Black Hills Expedition (1874)
The Black Hills Expedition was a United States Army expedition in 1874 led by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer that set out on July 2, 1874 from modern day Bismarck, North Dakota, which was then Fort Abraham Lincoln in the Dakota Territory, with orders to travel to the previously uncharted Black Hills of South Dakota. Its mission was to look for suitable locations for a fort, find a route to the southwest, and to investigate the possibility of gold mining. Custer and his unit, the 7th Cavalry, arrived in the Black Hills on July 22, 1874, with orders to return by August 30. The expedition set up a camp at the site of the future town of Custer; while Custer and the military units searched for a suitable location for a fort, civilians searched for gold, and found clear evidence in a creek near the camp. This prompted a mass gold rush which in turn antagonised the Sioux Indians who had been promised the land (which they saw as sacred) by the US government, and who were later to kill Custer at the Battle of the Little Big Horn when their antagonism erupted into the Great Sioux War of 1876-77 between themselves and the United States.
The entire expedition was photographed by William H. Illingworth, an English photographer who accompanied Custer after selection by the then-Captain William Ludlow. Ludlow, the engineer for the expedition, financed Illingworth's photography and paid him $30 per month to provide photographic plates for the US Army, of which he made 70 in all.
Read more about Black Hills Expedition (1874): Organization of The 7th Cavalry
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