Crook pulled back to Goose Creek and established a defensive camp, waiting for reinforcements.

He did not send word to Terry about what had happened.

Terry and Custer, advancing westward, had no way of knowing that the southern column — the one that was supposed to be driving the hostile bands toward them — was sitting sixty miles away, not moving.

When Custer’s scouts looked over the divide at the Little Bighorn valley on the morning of June 25 and reported what appeared to be a very large encampment — far larger than the Army’s intelligence had suggested — the situation was already set for disaster.

Custer chose to attack rather than wait for Gibbon’s column to come up and provide the coordinated assault the plan had originally envisioned.

The decision was catastrophic.

The encampment in the valley held somewhere between fifteen hundred and two thousand fighting men — estimates vary — supported by a community of perhaps six thousand people whose women could provide logistical support, care for the wounded, and, in the final defense of the camp, fight.

Reno’s initial attack on the southern end of the camp was turned back almost immediately.

Benteen, recalled from his southern reconnaissance, arrived to find Reno’s command badly shaken and under fire, and consolidated in a defensive position on the bluffs.

Custer, meanwhile, moved toward the northern end of the camp along the bluffs east of the river.