page_title: Black Hills Expedition
section_title: Organization of the 7th Cavalry
hierarchical_section_title: Black Hills Expedition / Organization of the 7th Cavalry
caption_attribution_description: Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer (1839-1876)
context_page_description: 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 it is disputed whether or not any substantial amount was found. Nonetheless, this prompted a mass gold rush which in turn antagonised the Sioux Indians who had been promised protection of their sacred land through Treaties made by the US government, and who were later to kill Custer at the Battle of the Little Big Horn in the Great Sioux War of 1876–1877 between themselves and the United States.
context_section_description: The table of organisation for the 7th Cavalry for the Black Hills Expedition of 1874 was as follows.
  Field and staff
  Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer
  Lt. Colonel Frederick D. Grant, 4th cavalry and acting aide
  Major George A. Forsyth, 9th cavalry commander
  First Lieutenant James Calhoun, adjutant
  First Lieutenant Algernon E. Smith, quartermaster
  Second Lieutenant George D. Wallace, commander of the Indian scouts
  Cavalry companies
  Company A - Captain Myles Moylan and Second Lieutenant Charles Varnum
  Company B - First Lieutenant Benjamin H. Hodgson
  Company C - Captain Verling Hart and Second Lieutenant Henry M. Harrington
  Company E - First Lieutenant Thomas M. McDougall
  Company F - Captain George W. Yates
  Company G - First Lieutenant Donald McIntosh
  Company H - Captain Frederick W. Benteen and First Lieutenant Francis M. Gibson
  Company K - Captain Owen Hale and First Lieutenant Edward S. Godfrey
  Company L - First Lieutenant Thomas W. Custer
  Company M - Captain Thomas French and First Lieutenant Edward Gustave Mathey
  Medical staff
  Dr. John W. Williams, chief medical officer
  Dr. S. J. Allen, Jr. assistant surgeon
  Dr. A. C. Bergen, assistant surgeon
  Engineering
  Captain William Ludlow, chief engineer
  W. H. Wood, civilian assistant
  Mining detachment
  Horatio Nelson Ross
  William McKay
  Scientist
  George Bird Grinnell
  Newton Horace Winchell
  A. B. Donaldson
  Luther North
  Photographer
  William H. Illingworth
  Correspondents
  William E. Curtis, Chicago Inter-Ocean
  Samuel J. Barrows, New York Tribune
  Nathan H. Knappen, Bismarck Tribune
caption: Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer, 7th U.S. Cavalry, March 1876 by Jose Mora
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