Fate seems almost to have conspired to conceal from Terry and Custer this ultimate strength of their foe. The latest and most direct evidence was Mitch Boyer's count of four hundred lodges, and this fit only too nicely with the estimate of winter roamers that Custer had picked up in Washington. Not until the day before the battle, after passing the sun dance camp, did the evidence abruptly change. And at that critical moment, Custer seems to have misinterpreted the signs to mean that the village was breaking up and fleeing.
A traditional misjudgement of the Indian nature undoubtedly fostered this fatal misinterpretation. Every experienced officer on the plains knew that it was hard to force Indians into a pitched battle. Cultural bias stereotyped this prudence as a coward's preference for running instead of fighting—an egregious error. The Indian placed little value on the exploitation of property and people that drives the white race to stubborn conquest and domination. Instead, the Indian sought the honors won by rash bravery in games of war; but such quests were properly postponable until tomorrow, when the signs, spiritual or physical, proved unfavorable today. Both races, however, placed equal value on the lives of their loved ones, and would fight with abandoned resolution for self-preservation.
What the command failed to appreciate was that the roving bands understood perfectly well that the white man, through the agency of the army, had marked them and their way of life for extinction. Under such circumstances they would not play at war games, but fight desperately for survival. And a profound religious experience, the sun dance, had marvelously inspired their hopes and resolution. Custer's Indian scouts could smell all this on the prairie breeze, but were powerless to communicate their perceptions to insensitive and sometimes contemptuous soldier-whites.
(John S. Gray, Centennial Campaign: The Sioux War of 1876, Volume No. 8 in the Source Custeriana Series [Ft. Collins, CO: The Old Army Press, 1976], 337-8)
