Custer's First Skirmish with the Lakota

By editor

Miles City, Custer County, Montana

The summer of 1873 brought the Seventh Cavalry to the banks of the Tongue River, where it met the Lakota for the first time. It was August 4, a day marked neither by thunder nor the clear light of triumph, but by confusion and shadow, near the confluence of the Tongue and Yellowstone Rivers. The cavalry had been dispatched under Colonel David Stanley’s command to guard the Northern Pacific Railroad surveyors as they pushed westward across the Montana plains. The railroad was an iron snake burrowing through land still fiercely claimed by the native tribes, and the soldiers were its reluctant protectors.

George Armstrong Custer, fresh from the Civil War and eager for glory, led two companies of the Seventh Cavalry into this uncertain ground. The New York Herald would later label the clash the "Battle of Tongue River," but the encounter was no grand battle. It was a skirmish -- a brief, uneasy collision of men caught between the slow grind of expansion and the stubborn resistance of those fighting for their homes.

The day was hot and dry. The sun, relentless overhead, burned the brown grasses to brittle straw. The riverbed where the cavalry made its stand was a dry channel, cracked and dusty. Cottonwood groves lined the banks, their leaves whispering faintly in a light breeze, hiding shapes that moved just beyond sight. It was in those cottonwoods that Custer first glimpsed the Lakota warriors, waiting. The air was thick with anticipation, the kind that prickles the skin, the kind that makes a man’s heart beat hard and fast.

Custer rode ahead of his men, scouting. He moved with the confident air of a man who had seen war but not yet experienced its full, brutal truth on this unforgiving frontier. The soldiers followed, their rifles ready, eyes sharp. But the quiet was deceptive. From the groves, warriors emerged, their numbers larger than Custer had expected. He realized the danger too late.

“Large numbers of Indians were waiting in ambush,” Custer noted in his report, “and we were forced to take up defensive positions in the dry channel of the river.” The soldiers scrambled into the cracked earth, finding cover where they could behind the low banks and stones. The Lakota, their faces painted, stood firm along the edges of the cottonwoods, weapons raised.

Gunfire shattered the stillness. The crack and pop of rifles echoed across the riverbed. Bullets thudded into earth and wood, some finding flesh. Yet, the casualties were light -- three hours of tension and exchange but few wounds. The soldiers’ blue uniforms blurred against the ochre dust, the red stains of blood on both sides scarce but vivid in the heat. The skirmish was a grinding, uncertain conflict. Neither side gained ground; neither lost face.

While the Seventh Cavalry held their ground, a smaller tragedy unfolded downstream. Three men, separated from Colonel Stanley’s main body, were caught in the open by Lakota warriors. Among them was John Honsinger -- sometimes recorded as Holzinger -- the cavalry’s civilian veterinarian. They were unarmed or ill-prepared; they were easy targets. The Lakota killed them swiftly. The news of their deaths sent a ripple of anger and fear through the camp.

The killing of Honsinger and his companions was the kind of violence that lingered in the memory, twisting into stories and grudges that would shape the years ahead. One of the warriors later linked to the incident was Rain-in-the-Face, a Hunkpapa Lakota known both for his fierce reputation and his cunning. A year after the skirmish, Rain-in-the-Face was arrested at Standing Rock Reservation. He had boasted openly about his role in the killings, a claim that led to his imprisonment at Fort Abraham Lincoln.

Captain Tom Custer, George’s younger brother, was involved in the arrest. George Custer himself interrogated Rain-in-the-Face during his captivity. Yet the warrior escaped after a few months, leaving behind a promise of vengeance. The bitterness between Rain-in-the-Face and the Custer brothers would fester, becoming part of the grim legend that surrounded the events leading to the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

The stories that followed the 1876 disaster at Little Bighorn were often wild and contradictory. Rain-in-the-Face was named in some accounts as the man who killed George Custer on that fateful day. But historians now regard this claim with skepticism. The truth was obscured by myth and the thirst for revenge on both sides. Rain-in-the-Face lived out his days on the Standing Rock Reservation, dying quietly in the fall of 1905.

The "Battle of Tongue River" itself was a minor engagement, but it was the first in a series of clashes that marked the coming storm. Custer and his Seventh Cavalry learned that the Lakota were neither easily intimidated nor willing to yield their land without a fight. The soldiers' rifles might crack and flash, but the plains belonged to the tribes who knew every tree, every bend of the river.

The terrain shaped the encounter. The dry river channel, the cottonwood groves, the rolling hills beyond -- all contributed to the uneasy balance of power. The soldiers could not charge through the trees without risking ambush; the Lakota could not dislodge the troopers entrenched in the channel. The heat of the day, the dust that clogged mouths and eyes, and the distant call of wild birds added to the strange, tense atmosphere.

One witness, an officer present that day, described the scene: “The men were soaked in sweat, their hands trembling as they reloaded. The dry channel offered little cover, and every crack and shadow might hide a warrior’s rifle.” The fear was not just for the moment but for what it meant -- the war that was quietly swelling beneath the surface of the West.

Custer’s report was measured, but his later actions would reveal a man driven by ambition and the desire to prove himself against what he called “the red enemy.” The skirmish at Tongue River was a small episode, but it marked the beginning of a violent contest between the Seventh Cavalry and the Lakota that would culminate in tragedy.

The New York Herald’s name for the fight, the "Battle of Tongue River," gave it a grandeur it did not possess. It was not a battle of legions or decisive victory but a fragmented, uneasy clash where fear and uncertainty ruled. The soldiers, far from home, faced an enemy who knew the land and the stakes. Each man in blue felt the weight of the unknown pressing down with the heat of the Montana sun.

By the day’s end, the skirmish dissolved into silence. The Lakota withdrew back into the cottonwoods, the soldiers remained in the dry riverbed, and the surveyors continued their work under watchful eyes. The land held its secrets tightly, and the war that would tear it apart was only just beginning.

See also

• Custer's First Skirmish with the Lakota at Miles City, Custer County