A battle over land, which they won but lost again
Little Bighorn Battlefield, Montana Photo courtesy of VisitUSA Driving along the i90, I found a note I wrote last year to remind myself about the Battle of Little Bighorn if we were travelling through Montana. It was on our way and we got there just in time for the morning Ranger talk with his rendition of what happened. He was an ex-history teacher and was very enthusiastic about delivering a history lesson that would keep us all engaged for an hour. In a nutshell, gold was found in the Black Hills which was part of the Indian reservation set up with the Fort Laramie treaty. Gold seekers rushed to the area, contravening the treaty, so the army tried to buy it from the Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho for $6m. The Indians understandably weren’t interested. They wanted to preserve their way of life, which wasn’t living on reservations. The money was taken off the table and they were told to leave anyway or be treated as hostiles. They resisted and a war ensued that ended with Col. C...