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Black Hills Battle

On this day in 1876, the U.S. Army's Seventh Cavalry met Cheyenne, Arapaho, and several Lakota Sioux bands in the Battle of the Little Bighorn in Montana.

Defending their ancestral homelands against gold prospectors and resisting removal to reservations, the Indians' stunning defeat of George Custer was a short lived victory. In response, federal troops poured into the Black Hills, which were opened to white settlement, and many Native Americans surrendered.

Today's poster by Leonard Baskin memorializes Chief Sitting Bull of the Hunkpapa Sioux. His bravery in battle and his religious insight were legendary among his people. Although he was victorious at Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull was killed in 1890 by Indian Agency police.

Learn more about art and American history in our online exhibition Posters American Style.

Pictured: Leonard Baskin, 1922–2000, Sitting Bull, Custer Battlefield, 1979, offset lithograph on paper, 39 x 29 1/8 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service.