The Battle of the Little Bighorn

Custer, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Sheridan, Bloody Nose, Reno: The Battle of the Little Bighorn, fought June 25 and 26, 1876, is the single most iconic event in what have been called the Plains Indian Wars. “Custer’s Last Stand” is one of the central episodes of the frontier era of American history. It’s one of the handful of stories that are endlessly fascinating—in new ways and with new points of view in each era—and never give up all their mysteries.

Join humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson, who has spent his life in Sitting Bull and Custer country and who has walked the Custer Battlefield a dozen times, as he brings his perspectives on the conflict. His discussion draws on his new book The Language of Cottonwoods: Essays on the Future of North Dakota, which has several chapters on the relations between Anglo-Europeans and Native Americans on the Great Plains of Montana, Wyoming, Kansas, and the Dakotas.

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