Great Sioux War of 1876 Col. George Armstrong Custer and the Seventh Cavalry were ordered out from the main Dakota Column to scout the Rosebud and Big Horn river valleys. On June 25, 1876, they encountered a large village on the west bank of the Little Bighorn. The US troops were seriously beaten in the Battle of the Little Bighorn and nearly 270 men were killed, including Custer. Custer split his forces just prior to the battle and his immediate command of five cavalry companies was annihilated without any survivors. Two days later, a combined force consisting of Colonel Gibbon's column, along with Terry's headquarters
Henry Armstrong Reed Custer. Heavily influenced by his military uncles, he followed in their footsteps and left Monroe in May 1876, with his sister Emma, for Fort Abraham Lincoln in the Dakota Territory. There, he was hired on May 10 to serve as a beef herder for the 7th Cavalry Regiment, which was under the command of George Armstrong Custer. Reed joined the 7th Cavalry Regiment shortly after the start of the Great Sioux War of 1876–77 in the Montana Territory, part of the larger American Indian Wars. While Reed was never officially enlisted as a soldier, he volunteered his services as such