On the eve of the 136th anniversary of the famous “Last Stand,” retired National Park Service Superintendent Paul L. Hedren asks: Was General George Custer’s defeat at the Little Bighorn on June 26, 1876, the greatest American Indian military victory? Or was it the beginning of the end of Sioux Country as the native peoples knew it?

Among Hedren’s many books on Western history are Fort Laramie in 1876: Chronicle of a Frontier Post at War, Great Sioux War Orders of Battle, First Scalp for Custer, and the Traveler’s Guide to the Great Sioux War: The Battlefields, Forts, and Related Sites of America’s Greatest Indian War.