At the Battle of the Little Horn river in June 1876, Indian cavalry quickly defeated the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division led by general Custer. It was the greatest victory of the Indians in the entire American Indian War.
The Battle of little Megahorn river broke out mainly because of the discovery of gold in 1874 in Mount Braque, the sacred mountain of Indians, in order to mine gold, the Americans tore up the Treaty of Fort Laramie, signed with the local Indian tribes in 1868, which clearly stipulated that whites were not allowed to enter The Holy Mountain Braque, in return for the Indians' assurance that they would not attack nearby new immigrants and railway facilities. Interested Americans declared any Indian who did not settle on the "Indian Reservation" before January 31, 1876, after discovering the gold mines, an enemy of the United States. In fact, it is an ultimatum to the local Indian tribe to hand over The Braque Mountain.
But the well-armed Indians were not deterred, and many left the reservation to join the Indian alliance led by the "sitting bull" and the "mad horse" to resolutely defend their holy land.
In the spring of 1876, the United States decided to launch an offensive against the Indian Coalition, and Lieutenant Colonel Custer's Seventh Cavalry Regiment soon arrived at the Indian camp on the banks of the Little BigHorn River. According to the reconnaissance of the camp there were about 5,000 Indians, about half of whom were able to fight (according to the encyclopedia shows that it was a combat force of 900-1800 men), Lieutenant Colonel Custer ignored the instructions of his superiors to keep moving, he divided his cavalry regiment of more than 600 people into three roads, and led 211 men to take the middle road to attack head-on, with the result that 211 cavalry in the middle of Custer's road were completely destroyed along with his own army, and the other two cavalry were rescued by reinforcements from higher levels after being besieged for 2 days.
This battle annihilated a total of 268 American troops, indians themselves died about a hundred people, the reason is that in addition to the U.S. army into the Indian to win in numbers, the Indian cavalry than the U.S. army better melee combat ability also played a key role, horses were first brought to the Americas by European colonists, and then the Indians began to domesticate in large quantities due to grazing needs, life forced the Indians to improve their riding skills very quickly, but because of the distance from the Old World, they did not have the opportunity to contact the riding and shooting tactics of the Eurasian nomads. Only in the face of the U.S. army armed with advanced firearms rushing into the U.S. army at high speed to engage in hand-to-hand combat With Indians has a chance of winning.
The cavalry of the 211 U.S. First Cavalry Division, which was completely annihilated, was killed by the Indians because of excessive reliance on the guns in their hands, in fact, until the maturity of continuous firearms in the early 20th century, the cavalry's melee combat ability has been able to play an important role.