Orbiting The Planet at Maximum Velocity.

Orbiting The Planet 

at Maximum Velocity.

The Moon with 

The Rebel Base 

will be in range 

in 30 minutes.

This will be A Day long remembered.

It has seen The End 

of Kenobi... it will 

soon see The End 

of The Rebellion.

All DARTH VADER Scenes   OBI WAN KENOBI HD Star Wars

Release The Hounds

Out on the trail at last, Custer was in high spirits, and 

despite Terry's orders to remain with the group, 

he and his brothers repeatedly disappeared 

on impulsive hunting and exploring jaunts. 

Nathaniel Philbrick, Author, The Last Stand: 

Almost as soon as the march starts, he's doing 

everything he can to stray from the column. 

He and his brothers are having 

a great time raising hell on the Plains. 

And, and Terry's getting increasingly frustrated 

until finally Terry chastises Custer and says, 

"Look, you got to stay with the column." 

Narrator: 

By June 9th, the expedition had followed the Yellowstone 

to its confluence with the Powder River. 

Then, perhaps to punish Custer for his skylarking, 

Terry sent Major Reno and half the regiment south to scout 

the Powder River basin in search of Sitting Bull's band. 

The decision to put Reno in charge stunned the rest of the regiment. 

"It has been a subject of conversation among the officers 

why General Custer was not in command," one lieutenant 

confided to his journal, "but no solution yet has been arrived at." 

Nathaniel Philbrick, Author, The Last Stand : 

Custer is left to lead the rest of the regiment towards a rendezvous, 

but on the way they come across an abandoned Lakota winter camp where 

hundreds, perhaps thousands of Lakota had spent the winter. 

And there he finds evidence of A Soldier who had apparently 

been beaten to death, tortured to death 

and his body eventually burned. 

And Custer sees the skull, looks down 

on it and is clearly moved in some way. 

And it's at that point that they camp right 

beside this Indian burial ground. 

And Custer seems to have been in the mood 

for revenge and he leads his brothers 

and some other officers in a systematic 

desecration of this burial ground. 

He and his brothers had a great old time. 

They would write letters about the 

great stuff that they had gotten. 

But for some of the other officers and soldiers, 

this was pretty horrifying stuff. 

Narrator: 

Four days later Reno rejoined the regiment with exciting news. 

Contrary to his orders, and against everyone's expectations, 

he had crossed over to the Rosebud and found a large trail 

that could only have been made by Sitting Bull's village. 

Reno had followed the tracks for several miles, but 

with his provisions dwindling, he had eventually 

decided to turn around and rejoin the column. 

Nathaniel Philbrick, Author, The Last Stand: 

Custer was outraged. He said, 'Reno if you see 

this village why didn't you pursue?' 

He thought it was an expression of cowardice 

this was one of those things that military people did. 

If you knew you would get a great victory, even 

though it was contrary to orders, you did it. 

And Reno after thinking about it for a while decided NOT 

to pursue The Lakota. Custer couldn't understand this. 

Narrator: 

That night, Custer was so insulted by Reno's caution, that 

he penned an anonymous letter to the New York Herald, impugning 

Reno's courage. "Faint heart never won fair lady," he wrote, 

"neither did it ever pursue and overtake an Indian village." 

On June 21st, at the confluence of the Yellowstone and the Rosebud, 

Terry gathered his officers in his cabin on 

the Far West, and unveiled his revised plan. 

Major Marcus Reno was not invited to the meeting. 

Terry ordered Custer to pick-up the Indian trail that Reno had found, 

but then, instead of following it, to loop south, until he and 

Gibbon could converge on the Indians from the north. 

Nathaniel Philbrick, Author, The Last Stand: 

Custer was a known quantity. You knew what you had with him. 

And to expect him to delay for a day and a half while Terry 

and the rest of the column positioned themselves was an absurdity. 

What Terry was doing was making sure that if everything went well, 

he was in a good position because it was a great victory. 

If everything went poorly, he was covered, because 

Custer had to break orders to attack the Indians 

in the way that they all knew he would. 

Paul Hutton, Historian:

 Terry absolutely knew that if he let Custer loose, 

Custer was going to find the Indians and 

Custer was going to attack the Indians. 

Custer didn't slip the leash, the leash 

was released and he was, off he went. 

He's just like one of those wolf-

hounds that he loves so much. 

He's absolutely on the scent 

and he's going 90 miles an hour, 

nothing is going to stop him, everybody 

knew that, that's why he's there. 

Narrator: 

As Gibbon's chief of scouts recorded in his diary, "if Custer is to arrive first 

he is at liberty to attack at once if he deems prudent... 

He will undoubtedly exert himself to the utmost to get there first 

and win all the laurels for himself and his regiment." 

Richard Slotkin, Historian: 

The assumption with fighting the Plains Indians 

was that they weren't very good at fighting. 

That is, they won't stand and fight. 

They'll snipe at you, they'll hold you off 

and then they'll scatter and run. 

Charging into the village from 

a number of different directions 

was army doctrine at the time. 

Since the Indians have no command system, 

they don't know which way to run to fight you. 

And therefore they'll become demoralised and they'll flee 

or surrender, so you should be able to defeat a much 

larger Indian force with a smaller force of cavalry.

Custer's column found the trail of Sitting Bull's 

village on June 23rd, and began following it.

 "There's a lot of them," Custer said at one point to 

his orderly, John Burkman, "more than we figured." 

Burkman asked if there were too many. Custer smiled and replied, 

"What The 7th can't lick, the whole U.S. Army couldn't lick."