Custer

Custer, GEORGE ARMSTRONG, American soldier, born in Ohio in 1839, graduated at West Point in 1861, and served with distinction through the civil war, retiring with the rank of major-general. He afterwards held various cavalry commands in the west, and several times defeated the hostile Indians. On 15th May 1876, with a force of 1100 men, he attacked a body of Sioux, afterwards found to number some 9000, encamped on the Little Big Horn, in Montana, and he and his entire command were destroyed. See his Life by Whittaker (New York, 1878).