Curiously Named Locales: Little Bighorn River

The Custer Fight - Charles Marion Russell

I first remember hearing about Custer's Last Stand at the Battle of the Little Bighorn when I was in the fourth grade. At the time, I remember thinking it was a strange name, but I let it go. More recently, as I was searching for the next item for this series on strangely named places, that old nagging thought reoccurred to me, "Why would it be both a Little and a Big horn?" 

As facts would have it, the Little Bighorn River is a 138-mile tributary of the Bighorn River proper that runs from Wyoming into Montana. The Bighorn River itself is named for the mountain sheep indigenous to the area. A bit on the nose, it's true, but that branch became famous following the Battle of the Greasy Grass, commonly known by the US Army as Custer's Last Stand. In 1876, Crazy Horse fought alongside a coalition of forces that included the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes against the 7th Cavalry Regiment under George Custer. 

The river's other name, the Greasy Grass, arose from the tall grasses that grew in the riparian zone and held the morning dew. When the horses were ridden through the wet grass, the transference of moisture would cause their bellies and the moccasins of their riders to appear wet and greasy.

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Little_Bighorn
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Bighorn_River