Bighorn River river passes through Yellowtail Dam and Afterbay Dam. The river turns to the northeast and enters the Great Plains. At Hardin the river is joined by the Little Bighorn River. Approximately downriver from the Little Bighorn, in Big Horn County, the Bighorn empties into the Yellowstone. The Bighorn River has also been known as the Great Horn River, Le Corne and Iisaxpúatahcheeaashisee in the Apsáalooke language which translates to English as "Large Bighorn Sheep River". Bighorn River The Bighorn River is a tributary of the Yellowstone, approximately long, in the states of Wyoming and Montana in the western United States.
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