This week in 1868, the US army’s General Custer, committed the Washita massacre, slaughtering 100 Cheyenne Native Americans, most of whom were women and children. The Cheyenne village was peaceful, having moved to a “reservation” for a guarantee of safety by the US government. 
Custer attacked the village at dawn, with his soldiers indiscriminately firing at women and children, many of them as they were fleeing. According to a witness, a cavalry unit was seen pursuing "a group of women and children," shooting at them and “killing them without mercy.”
Custer planned the winter attacks on native encampments because if their food, shelter and livestock were destroyed, they’d be at the complete mercy of the US and would have to surrender.
Custer’s war strategy explicitly targeted Native civilians (women, children, disabled) with capture to serve as hostages and human shields.
Custer’s men took 53 women and children from the Washita village for use as human shields. Custer knew that Cheyenne wouldn’t attack his men if they saw women and children marching with them.
The commander of the Department of Missouri, General Phil Sheridan, who authorized Custer’s campaign against the Cheyenne, gave orders to destroy native “villages and ponies, to kill or hang all warriors, and to bring back all woman and children [survivors].”
Sheridan explicitly ordered a war of terrorism against civilians, stating, make "all segments of Indian society experience the horrors of war as fully as the warriors".
