The Great Sioux Massacre The Great Sioux Massacre The Great Sioux Massacre is a 1965 film directed by Sidney Salkow in CinemaScope using extensive action sequences from Salkow's 1954 "Sitting Bull". In a fictionalized form, it depicts Custer as an incompetent warmonger, and the Indians as his victims, and covers events leading up to the Battle of the Little Bighorn and Custer's Last Stand It stars Joseph Cotten, Philip Carey and Darren McGavin. The film begins at Board of Inquiry over the Battle of the Little Big Horn; specifically examining the conduct of Major Marcus Reno. Captain Bill Benton (perhaps inspired by Frederick Benteen)
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