With women, children, and elders, the total population of the camp may have been six thousand or higher.

Custer divided his regiment into three columns, intending to attack from multiple directions simultaneously and prevent the camp from dispersing.

He sent Captain Frederick Benteen with three companies to scout the terrain to the south.

He ordered Major Marcus Reno to attack the southern end of the camp directly.

He led five companies — roughly two hundred and ten men — toward the northern end.

Reno’s attack on the southern end of the camp was repulsed quickly.

The warriors defending the camp — warned by the women who sounded the alarm as the soldiers were spotted — overwhelmed Reno’s column and drove it across the river to a defensive position on the bluffs, where it would remain under siege for two days.

Custer, moving toward the northern end of the camp, rode into the largest military disaster in the history of the United States Army’s campaigns against Native peoples.

The warriors who met his column included many of the men who had fought at the Rosebud eight days earlier — men who had ridden through the night, who had not slept, who had come directly from one battle to prepare for another.

Men who were angry and determined and fighting for the lives of the women and children in the great camp behind them.