In the 1870s, as the country rapidly expanded westward, the Southern states were still struggling to recuperate from the Civil War. The Reconstruction Acts continued to be enforced by U.S. Army troops assigned to police trouble spots. Meanwhile, President Grant's Republican administration, fraught with corruption, struggled to deal with the Native tribes along the western frontier. The railroads were desperate for land grants that came with the right of way, lands that belonged to the Indian tribes by treaty. Lands that could be sold to the immigrants fleeing Europe's social upheavals. The fur trade was winding down and being replaced by demand for buffalo meat and hides. The wholesale slaughter of the buffalo began to exacerbate the native Indian tribes that depended on the herds for sustenance, The U.S. army greatly downsized and with a parsimonious budget, was tasked with controlling these increasingly restless Indian tribes, which were also being victimized by crooked agents and traders that ignored and abused the existing Treaty terms. Added to this volatile mix was the discovery of gold in the Montana and Dakota territories, which shattered the fragile edges of the frontier. Thrust in the middle of all this was the U.S. 7th. Cavalry regiment and its mercurial commander, George Armstrong Custer, who would become legend along a small meandering river in Montana. A DISTANT RIDGE is a fictional account based on historical research that attempts to illustrate the many facets of this period, which ultimately led to the subjugation of the Sioux and Cheyenne bands, followed by their Nez Perce counterparts.