Indian Encampment

On June 25, 1876, approximately 7,000 Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho, including 1,500 to 2,000 warriors, encamped below on the Greasy Grass River (Little Bighorn). Under the political and spiritual leadership of Tatanka-Iyotanka (Sitting Bull), they refused to be restricted to their reservation and sought to follow their traditional nomadic way of life. Black Elk, Oglala Lakota, recalled that they camped in the valley along the south side of the Greasy Grass in a very big village with countless tipis, with the river and some timber along it, running from melting snow in the Bighorn Mountains. Two Moons, Northern Cheyenne, remembered crossing the divide to camp in the valley of the Little Bighorn, where people believed they were out of the white man's country and could live there themselves.

Montana · United States