Elizabeth Bacon Custer led the Seventh Cavalry in pursuit of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and the Sioux and Northern Cheyenne who refused to be confined to the reservation system. After her husband's column was wiped out at the Battle of the Little Big Horn in June 1876, many in the press, Army, and government criticized Custer for blundering into a massacre. President Ulysses S. Grant publicly blamed Custer for the disaster. Fearing that her husband was to be made a scapegoat by history, Libbie launched a one-woman campaign to rehabilitate her husband's image. Her assistance to the author of the first Custer biography,
9th Cavalry Regiment (United States) scouting for hostile natives, escorting the mail, surveying uncharted land, and constructing roads. That service also included the Battle of Tularosa with Chiricahua Apache warriors led by Victorio in May 1880. The 9th Cavalry was transferred to Fort Riley, Kansas, in 1881, and to Fort Robinson, Nebraska, in 1885. On 5 November 1887, Company H, of the 9th Cavalry fought at the Battle of Crow Agency during the Crow War, at Crow Agency, Montana. The regiment was also patrolled during the Ghost Dance War with the Sioux around the time of the Wounded Knee Massacre and were the last regiment