He was defeated and killed by the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
He was portrayed by future U.S. president, Ronald Reagan in Santa Fe Trail (1940), as well as by Errol Flynn in They Died With Their Boots On (1941).
In 1896, Anheuser-Busch commissioned from Otto Becker a lithographed, modified version of Cassilly Adams' painting Custer's Last Fight, which was distributed as a print to saloons all over America.
In 1963 Harold McCracken, director of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, deemed Paxson's painting "the best pictoral representation of the battle" and "from a purely artistic standpoint...one of the best if not the finest pictures which have been created to immortalize that dramatic event.
"[2] The mythic quality of Custer's life has made him a popular subject for several alternate history stories.