The exact sequence of this movement, and how it interacted with the deployment of Custer’s five companies, is reconstructed from Lakota accounts and from the physical evidence on the battlefield.

What the accounts and evidence together suggest is that Custer’s command was overwhelmed not by a disorganized mass of warriors but by a coordinated response that used the terrain effectively, that separated and isolated segments of the Army formation, and that brought overwhelming numbers to bear at critical moments.

The men with Custer never had a chance to form the kind of defensive position that might have extended the fight.

They were hit, pushed back, fragmented, and destroyed in a relatively short period — probably less than an hour from the first serious contact to the last survivors being overwhelmed on the hill above the river.