Thieves’ Road: The Black Hills Betrayal and Custer’s Path to the Little Bighorn

Capt. George A. Custer and Gen. Alfred Pleasonton on horseback (Library of Congress).

(Wild West) Countless books deal with Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer’s ill-fated “Last Stand” at the Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876.
Much less ink has been expended on Custer’s venture into the Black Hills in the summer of 1874. There may have been less shooting during that expedition, but it laid the groundwork for the scrapping of the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie with the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne … Continued