Custer and the great controversy robert m utley

Review Essay

General Custer and the Little Bighorn Reconsidered—Again

James B. Potts

Archaeological Perspectives on the Battle of Little Bighorn. By Douglas D. Scott, Richard A. Fox, Jr , Melissa A. Conner, and Dick Harmon. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989. Illustrations. Tables. Maps. Photographs. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xvii, 309. «27.95.

Archaeological Insights into the Custer Battle. By Douglas D. Scott and Richard A. Fox, Jr.. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987. Illustrations. Tables. Maps. Photographs. Index. Notes. Bibliography. Pp. xiii, 138. «14.95. The Great Sioux War 1876-77. Edited by Paul L. Hedren. Helena: Montana Historieal Society Press, 1991. Illustrations. Maps. Photographs. Notes. Index. Pp. xii, 293. «29.50 cloth. «11.95 paper.

Cavalier in Buckskin: George Armstrong Custer and the Western Military Frontier. By Robert M. Utley. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988. Illus- trations. Maps. Photographs. Index. Bibliography. Pp. xiv, 226. «19.95. Yellowstone Command: Colonel Nelson A. Miles and the Great Sioux War, 1876-1877. By Jerome A. Greene. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991. Photographs. Maps. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xv, 333. «35.00. Custer's Last Campaign: Mitch Boyer and the Little Bighorn Reconstructed. By John S. Gray. Lineoin: University of Nebraska Press, 1991. Illustrations. Maps. Charts. Tables. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xviii, 446. «35.00. The Custer Reader. Edited by Paul Andrew Hutton. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992. Maps. Photographs. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xiv, 583. «40.00. The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull. By Robert M. Utley. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1993. Illustrations. Maps. Bibliography. Notes. Index. Pp. xvii, 413. «22.00.

A Complete Life of General George A. Custer. By Frederick Whittaker. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 1993. 2 vols. Illustrations. Maps. Preface. Index. Vol. 1: Pp. xxiv, 358. «12.95. Vol. 2: Pp. xiv, 314. «12.95.

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JAMES B. POTTS

Glory-Hunter: A Life of General Custer. By Frederick F. Van de Water. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988. Illustrations. Maps. Photographs. Index. Pp. 442.811.95.

Son of the Morning Star: Ouster and The Littte Bighorn. By Evan S. Connell. New York: Harper Collins Publishers. 1991. Maps. Photographs. Index. Bibliography. Pp. 441. «10.95.

The Centennial Campaign: The Sioux War of 1876. By John S. Gray. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 1988. Illustrations. Maps. Tables. Photographs. Index. Bibliography. Notes. Pp. 408. Ï16.95. Soldiers Falling into Camp: The Battles at the Rosebud and the Little Big Hom. By Robert Kämmen, Frederick Lefthand, and Joe Marshall. Encampment, Wyo.: Affiliated Writers of America, 1992. Illustrations. Maps. Appendixes. Index. Pp. 240. 819.95.

Arvhaeotogy, History and Ouster's Last Battle: The Littte Bighorn Reexamined. By Richard A. Fox, Jr. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993. Illustrations. Charts. Maps. Photographs. Index. Bibliography. Notes. Pp. xviii, 411. $29.95. Battles and Skirmishes of the Great Sioux War, 1876-1877. Edited by Jerome A. Greene. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993. Illustrations. Maps. Index. Pp. 256. 824.99.

Nelson A. Miles and the Twilight of the Frontier Army. By Robert Wooster. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993. Index. Bibliography. Illustrations. Notes. Pp. 391. «35.00.

DEFYING part of the military adage that old soldiers never die—theyjust fade away, George Armstrong Custer joined 210 troopers in death at the hands of Sioux and Cheyenne warriors; but his famous last stand has lived on in publie memory. Generations of historians, novelists, and poets, along with painters, illustrators, and motion pieture and television producers, have concocted countless renditions that have made Custer the nation's most remembered soldier and the Little Bighorn the most frequently depicted battle. Even today, there is a national organization—The Little Bighorn Associates—devoted to pre- serving the general's memory and reputation, while each year the battlefield attracts nearly 300,000 visitors to the scene of his death.

The scale and shock of the Bighorn disaster combined with the mystery of what happened on the battlefield and Custer's own flamboy- ance and fame have ensured publie interest and eontinuous controversy. For nearly twelve deeades, students of the battle have scrutinized the engagement from nearly every angle; They have combed the official records, the recorded memories of participants, and the battlefield itself, and have offered a variety of explanations of events. Several have studied Custer's personality and psychology, searching for clues to his

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behavior at the disaster. Indeed, most attempts to explain what happened to his command are tied to favorable or unfavorable views of Custer's character. And his historical image has also changed over the years in response to shifting popular opinions and values.

Custer's enshrinement began with Frederick Whittaker's Life of George Armstrong Custer, published just months after the general's fall. A highly fictionalized account culled from press reports and the general's own writings. Life absolved Custer of blame for the catastrophe and portrayed him as a frontier Galahad who, betrayed by politicians and subordinates, died heroically. Whittaker's mythology foreshadowed a procession of novelists and biographers, including Elizabeth Custer, who produced a trilogy of metnorials of her dead husband.

Debunking began in 1935—the year after Elizabeth Custer's death— with Frederick Van de Water's caustic Glory-Hunter, which presented Custer as a callous, arrogant, egotistical, irresponsible, unprincipled, and immature glory-seeker who alone bore responsibility for his failure. This unflattering portrait became the standard interpretation for fifty years, and Custer's reputation plummeted. Especially during the civil rights struggles and Vietnam War, many Americans saw Custer as emblematic of America's past misdeeds against Indians and of its contemporary excesses in Southeast Asia.

Since the appearance in 1976 of John Gray's brilliant réévaluation of the Little Bighorn battle. Centennial Campaign, unrestrained and indiscriminate Custer bashing has yielded to more dispassionate assess- ments. Particularly in the last decade, scholars and popular writers like Evan Connell have produced several major works according Custer respectability as a soldier. Connell's epic biography. Son of the Morning Star, a literary tour de force in Custeriana, became a national best- seller in 1984 and the basis of a television miniseries in 1991. Connell's book emphasized Custer's historical role as a controversial but competent soldier and Indian campaigner, and more than any other work rekindled public interest and possibly rehabilitated Custer's reputation.

National interest was also aroused after a grass fire swept across the Little Bighorn National Monument in August 1983, enabling Richard A. Fox, Douglas D. Scott, and others to conduct a pioneering archeological examination of the Custer battle site in 1984 and 1985. Although these investigations produced no major new discoveries, they uncovered physical evidence that shed additional light on the battle. Combining techniques of historical archaeology, geomorphology, forensic anthro- pology, firearms identification analysis, and computer artifact plotting, the investigators identified the number and types of weapons used and the pattern of the fight. The excavations established that the Indians were better armed than previously supposed and very likely outgunned Custer's smaller force, and that extraction failure of the army carbines

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figured little in the outcome. The archaeological record also verified the accuracy of the battlefield markers indicating where soldiers fell. Some hand-to-hand fighting took place and some mutilation of soldiers' bodies occurred; panic and flight may have disrupted Ouster's force at the end; and the fighting actually terminated with a last stand on Custer Ridge.

On balance, the archaeological evidence conflicts with some conven- tional accounts, while supporting others. The revealed battlefield dynamic particularly corroborates the Indian battle narratives, which the investi- gators found to be collectively "more accurate" than the recreations of the soldiers after the battle {Archaeological Perspectives, p. 130). Several Indian-based studies have since appeared. Richard A. Fox's Archaeology, History, and Custer's Last Battle makes substantial use of warrior accounts gleaned from recorded eye-witness testimonies and Cheyenne oral traditions. Robert Utley's Sitting Bull, also relying on Indian sources, examines the 1876 Siotix War through the eyes of the Lakota Siotix. Robert Kämmen, Frederick Lefthand, and Joe Marshall also present the Indian side in Soldiers Falling into Camp, a recounting of the conflict drawn from the traditions of participating Crow and Sioux. While this first published Indian account provides additional details on the behavior of Crazy Horse, Gall, and other Indian leaders during the fight, it adds little to our understanding of Custer. And aside from claims that Custer fell early in the engagement, and that Indian warriors were fewer in number and less well-armed than army apologists maintained, this version of the Bighorn battle generally complements rather than contests the more conventional military-oriented studies of Utley, Gray, and others.

Despite the new interest in Indian sources, Custer and the cavalry remain the focus of scholarly attention. In 1988, Robert Utley inaugurated the University of Oklahoma's Western Biography Series with Cavalier in Buckskin, arguably the best study of Custer's life to date. Utley's book penetrates the layers of legend to discover "the real Custer," showing his historical significance to be less than his status as myth. Rejecting simplistic depictions of Custer as either hero or villain, Utley describes a flawed but talented soldier whose complex personality and performance allowed his contemporaries to both idolize and despise him. Utley acknowledges Custer's many faults: his arrogant impudence; his probable infidelities; his business dealings and apparent schemes to defraud the government; and the nepotism, favoritism, and garrison ineptitude that demoralized his command. He nevertheless praises Custer's bravery, leadership, and charisma.

During the Civil War, Custer had demonstrated bold combat leader- ship. His audacity and luck produced a superlative record from Gettysburg to Appomattox, a brigadier's star at the age of twenty-three, and recog- nition as a national hero—a military prodigy, admired by peers, press,

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and public. Utley asserts that had he died at Appomattox Station in 1865 "he would be remembered as the great cavalry general that he was, second in the Union army only to Sheridan" (p. 35).

Custer never achieved comparable success in the West after 1865. Irregular Indian warfare initially perplexed him—as it did other Civil War commanders—and he did not readily adjust to regular army life on the frontier. Yet, after a dismal introduction to Indian campaigning in Kansas in 1867, Custer did defeat Black Kettle's Cheyennes on the Washita in 1868. The Washita campaign and well-publicized expeditions against the Sioux along the Yellowstone in 1873 and in the Black Hills in 1874 gained him recognition as the nation's premier Indian fighter—a renown that, Utley admits, he probably did not deserve. He never mastered the thinking of Indian fighters and never equalled the success of officers like Ranald Mackenzie or Nelson Miles. Still, Custer's actual record "formed a solid foundation for the publicity that kept him in the public eye" and gave firm grounding to the heroic image that became the basis of the legend that grew after the Little Big Horn disaster (p. 206).

Utley believes that even his final performance merits commendation. Custer's conduct at the Little Big Horn, if judged in light of what he knew rather than of our hindsight, was neither disobedient, impulsive, nor foolish. For the most part he acted responsibly and his defeat came not from his own mistakes, but from circumstances mostly beyond his control. Simply put, Custer's fabled luck deserted him in his final hours.

Bad luck revealed Custer to his enemy prematurely, forcing him into battle earlier than he intended and without proper reconnaissance, leaving him ignorant of the battle terrain and the exact location and the size of the Indian camps. But, like his superiors, he believed that his troopers could whip any Indian force, and he worried less about their numbers than preventing their flight. He divided his command to cover contingencies and by the time he learned the true situation it was too late to get it back together. Custer ordered Benteen to scout to the left to block the escape of Indians to the south. He separated from Reno because he believed the Indians were already fleeing, but then rugged terrain and unanticipated Indian resistance delayed and dispersed his attack on the northern flank. Custer no doubt intended to reunite his forces behind Reno's charge, but Benteen's dallying and Reno's unex- pected retreat kept the Seventh divided and left Custer's isolated battalion to fend for itself against overpowering numbers of well-armed warriors in untenable terrain. Despite the outcome, Custer's decisions were tactically sound, and Utley maintains that the attack might have suc- ceeded had his subordinates performed properly.

Utley has drawn from a myriad of historical, archaeological, and topographical sources; nevertheless, his reconstruction of the Little

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Bighorn battle reflects the heavy influence of John Gray's Centennial Campaign, originally published in 1976. Gray, like Utley, also viewed Custer as a talented though unfortunate commander whose final defeat came from a eombination of faulty military intelligence, the failures of his subordinates, and most notably a formidable Indian adversary whose superior military strength probably doomed his command from the start.

An exhaustive study based on serupulous research, careful reasoning, and remarkable time studies. Gray's Centennial Campaign was applaud- ed by many critics as the best single volume on the Sioux War of 1876, and his explanation of what happened to Custer's final eommand seemed to be definitive. But in a new book, Custer's Last Campaign: Mitch Boyer and the Little Bighorn Reconsidered, Gray has now superseded this earlier achievement with a work that, according to Utley, "has radically and enduringly transformed the historiography of the Battle of the Little Bighorn" (p. xi).

Custer's Last Campaign is essentially two books. The first is a seminal study of Mitch Boyer, a little-known frontier army scout who perished with Custer's battalion on the Little Bighorn. The seeond book is a meticulously constructed narrative of the events of 10-25 June 1876, when Boyer served as Custer's key guide and seout.

Boyer's career ultimately epitomized the advance of white Americans into Indian country and the ensuing cultural conflicts that led to the tragie eneounter at the Little Bighorn in 1876. Born in 1837, Boyer was the son of a Sioux mother and a French father. The young fur trapper and trader moved from the Missouri to present-day Wyoming in 1849 and then northward to the Yellowstone eountry in 1864, where he was adopted into the Crow tribe. A skilled frontiersman, fluent in English and native tongues, and familiar with both Indian and white ways, Boyer found steady employment as an Indian interpreter and army scout. By 1875, Boyer was recognized as "the best guide in the country" (p. xiv). Thus, in 1876 when the campaign against the Sioux began. General John Gibbon recruited him as chief guide for the Montana Column as it marched down the Yellowstone to make contact with General Alfred Terry's Dakota Column. Boyer went on from there to serve with Custer's Seventh Cavalry.

Gray's account of the Bighorn campaign is exhaustive. He recon- structs the battle step by step and coulee by eoulee. Combining topo- graphic research and time-motion analysis based on "feasible speeds" and documented "intereonnections"—separations, meetings, messages, eross-sightings, and hearings—between the numerous parties. Gray charts the itineraries of every component of Custer's command from the Rosebud to the Little Bighorn, and beyond to the battlefield where Custer and Boyer died. Gray in fact lays out the entire battle sequence

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in time and space and has apparently located the actions of all of Custer's troops to the quarter-mile and to the half-minute.

The application of analytical tools to all the primary sources exposed participant accounts that were blatantly impossible, allowing Gray to eliminate these "impossibilities" and to ascertain what could have happened and most likely did. These research methods also established the reliability of the Crow scout Curley, whose relation of the battle previous writers had either distorted or dismissed as another Indian lie. Gray validates Curley's claim to have accompanied Custer as far as Calhoun Hill, where the final act of the Bighorn tragedy began, as well as his claim to have witnessed the battle's end from a distant height.

Curley's testimony, combined with other evidence, enabled Gray to track Custer beyond Medicine Tail Coulee and to examine the final stage of the battle. His reconstruction of these nebulous events is brilliant historical detection, establishing beyond serious doubt Custer's movements during this little understood phase. However, Gray ventures beyond Calhoun Hill with far less authority, and his construction of Custer's "final minutes" is mostly speculation based on gravestone locations, time restraints, and estimations of "Custer's probable thoughts and actions" (p. 370). He hypothesizes that Custer's soldiers retreated northward, counterclockwise around the perimeter of the battlefield, and that the fight probably terminated in simultaneous last stands by two separated bodies of troops.

While differing in some details. Gray and Utley both affirm the popular perception of Custer's gallant defiance of overwhelming odds. Archaeologist Richard Fox presents a radically different explanation in Archeology, History and Custer's Last Battle. He finds little evidence to support claims for a coordinated, determined defense or heroic last stand. Fox suggests that Custer's battalion was ensnared in the deadly process of psychological debilitation and unexpectedly collapsed in confusion and disorder.

Fox's study is an ingenious blending of history and archaeology, based upon the material remains of the battle, the reminiscences of participants, and the author's personal knowledge of contemporary cavalry tactics and combat behavior generally, filtered through a theo- retical model of tactical stability and disintegration. This approach allows Fox not only to trace the position and movement of combatants across the battlefield, but also to discern their behavior. He also resolves some seeming contradictions and inconsistencies in previously under- valued Indian battle narratives. The result is a detailed recounting, stripped of myth and fatalism, of the final action on battle ridge.

According to Fox, Custer's battalion began the fight in good tactical order, which dissipated under enemy fire. A thrust from Calhoun Hill encountered unexpected resistance, stalled, then disintegrated in panic.

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and flight. This sudden collapse of Custer's right wing infected other sectors as emboldened Indians pressed the attack, and "the battalion quickly lost its ability to fight" (p. 15).

Archaeological evidence confirms that the cavalry offered little tactical resistance. The paucity of government cartridges, the quantity of Indian bullets, and concentrations of soldiers' graves on Custer Ridge and elsewhere indicate little determined fighting and suggest that many soldiers died in flight or while huddled, "fighting without benefit of tactically prescribed deployments" (p. 117). The last troopers fell not at Custer Ridge but rather on the slopes and in the Deep Ravine beyond, just as many Indian sources said.

Fox acknowledges a complex interplay of prefatory and immediate factors. Disparities in manpower, armaments, and mobility certainly contributed to the defeat. Tactical errors and miscalculations were also consequential: Custer's underestimation of Indian strength and resolve; his decision to divide his command at Calhoun Hill, to deploy a left- wing reconnaissance to block the flight of fugitives, and then to delay his attack until reinforcements arrived; and Benteen's delay and Reno's failure clearly influenced the outcome. Yet, Fox maintains that Custer's troops rode into battle woefully ill-prepared and extremely vulnerable to the effects of combat shock. They were inadequately trained in tactics, horsemanship, marksmanship, and other combat skills. These deficiencies, inexperience in Indian fighting, and fatigue induced by exhausting marches and inadequate diet eroded unit morale, and magni- fied the effects of shock produced by the suddenness, weight, and proximity of the Indian assault.

Although not without some ambiguities. Fox's analysis of Custer's final fight is provocative and plausible. Psychological debilitation is a common phenomenon in battle and, as Fox points out, armies engaged in combat are potentially subject to disintegration depending on their training, armaments, and condition, and the nature of fighting. There will be many who dispute Fox's findings. And rather than stilling debate, this work—along with those of Utiey and Gray—will likely generate new arguments, and another round in the continuing Custer controversy.

The Custer Reader, a unique collection compiled by Paul Andrew Hutton, nicely complements these excellent monographs. This first major anthology of classic writings on the subject, combines personal narratives, scholarly reprints, and current research to display Custer "as he saw himself, as his contemporaries saw him, and as the best scholars have interpreted him" (p. xiii). Hutton presents authoritative articles, essays by Custer, memoirs of fellow officers, and excellent Indian accounts of the Little Bighorn, supplemented by introductions and a critical bibliography. Reprinted accounts of Custer in popular culture, along with commentaries by the editor and original essays by other

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specialists, supply an interpretive and unifying context. In The Custer Reader's first section, the subject reminisces about

his West Point years and Gregory Urwin, Jay Monaghan, and Harlan Page Lloyd (a contemporary) contemplate his Civil War career. Urwin describes his spectacular rise from a cadet last in his class to victorious cavalry commander and national hero, and concludes that Custer's wartime success shaped his career and its accompanying myth as much as the dénouement at the Little Bighorn.

The book's second section, which includes selections by Brian Dippie and Minnie Dobbs Millbrook, as well as by contemporaries Edward S. Godfrey and Charles W. Lamed and the general himself, deals with his role in the Indian wars prior to the Little Bighorn. Millbrook recounts Custer's troubled initiation into Indian warfare in Kansas—his court martial and suspension from the army—while Dippie evaluates his record from Kansas to the eve of the climactic Sioux campaign. Godfrey presents a first-hand appreciation of his superior's leadership at Washita in 1868, while Larned's letters on the Yellowstone campaign of 1873 portray the nepotism, egotism, and tyranny of a man "selfishly indifferent to others, and ruthlessly determined to make himself conspicuous at all hazards" (p. 185). The section on the Bighorn features Utley's reconstruction of the battle. It also contains contem- porary accounts by Godfrey and Charles King along with the testimony of two Native Americans: a Sioux participant and a Cheyenne woman who claimed to be present on the fateful day.

The book's final section examines the legend that grew out of the Bighorn battle and describes how and why the mythic Custer became more important than the real man. Hutton, Dippie, and others examine Custer's representation in the public media, emphasizing the decisive influence of purveyors of popular culture, including artists, novelists, and film-makers, in defining his historical image and shaping the myth. In the collection's final essay, folklorist Bruce Rosenberg relates the Custer saga to hero myths and legends of other lands. Although the Custer story resembles other tales, Rosenberg concludes that the legend is mostly a product of American imagination.

The notorious Little Bighorn was only one of several contests in the Sioux War of 1876-77, yet Custer and the Bighorn have dominated its study. Even John Gray's masterful account. Centennial Campaign, emphasizes the events preceding the encounter and tails off sharply after Custer's calamity. Stressing the failures of Custer, Crook, and Terry, Gray virtually ignores other important operations, particularly Nelson A. Miles's successful Yellowstone campaign of the winter of 1876-77. Fortunately, Paul Hedren, Jerome Greene, and others have partially filled the gap in the literature.

Paul Hedren's The Great Sioux War, 1876-1877 examines the

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broader historieal aspeets of the conflict. This anthology assembles fifteen artieles previously published in Montana: The Magazine of Western History—some of them elassies of the genre. In this collection Mark H. Brown and Harry H. Anderson eonsider the causes of eonflict; Paul Hutton assesses Phil Sheridan's Indian strategy; and Hedren himself describes the life of an ordinary soldier during the campaign. Other topics include the impact of transportation on military operations and policy, Indian Bureau management, military actions at Fort Pease, Wolf Mountain, and the Little Bighorn, western and southern press treatment of the "Custer Massacre," the location of forts, and the controversy over Custer monuments after the campaign.

Recent works by Jerome Greene also look beyond the Bighorn to other often ignored battles that followed. Greene's latest work. Battles and Skirmishes of the Great Sioux War, 1876-1877, features first- hand accounts of engagements observed and reeorded by participating officers, enlisted men, and newspaper correspondents. His Yellowstone Com- mand focuses more direetly on Colonel Nelson Miles's successful winter campaign against the Sioux and Cheyenne in the aftermath of Custer's defeat. Miles, in faet, offers a revealing contrast to Custer, and points up the paradox of their respective eareers. Nelson Miles, too, was oppor- tunistic, careerist, young, and self-eonfident and something of a military phenomenon. A Civil War hero, four times wounded and a breveted Major General at twenty-six. Miles achieved even greater distinction in the Indian wars after 1865. Successful campaigns against the Cheyenne on the Red River in 1874-75, against the Sioux and Nez Perces along the Yellowstone between 1876 and 1880, and against Geronimo's Apaches in the Southwest in 1886 established him as the Army's preeminent Indian fighter and won him promotion to Lieutenant General and Commanding General of the Army in 1895. Yet Miles lacked Custer's flamboyanee, his charisma, and his genius for self-publicity and, despite his accomplishments, never achieved comparable fame. Had he lived, Custer might well have suffered a similar fate. But, Custer became a hero, then a legend and a symbol—the embodiment of the Indian- fighting army and ultimately the personifieation of white America's misdeeds. This embodiment, Utley has shown, began to form during Ouster's life, spawned by a colorful, controversial, and well-publicized personality and career. But it was his spectacular death (and ironically, his defeat) at the Little Bighorn that more than anything else transformed the historical Custer into one of America's most enduring legends.

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