(Custer had attained the rank of brigadier general in the Union Army during the Civil War, and like many officers who remained in military service after the war ended, his rank was reduced with the resulting contraction of the U.S. Army in the late 1860s, although most everyone continued to accord to him the title of "General.")

Ignoring Gen. Alfred Terry's explicit directive that he was merely to reconnoiter the Indians' position and then report back to him, and in the face of a well-armed enemy that outnumbered him by about seven to one, Custer had foolishly divided the dozen companies of his 7th Cavalry command into three wings. Further, he had separated them by such distances that day, none could have realistically assisted either of the other two in the event anyone ran into difficulty.

Four companies under Major Reno were ordered by Custer to assault the front of the Indian encampment, which was estimated to hold as many as 15,000 men, women and children. Another three companies under Capt. Benteen were ordered to remain in the rear and guard the 7th Cavalry's supply train. Custer himself took command of the remaining five companies, and set off to assault the Indian village from the rear.

Of the 647 officers and men of the 7th Cavalry who fought at the Little Bighorn River, only 379 survived. All of them were under the command that day of Reno and Benteen. It was by sheer luck that Benteen had moved his three companies and the 7th's supply train forward in a timely manner to assist Reno, whose own four companies might have otherwise might shared Custer's fate as well.

As it was, the 7th Cavalry suffered a horrific 52% casualty rate, with 268 killed and 52 wounded. (11 men later died as a result of their wounds.) As I noted above, the five companies led by Custer himself were completely annihilated. And as you correctly noted, Maj. Reno was initially blamed for Custer's slaughter along with Capt. Benteen, although both officers were eventually -- albeit quietly -- exonerated by a U.S. Army Board of Inquiry held in Chicago in 1879.

George Armstrong Custer was a nationally renowned and popular figure in his era, and he was held in very high esteem by both the general public and Congress. And while most of the U.S. Army's high command did not share the public's exalted opinion of the man, they nevertheless took great pains to avoid holding him directly accountable for the fate of his command, primarily because they didn't want to anger those members of Congress who adored Custer and also held the Army's purse strings. And since neither Maj. Reno nor Capt. Benteen enjoyed any such stellar public reputation, they were considered expendable by their superiors.

As a result, the romanticized version of Custer and the tragic events at the Little Bighorn, much of which had been jealously guarded and carefully nurtured by Custer's loving and loyal widow Elizabeth (who until her own death in 1933 had never hesitated to wield her own political clout and sharp tongue to publicly squelch alternative points of view), took firm hold in the public mind and persisted in American lore until at least the 1960s.

Strangely enough, the first Hollywood film to attempt to accurately convey the Battle of the Little Bighorn from the Indians' perspective was Walt Disney's "Tonka" (1958). The first significant public challenge to the Custer legend itself was actually a work of fiction, Thomas Berger's best-selling 1964 novel "Little Big Man," which provided the basis for Arthur Penn's critically acclaimed 1970 film starring Dustin Hoffman in the title role and Richard Mulligan as a sociopathic Gen. Custer.

Needless to say, the actual historical record of the Battle of the Little Bighorn has since been vigorously reassessed by military, civilian and Native American historians alike, and it completely belies those earlier fanciful notions long held by the American public. Today, we no longer venerate the legend of Brevet Gen. George A. Custer, a now-mostly discredited figure who's finally been held responsible for a military disaster that was entirely of his own making.

Anyway, although I've strayed seriously off-topic, it's still a fascinating story which offers us valuable insight into how the general public can stubbornly continue to cling to long since-discredited accounts of historical events, even in the face of significant evidence to the contrary. One can only hope that our own progeny will seriously reassess ad eventually revise the legacy of Ronald Reagan and our modern GOP over the course of the coming decades.