History of Montana degree of longitude northward to the boundary line of the British possessions. The boundaries of Montana territory did not change during its existence. Montana was admitted to the Union as the state of Montana on November 8, 1889. The Battle of the Little Bighorn—also called Custer's Last Stand and the Battle of the Greasy Grass—was an armed engagement between a Lakota (Sioux)-Northern Cheyenne-Arapaho combined force and the 7th Cavalry of the United States Army. It occurred June 25–June 26, 1876, near the Little Bighorn River in eastern Montana Territory near present-day Hardin, Montana, on land that today is part of
Battle of the Little Bighorn also accepted. Historian James Donovan states that when Custer asked interpreter Fred Gerard for his opinion on the size of the opposition, he estimated the force at between 1,500 to 2,500 warriors. Additionally, Custer was more concerned with preventing the escape of the Lakota and Cheyenne than with fighting them. From his own observation, as reported by his bugler John Martin (Martini), Custer assumed the warriors had been sleeping in on the morning of the battle, to which virtually every native account attested later, giving Custer a false estimate of what he was up against. When he and his scouts