Seventh Cavalry Horse Cemetery

After Custer’s Last Stand, 39 cavalry horses that had been shot for breastworks were found among the dead on Last Stand Hill. In 1879 the Army erected a temporary cordwood monument on the crest of the hill, policed the area strewn with horse skeletons, and placed the horses’ remains inside it. In July 1881, Lt. Charles F. Roe and a detail from the Second Cavalry replaced that temporary monument with the present granite monument and interred Seventh Cavalry casualties around its base; in reverence for the horses, the Second Cavalrymen re-interred them there and lined the horse cemetery with cordwood from the original monument. On April 9, 1941, maintenance workers digging a trench for a water reservoir drainage pipe discovered a horse cemetery at the site, recovering partial human remains, cavalry boots, bullet-pierced hardtack tins, and about 10 horse skeletons. Further excavation was delayed until July 1946, when Lt. Col. Elwood L. Nye, a U.S. Army veterinarian, continued the work, though his report has not been located and the fate of the uncovered horses is unknown. In February 2002, ground-penetrating radar found soil anomalies there, and National Park Service archeologists excavated the cemetery from April 29 to May 1, 2002, finding horse skeletal remains in two six-foot-square areas just northeast of the Seventh Cavalry Monument; after documentation, mapping, and photography, the remains were left in place for future reference and the site was covered with protective plastic sheeting and restored with backfill.

Crow Agency, Montana · United States