Among these troops was the Seventh Cavalry, Custer's Regiment, formed after the Civil War, and it was led by Lieutenant-Colonel George A.Custer himself, that gallant officer whose name was to go into further and more melancholy history of the Plains.
Custer marched until he got in touch with the trails of the Cheyennes, whom he knew to belong to Black Kettle's band.

He did not at the time know that below them, in the same valley of the Washita, were also the winter encampments of the Kiowas, the Comanches, the Arapahoes, and even a few Apaches.

He attacked at dawn of a bleak winter morning, November 27, 1868, after taking the precaution of surrounding the camp, and killed Black Kettle, and another chief, Little Rock, and over a hundred of their warriors.

Many women and children also were killed in this attack.

The result was one which sank deep into the Indian mind.