Charles Page, a civilian worker at Fort Abraham Lincoln who froze to death in the fall of 1873, was the first recorded burial in the cemetery. Freezing, gangrene, gunshot wounds, and other illnesses and injuries were typical causes of death. After the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the steamboat Far West brought casualties back to Fort Abraham Lincoln. Those who died of their wounds during or after the trip back to Fort Abraham Lincoln were buried in the cemetery. After Fort Abraham Lincoln was abandoned, the remains of soldiers were reburied in the Custer National Cemetery, rejoining their comrades killed during the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The bodies of civilian workers and children who died at the fort whose remains were unclaimed by relatives were reinterred at Greenwood Cemetery in Mandan.