Thanks for the concern, gents - we hope this is his last deployment, but he enjoys being in the thick of things
These are images from the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. We did not know this, but the Native Americans were instrumental in changing the name because of the focus on Custer and not on the bigger picture. The Ranger told is an interesting story that I also was not aware of. He told us that Custer had a few hundred soldiers under his command, and that his charge was to return the Native Americans to the reservations. Custer sent out scouts to gather intel, and they reported that there was a large village in the valley. Turns out that the "large village" was actually 3 miles in diameter, and consisted of approximately 7000 teepees. The scouts further reported that there were only women and children present. Custer relied on this information and sent Reno to the head of the valley with half the men with the charge that they herd the women and children toward Custer, who would be at the other end of the valley.
What Custer didn't know was that the "village" had partied the night before and the men were actually not gone hunting - they were sleeping and as such were not visible to the scouts. To compound the disaster, Reno had his men dismount and form a skirmish line, firing shots into the air - the Indian men then came boiling out of the teepees, weapons in hand and furious for a fight. The end result is that there were a few hundred 7th soldiers against thousands of sleep-deprived angry Indians - the outcome was inevitable
