On a hot Sunday afternoon in June of 1876, thousands of Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors surrounded 210 cavalrymen and cut them down. Two days later, when General Terry's column arrived, the bodies on the field had been so changed by sun and wind and the hands of the victors that Terry mistook them for buffalo carcasses. The burial party had eight shovels among them. They used bullet casings to pin paper names to the makeshift grave markers. They shot the wounded horses where they stood, after letting them drink. One horse they did not shoot. His name was Comanche.