"Why We’ve Gotten ‘Custer’s Last Stand’ Wrong for Nearly" Topic

… 150 Years

"Sometimes to get remembered in history, you need a great publicist.

This weekend marks the 147th anniversary of the Battle of Little Bighorn—also known as ‘Custer's Last Stand'—a chapter in U.S. history that some historians are arguing needs a rewrite. The story American students are generally taught is that "in one of the most decisive battles in American history," Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and more than 200 men from five companies of the Seventh infantry cavalry heroically died on June 25, 1876, in a sneak attack by Native Americans in what's now Montana. It was part of the broader crackdown by the U.S. government on Native Americans, who were seen as threatening innocent white settlers…"

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Armand

Armand not quite the history of the LBH battle I was taught, nor read. No teacher i had or professor, idolized George. Maybe this was the narrative of the 1880's through 1940's.

"But as to the noble Sioux. They were not defending their land, they were defending the land they had taken from others. So actually no different than the whites they fought.

First encounters. The Arikara arrived by AD 1500, followed by the Cheyenne, Crow, Kiowa and Arapaho. The Lakota (also known as Sioux) arrived from Minnesota in the 18th century and drove out the other tribes, who moved west. They claimed the land, which they called Ȟe Sápa (Black Mountains)."

….

"According to historical records, the Sioux (particularly the Lakota branch) primarily took land from tribes like the Arikara, Cheyenne, Crow, Kiowa, and Arapaho, pushing them further west as they migrated into the Great Plains region, particularly claiming the Black Hills area which they considered sacred land; this displacement happened as the Sioux expanded their territory from their original homelands in Minnesota.
Key points about the Sioux land acquisition:
Original Sioux territory:
The Sioux originally inhabited areas around the Great Lakes region, but migrated westward due to conflicts with other tribes.
Tribes displaced by Sioux:
The Arikara, Cheyenne, Crow, Kiowa, and Arapaho are most commonly cited as tribes displaced by the Sioux expansion. "

As with every tribe, the most powerful took what they wanted and had no issues killing and torturing each other. They even sacrificed each other in central and South America. Not to mention the occasional cannibalism.

Similar tribal migrations and dispossessions happened in Eurasia in the centuries before and after the fall of the Roman Empire and the fall of the "Byzantine" Empire.

So, nothing really new.

Jim

And it's still happening.

There were three divisions of Sioux, Santee or Dakota, Yankton or Nakota, and Teton or Lakota. The Teton Sioux were the first to emerge on the prairie and the fringes of the plains, not as conquerors but as the least fortunate of the Sioux bands pushed out ahead of their 'cousins' by the aggression of the Algonqian Ojibway, or Chippewa, and other Great Lakes confederacies, who had aquired firearms from the French and British and were seeking control of wider fur trapping grounds and their role as middlemen for European trade goods.

The coincidental access at that time to horses from Spanish colonies in the south west changed the situation, giving pedestrian 'hunter gatherers,' newly mounted on their 'medicine dogs,' the means to dominate wide stretches of the plains environment and to assert control over their neighbours in turn.

As for Custer, I'm not sure he was a buffoon but he was an egocentric, and possibly increasingly desperate, attention seeker, who died for our sins. Poor man, he was losing his golden locks. That can warp a man's judgement.

I'm with 35thOVI on this.
I was NEVER taught what the OP alleged, nor have I ever read a book that said that.
Invariably, I read that Custer was a buffoon who blundered.

Yet another click bait site that the OP is so good at finding. 🤷

Thanks

Armand