George Armstrong Custer was a United States Army officer and cavalry commander in the American Civil War and the American Indian Wars. Graduating last in his class at West Point, Custer distinguished himself during the Civil War, most notably at the Battle of Gettysburg. After the Civil War, he was dispatched to the west to fight in the Indian Wars, a controversial and brutal chapter of his career. His final engagement was the disastrous Battle of the Little Bighorn, where he and all his men were killed, an event now famously known as 'Custer's Last Stand'.