The Demise of George Armstrong Custer IV

Lead: During the afternoon of June 25, 1876 Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer led el-ements of the Seventh United States Cavalry to their deaths.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: Operating on the supreme confidence that had nearly always attended his military service, George Custer in a race with time and driven by political ambition, de-scended into the valley of the Little Bighorn in southern Montana. He was in pursuit of a group of Indian clans most prominent of which was the Sioux who led by their Chief Sitting Bull, had slipped off their reservation in what is now western South Dakota. His greatest problem? Custer was significantly outnumbered. The Seventh Cavalry with fewer than seven hundred troopers faced perhaps the largest concentration of hostile native Americans ever to assemble in one place.