Little Bighorn River Canyon trail was originally established for the purposes of delivering mail to Bald Mountain City, a gold mining town, in the late 1800s. The trail is now primarily used by cattle ranchers, marathon runners, and fisherman. After flowing out of Wyoming and into Montana at the mouth of Little Bighorn Canyon, the entire remaining course of the Little Bighorn River and all its tributaries are within the boundaries of the Crow Indian Reservation, and access to the river is subject to the unique and confusing mixture of Montana state and Crow tribal law. Fishing within the boundaries of the Crow
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