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Description
The Custer battlefield is a beautiful, rolling expanse of tall grasses, sage brush, wild flowers, and trilling meadowlarks. The scene is, overall, that of a beautiful mid-west wilderness, but for the small white stones dotting the roughly five mile expanse. Each marker represents a US soldier who died doing the government's dirty work of clearing away "hostile" native americans who, struggling to preserve their way of life, refused to submit to a mandate forcing them on to reservation lands. Custer and his men, as well as two other bands of soldiers, were sent out to fufill the impossible task of rounding up some 8,000 defiant natives, including approximately 1,500 fierce warriors. The resulting battle caused the death of not only Custer himself, but all of his men, and many brave natives as well.
Looking out over the halcyon meadows, it is hard to imagine the horror and chaos that enveloped the two day struggle, which became nothing short of a bloodbath. Piled in close proximity, markers telling the stories of men felled in battle show how quickly Custer and his men were overwhelmed, and the desperate devoution the warriors felt to preserving their way of life. With half of the battlefield carved from Crow reservation land, it is clear that, though Custer lost this battle, it was the natives who lost the war in the end.

Description
The Custer battlefield is a beautiful, rolling expanse of tall grasses, sage brush, wild flowers, and trilling meadowlarks. The scene is, overall, that of a beautiful mid-west wilderness, but for the small white stones dotting the roughly five mile expanse. Each marker represents a US soldier who died doing the government's dirty work of clearing away "hostile" native americans who, struggling to preserve their way of life, refused to submit to a mandate forcing them on to reservation lands. Custer and his men, as well as two other bands of soldiers, were sent out to fufill the impossible task of rounding up some 8,000 defiant natives, including approximately 1,500 fierce warriors. The resulting battle caused the death of not only Custer himself, but all of his men, and many brave natives as well.
Looking out over the halcyon meadows, it is hard to imagine the horror and chaos that enveloped the two day struggle, which became nothing short of a bloodbath. Piled in close proximity, markers telling the stories of men felled in battle show how quickly Custer and his men were overwhelmed, and the desperate devoution the warriors felt to preserving their way of life. With half of the battlefield carved from Crow reservation land, it is clear that, though Custer lost this battle, it was the natives who lost the war in the end.