Fort Custer (Montana)

P. Buell and 2 companies Eleventh Infantry (C and F), together with a number of mechanics, arrived, per steamer Florence Meyer, en route to build Post No.

Colonel Buell, with four companies of his regiment and a large force of mechanics and laborers, left Bismarck by steamers for the site of the post ou the 16th of May.

It had been determined to build this post from material to be found in the country; and as soon as Colonel Buell had put up temporary storehouses to protect his supplies, he commenced cutting logs, baking brick, and sawing lumber.

The lumber in this immediate vicinity is cotton wood, and, with the exception of some finishing lumber—pine—sent up from Bismarck, the post was built of this material.

Immediately after his arrival he made a thorough examination of the whole neighborhood, and became so well satisfied of the superior advantages of the plateau in the fork over any other possible situation, that he selected it as the site.

Many unforeseen obstacles delayed the completion of the post; but its construction is so far advanced, that the garrison, its animals and supplies, will be well sheltered during the winter.

It was built with buildings surrounding a large parade ground but had no walls or other fortifications[3] Fort Custer was originally called Post No.

[5] Then on January 28, 1881, Lieutenant Charles F. Roe and Troop M, Second Cavalry, left Fort Custer for the battle-field on the Little Big Horn River, in charge of the materials for the monument to be erected to the officers and men who fell in that action.

There was an uprising at the Crow Agency in the fall of 1887, and on the morning of November 4, Colonel Nathan Dudley left Fort Custer with Troops A, B, D, E, G and K, and Company B, 3d Infantry, with a section of Hotchkiss guns, to arrest "Sword Bearer" and the Native Americans who had fired into the agency buildings on the night of September 30.

The nickname Buffalo Soldier was given to the Black Cavalry by the Native American tribes they fought; the term eventually became synonymous with all of the African-American regiments formed in 1866.

A Daughters of the American Revolution marker designates the site, within the boundaries of the Crow Indian Reservation on an abandoned golf course.