: Oh, yes, and guess who won the subsequent battles.
Little Big Horn was a Battle-not the whole war. Unfortunately Native leaders did not use these tactics for the duration of the war. If they had done this from the start, they would have held off the invaders at the crest of the Appalacians or even hurled them back into the Atlantic. Tecumseh nearly managed to organize enough people for a stand at the Missisippi and Ohio rivers.
Unfortunately, the Natives were fighting an enemy prepared to kill the Buffalo too deprive them of food and employ biological weapons(like smallpos infected blankets). This is essentially a nuclear war scenario. If the enemy is willing to nuke you, the only defense that works is being able to nuke HIM so he decides not to fight in the first place.
Buffalo hunts should have been repaid by driving off or otherwise denying the white ranchers access to their cattle and sheep. Village massaces should have brought down blitzes against new settlements and ranches. Powder barrels should have been used as bombs to smash fortifications. Any nation facing final extermination should have stuck out East aiming to do as much damage as possible before being killed(as they would otherwise be anyway). As the invaders intended to exterminate the natives anyway, provoking the Army should not have been a consideration. In this kind of conflict, the only way to win is to make the enemy decide it is not worth fighting, like what happened in Vietnam(or to the Russians in Afghanistan).
