civilians: Lists attached personnel, including Custer's brother Boston Custer, his nephew Arthur Reed, the newspaper correspondent Mark Kellogg, and guides/interpreters like Mitch Bouyer and Charley Reynolds.
The 7th Cavalry Horse Cemetery honors the roughly 39 cavalry horses that were killed and used as protective breastworks by Lt. Col. George Custer’s men during their final stand on June 25, 1876.
History of the Horse Cemetery
June 1876: Desperate for cover on the exposed and windswept plains of Last Stand Hill, soldiers shot their own mounts to create a makeshift defensive wall.
1879 (The Cordwood Monument): Captain George K. Sanderson gathered the horse bones scattered across the battlefield and placed them inside a temporary 11-foot cordwood monument erected at the summit of the hill.
July 1881: When the temporary wood structure was replaced by the large permanent stone obelisk seen in your previous photo, the horse remains were carefully and respectfully reburied nearby.
Archaeological Finds: Investigations in 1941, 1946, and 2002 uncovered additional equine skeletal remains alongside battle artifacts like boots and pierced hardtack tins, confirming the exact location of the horse burial site.
The Marker Today
Located just down the ridge from the main monument, the site is designated by a dedicated dark granite marker engraved with a saddled cavalry horse. It serves as a somber reminder of the animals that had no choice in the battle but shared the same fate as the men.
Other graves scattered about.
