In 1876 the United States was finally emerging from the devastation of the Civil War.
A railroad connected the Atlantic and the Pacific. The telegraph blasted information in minutes instead of days. Manifest destiny, the so-called inevitable fate that all of North America would belong to the United States, was largely achieved.
Indian conflicts still existed, but they were a distant problem, not an existential threat to an industrializing nation of thirty million. So it was inconceivable for Americans to wake up one July morning, just days after celebrating the country’s 100th birthday, to learn that Indians in Montana had wiped out the famous general George A. Custer and 200 of his men. The whole country went through shared disbelief, grief, and rage. For Americans of that time, the U.S. Army’s defeat at Little Bighorn was as shocking as JFK’s assassination a century later.
Who really won?
The Lakota and Northern Cheyenne won the battle. But eight months later the United States won the Great Sioux War and confined to reservations nearly all their Plains Indian adversaries. Little Bighorn, however, never really ended. It was replayed over and over through official hearings, staged presentations, elaborate reenactments, and later in movies and on TV. After 1876, generations of Americans were destined to grow up playing cowboys and Indians.
The Battle of Little Bighorn never really ended.
Why have Americans been obsessed with this one loss rather than dozens of victories? Little Bighorn was a way for the country to begin to understand the cost of westward expansion. The military defeat of Indians required a story of epic sacrifice against some of the bravest and most brilliant fighters any army had ever faced. The crushing loss at Little Bighorn sanctified the idea of manifest destiny. And Americans still debate the meaning of Little Bighorn because we are still coming to grips with how the West was won.
After the battle, a strange thing happened: the Lakota leaders who defeated American soldiers became celebrities. The stuff of sensational news in 1876 became dramatic material in the years that followed. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West stage show and its many copycats blurred the lines between entertainment and history. The performances, which often featured reenactments of the battle, were advertised as “the great struggle of civilization and savagery, finally enabling our continental expansion.” The shows were only the beginning.