United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians their failure to obey an order to return from an off-reservation hunting expedition in the dead of winter when travel was impossible. The consequent military expedition to remove the Sioux from the Black Hills included an attack on their village on the Little Bighorn River led by General Custer. The attack culminated in the victory of Chiefs Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse over the 7th Cavalry Regiment now known as Custer's Last Stand. That victory was short-lived. Those Indians who survived subsequent battles to surrender to the Army were interned on a reservation, and deprived of their weapons and horses,
George Armstrong Custer agencies (reservations) or be considered "hostile". At that time the 7th Cavalry's regimental commander, Colonel Samuel D. Sturgis, was on detached duty as the Superintendent of Mounted Recruiting Service and in command of the Cavalry Depot in St. Louis, Missouri, which left Lieutenant Colonel Custer in command of the regiment. Custer and the 7th Cavalry departed from Fort Abraham Lincoln on May 17, 1876, part of a larger army force planning to round up remaining free Indians. Meanwhile, in the spring and summer of 1876, the Hunkpapa Lakota holy man Sitting Bull had called together the largest ever gathering of