THE STORIES SOLDIERS BROUGHT HOME

The men who survived Little Bighorn carried their own version of the battle back to the American public — and that version shaped everything that followed.

Reno’s survivors reached the bluffs and dug in through the night of June 25 and most of June 26.

They were terrified, exhausted, and in many cases badly wounded.

When relief finally arrived on June 27, under General Alfred Terry, the soldiers found Custer’s battlefield littered with bodies that had been stripped and, in some cases, mutilated.

The mutilation disturbed the surviving soldiers deeply, and they reported it in graphic terms that were then published widely in American newspapers.