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,
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