Arapaho adopt reservation life living off government handouts. Decreased resources and starvation was the major reason for the surrendering of individual Indian bands and the end of the Great Sioux War. The most significant battle of the war was the Battle of The Little Bighorn on June 25–26, 1876. The battle was fought between warriors from the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho (as well as individual Dakota warrior) and the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the US Army. The battle was fought along the Little Bighorn River in eastern Montana. The soldiers attempted to ambush the large camp of Indians along the river
Battle of the Little Bighorn engage noncombatants at the encampments on the Little Bighorn so as to capture women, children, and the elderly or disabled to serve as hostages to convince the warriors to surrender and comply with federal orders to relocate. Custer's battalions were poised to "ride into the camp and secure noncombatant hostages" and "forc[e] the warriors to surrender". Author Evan S. Connell observed that if Custer could occupy the village before widespread resistance developed, the Sioux and Cheyenne warriors "would be obliged to surrender, because if they started to fight, they would be shooting their own families." In Custer's book "My Life