Battle of Little Bighorn

12 Key excerpts on "Battle of Little Bighorn"

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  Imagining the American West through Film and Tourism

  • Warwick Frost, Jennifer Laing(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  westwards, away from the other two columns. Why? What was he attempting to do? We don’t know – and can never know. Within a short time, Custer and every man of his column were killed at the Battle of Little Bighorn.

  Today, the site is protected and managed by the US National Parks Service (NPS) as the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. There is a small visitor centre at the entrance and one winding road linking a series of interpretive panels. At Last Stand Hill, where Custer was finally overwhelmed, there are monuments and gravestones to the fallen (Figure 12.1 ). However, apart from these modest developments, the rest is undulating grassy hills. An isolated place in eastern Montana, there are few tourists. The visitor only has to walk a short distance away from the road to be completely alone and to imagine that this is what it really was like in 1876. Walking down to Medicine Tail Coulee, one can look at the landscape and easily see the choices that Custer had. It is a place to contemplate and speculate – why did he go West?

  Figure

  12.1

  Monument and gravestones on Last Stand Hill (photo W. Frost).

  A difficult centenary

  For all its fascination, this is a highly contested place. The centenary of the Battle of Little Bighorn was commemorated in 1976. Both in the lead-up and for a number of years later, the NPS was acutely aware of four contentious issues in effectively managing and interpreting this iconic site.

  The first was with its name. At the time of the centenary, its official name was Custer Battlefield National Monument. However, many were uneasy with a name that gave such prominence to Custer. Though lionised as a hero for a long time, by the late twentieth century his reputation was quite tarnished and there were many who felt it inappropriate to honour his name. In 1868, he had led an unprovoked attack on a peaceful village on the Washita River, Oklahoma (Custer 1874 ) and this was what he was attempting to repeat at Little Bighorn. These concerns were debated for many years, until in 1991 the NPS decided to change the name of the site to one that was neutral and geographically focussed. This, the NPS argued, was in line with the naming of its other battlefield national monuments, particularly those from the Civil War. Nevertheless, great controversy arose with the change (Buchholtz 2005

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  The Battle of the Greasy Grass/Little Bighorn

  Custer's Last Stand in Memory, History, and Popular Culture

  • Debra Buchholtz(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Newspaper reporters and popular writers of the late 1870s certainly played a major role in securing the battle’s place in history but one must not overestimate their contribution. Distracted by the actions and personalities of Custer—whom they construed as an endearing, almost recklessly courageous, and youthful icon of blossoming civilization—and Sitting Bull—whom they construed as Custer’s polar opposite and a stereotypically stoic and menacing symbol of the untamed wilderness and “savage” past—they generally promoted a Great Man reading of the Greasy Grass/Little Bighorn battle and the events that preceded it. But what happened cannot be reduced to an outcome of decisions and actions taken by a few “great” men and women nor can its continuing resonance be explained by this simple polarization. Context was and still is everything: the battle itself and the challenges it posed to American sensibilities were very much a product of their time, as were the decisions made by Sitting Bull and Custer. The symbolic contrast between these two colorful and powerful antagonists and the detailed focus on their actions and motivations have always fired the imaginations of ordinary people by adding drama and dimension to the historic moment. Nonetheless, social, cultural, political, and economic factors that originated in the particular context in which the battle occurred and the many contexts in which it has since been recounted, coupled with its multivocality, have been more crucial to securing its enduring salience than any clash of personalities.

  Many other factors have undoubtedly contributed to the battle’s status as a critical, if discursively unstable, moment in the American past but two are particularly noteworthy. The first is the overarching but generally unspoken objective of the military campaign against the off-reservation Lakota and Cheyenne. The second is the painful irony of the battle’s centennial year timing.

  Although ostensibly a major victory for the Lakota and Cheyenne and a catastrophic defeat for the cavalry, Custer’s Last Stand or the Little Bighorn battle was less a military engagement than a calculated maneuver in the American nation-building project, albeit one that appeared at first to have gone badly wrong. Access to land and natural resources and the safety of the settlers and other security issues ranked high among the army’s officially stated objectives in its campaign against the Lakota and Cheyenne roaming off the reservation. Nonetheless, it was a less tangible objective that arguably did most initially to install the battle as a critical moment in the American past. The nature of that objective is intimated by the alternate names for the army’s campaign popularized by writers in later years: the Sioux War and the Centennial Campaign. Together these two designators invoke the hopes and fears of the American people in the centennial year: optimism for a future at the vanguard of progress tinged with unease over the militant independence of the non-treaty Indians still wreaking havoc out on the northern Plains. The unspoken but widely recognized objective of the 1876 campaign was to enhance and consolidate the integrity of the nation by subduing the unruled and unruly northern Plains tribes and sequestering them on reservations until they either died off or were ready for incorporation into the American body politic. It was an assimilationist objective that dovetailed neatly with post-Civil War efforts to cobble unity out of diversity within the newly reunited nation’s borders, which now stretched from coast to coast. It also conveniently promised to open badly needed lands to white settlers and economic exploitation.

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  Troopers With Custer: Historic Incidents Of The Battle Of The Little Big Horn

  • E. A. Brininstool(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Normanby Press

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 1 — THE CUSTER FIGHT IN BRIEF

  TO THE AVERAGE AMERICAN little is known regarding the actual facts surrounding the battle of the Little Big Horn. Perhaps he has read brief extracts, or heard others discuss the affair, and it therefore seems fitting that the story of this greatest of Indian battles should be briefly told, the main reason being to correct some of the exaggerated stories which have been broadcast over the years, and to refute others which have been foisted on the public by persons who were not in possession of the actual facts.

  The battle of the Little Big Horn was the culmination of the invasion of the Black Hills of Dakota (ceded Sioux territory) by white gold hunters. Custer, in 1874, led a government expedition into that then unexplored and unknown region, under orders to “spy out the land,” and determine if the stories in circulation regarding its beauty and wealth were true. It was hinted that gold was there—in abundance—and where gold is, there the white man will go, regardless of treaties or the rights of anyone of whatever race or color.

  After Custer had discovered and reported that there was gold in the Hills, a general stampede into the forbidden territory followed. In spite of the fact that the treaty of 1868 with the Sioux distinctly specified that “no white man should ever set foot in the territory without the consent of the Indians,” no attention whatever was paid to this edict. Gold had been discovered—and what else mattered?

  The Sioux resented this invasion of their ceded territory—and rightly! But the government could not keep the gold-maddened miners out, although a feeble attempt was made in that direction. The protests of the Sioux went unheeded, and it soon became apparent that armed resistance was imminent.

  Sitting Bull, the great medicine man of the Sioux nation—not a fighting chief in the strict sense of the word—was the leading fomenter among the Indians. He was a great schemer, a conjurer, with an immense following, particularly among the young men of the tribe. He was not an agency Indian but had a most bitter hatred for the “pale-face.” He preferred to roam, refusing to accept the agency rations doled out to him by the “great Father” at Washington, choosing instead to live by the chase as long as the buffalo were plentiful. His camp, in 1876, was supposed to be located somewhere in the Big Horn country of Wyoming, or in the adjacent Montana wilderness—just where was not known, as that entire section, in 1876, was an unsettled and all but unexplored region.

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  The Frontier Newspapers and the Coverage of the Plains Indian Wars

  • Hugh J. Reilly(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  C HAPTER 4  The Little Big Horn Campaign: January–July 1876 No single battle in the history of the American Indian Wars resonates with more power than the Battle of the Little Big Horn, June 25, 1876. It features sev- eral mythic elements that have made it legendary. First, there were a high number of casualties. Every man under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer’s im- mediate command was killed. The number of casualties, for a single battle in an Indian war, was second only to Little Turtle’s defeat of General Arthur St. Clair in 1791 (900 total casualties, 630 killed). 1 Second, the defeat took place on the eve of the United States’ centennial celebration. Third, the death of Custer, who had become a larger-than-life figure, truly made the battle of the Little Big Horn leg- endary. He had gained notoriety during the Civil War and had added to his repu- tation during the Indian Wars. Historian Robert M. Utley described the shock felt at the news of Custer’s defeat: “Custer dead? To the generals as well as all who read the papers that morning, the story seemed preposterous. For more than a decade George Armstrong Custer had basked in public adulation as a national hero. . . . By 1876 the public saw him as the very embodiment of the Indian-fighting army. . . . Even to hard-eyed realist like Sherman and Sheridan, the vaunted Custer could hardly fall victim to a calamity such as the newspaper reported.” 2 The response of the Omaha newspapers was predictable. They were as shocked as the rest of the country. The Omaha Daily Herald said that the news “created a profound sensation throughout the entire city, and a deep feeling of pity was man- ifested for the brave men who had been thus ruthlessly destroyed.” 3 The Omaha Bee wrote, “The shocking intelligence of terrible disaster which has overtaken Gen.

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  The Cultural Life of Images

  Visual Representation in Archaeology

  • Brian Leigh Molyneaux(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  Custer’s battle took place some four miles north of the Reno-Benteen battlefield. After ordering the attack on the village, Custer, intending to capture the non-combatants, veered to the right and marched north unopposed, as the Indians confronted Reno. Warriors belatedly learned of Custer’s battalion as they drove Reno to the bluffs. Many left to meet the new threat and ultimately a numerically superior force of warriors gathered. Most likely it was over in little more than an hour; Custer and all his troops were dead. Indian casualties are difficult to estimate; perhaps forty or fifty warriors died. Though most with Reno and Benteen survived, the Army failed in its objective to move the Sioux to their reservation.

  The Little Big Horn battle has generated more treatises, so some say, than any US military event. In any case, its popularity is scarcely restricted to prose. Ever since the gunsmoke wafted from the field, comic books, comic strips, postcards, poems (including one by Walt Whitman, no less), photography, editorial cartoons, songs, film, and videos have helped to perpetuate the memory of the event. Today, there is talk of a software program which will allow aficionados to re-fight the battle. Even a board game exists, and most recently, trading cards like those associated with baseball and bubble gum have appeared. And there is art.

  OBJECTIVES

  The Custer battle long ago became a symbol of white America’s ethos. It remains so to this day, and it is images of the battle created by white artists that are in large part responsible. The problem is, these artworks, principally those I call ‘Custer’s last stand’ images (the genre I examine here), seem to reveal little about the historical nature of Custer’s battle. That is what I am seeking in this chapter — an historical perspective. I shall first discuss elements of ‘Custer’s last stand’ imagery, and then argue that the artistic tradition in which these images were produced is ill-suited for portraying history.

  But white artists were not the only ones to draw the battle. Sioux and Cheyenne artists created drawings as well. After examining ‘last stand’ images, I will analyse selected drawings by native artists for their historical content, but only after recapping what others have demonstrated — that there is a strong historical element in Plains Indian art. This includes art produced during the contact and reservation periods, that is, from early contact times (c

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  "Why Won't You Just Tell Us the Answer?"

  Teaching Historical Thinking in Grades 7-12

  • Bruce Lesh(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 6 Continuity and Change over Time Custer's Last Stand or the Battle of the Greasy Grass?

  DOI: 10.4324/9781032683164-7

  I believe people created the memory of “Custer’s Last Stand” because they did not want to believe in an Indian victory. They wanted Custer to be depicted as a hero and not a loser.

  The memory of “Custer’s Last Stand” was created to promote patriotism. The media was controlled by whites. They wouldn’t want to show the Indians as heroes or victorious so they depicted it as the whites being heroes.

  —Student reflections on the memory of the Battle of the Little Bighorn

  Exiting Yellowstone National Park, my wife, Christine, and I decided Exiting to head to the Black Hills via the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument (Figure 6.1 ). After an arduous pass through the Bighorn Mountains—which did not look as big on the map—we arrived in Gillette, Wyoming. The next morning we traveled north to visit the site of Custer’s infamous last stand, and into what, unbeknownst to me, would be a transformational occasion in my approach to teaching history.

  Figure 6.1

  What I discovered in the beautiful scenery of Montana was history alive, not in an artificial manner, but intellectually alive. In 1998, my wife and I arrived on the coattails of a prolonged debate over what to name the site where Custer’s Seventh Cavalry fought Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and the various Indian tribes encamped along the banks of the Little Bighorn River. What immediately struck me that day, beyond Montana’s endless sky, was the interpretive exhibit at the National Park office. At the time Christine and I were there, we were confronted with a multitude of popular culture manifestations of Custer and his “Last Stand.” Children’s lunch boxes, board games, movies, television shows, toys, and numerous other artifacts depicted Custer as a hero, fighting to the last man against the “savage” Indians. Because I am a huge fan of popular culture, this immediately resonated with me. Why, I wondered, would American culture so venerate the guy who had not only died, but, I knew, made several poor tactical decisions?

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  Custerology

  The Enduring Legacy of the Indian Wars and George Armstrong Custer

  • Michael A. Elliott(Author)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • University of Chicago Press

    (Publisher)

  Those who believed that the Park Service’s national monu-ment should reflect the representational desires of American Indians, like Means, and those who argued that the sacrifice of Custer and his men for the project of national consolidation should remain the focus of the com-memoration agreed on something crucial: this dispute over the symbolic space of the battlefield emanated from a historical period in which at least some tribal peoples on the Plains pronounced their political and military independence from the United States. That is, what has driven the con-flicts over the commemoration of the Battle of the Little Bighorn is not only something that divides those who differently interpret the battle but also something that they share, namely, an understanding that the Indian Wars of the nineteenth century continue to matter to the political status of American Indian tribes today. What remained in contention was how exactly the kind of Indian patriotism represented by the plaque that Means and his supporters planted in Last Stand Hill should be registered in the commemorative landscape and how that patriotism should be situated in relationship to the U.S. patriotism that Custer and his Seventh Cavalry had represented for generations. That question moved from the Little Bighorn itself to the halls of Con-gress in the aftermath of Means’s protest. In 1990, U.S. Representative Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a member of the Northern Cheyenne tribe and at that time a Democrat from Colorado, and Ron Marlenee, a Republi-can from Montana, introduced a bill into Congress calling for the con-struction of a memorial at what was then called Custer Battlefield National Monument “to honor the Indian participants” in the Battle of the Little Bighorn. 50 The bill failed to make it out of Congress before the end of the session, and in the next year, 1991, Campbell reintroduced it. This time,

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  A Companion to Custer and the Little Bighorn Campaign

  • Brad D. Lookingbill(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  Montana: The Magazine of Western History 41 (4): 93.
• Dippie, Brian. 1976. Custer’s Last Stand: The Anatomy of an American Myth. Missoula: University of Montana Press.
• Doerner, John A. 2000. “‘So That the Place Might Be Remembered’: Cheyenne Markers at Little Bighorn Battlefield.” Research Review: The Journal of the Little Bighorn Associates 14 (2): 2–11.
• Doss, Erika. 2010. Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
• Elliott, Michael A. 2007. Custerology: The Enduring Legacy of the Indian Wars and George Armstrong Custer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Foote, Kenneth E. 2003. Shadowed Ground: America’s Landscapes of Violence and Tragedy, revised ed. Austin: University of Texas Press.
• Foote, Kenneth E., and Maoz Azaryahu. 2007. “Towards a Geography of Memory: Geographical Dimensions of Public Memory and Commemoration.” Journal of Political and Military Sociology 35 (1): 125–144.
• Fox, Richard Allan, Jr. 1993. Archaeology, History, and Custer’s Last Battle: The Little Bighorn Reexamined. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
• Glassberg, David. 1996. “Public History and the Study of Memory.” Public History 18 (2): 7–23.
• Gray, John S. 1975. “Nightmares to Daydreams.” By Valor & Arms 1 (4): 30–39.
• Greene, Jerome. 2008. Stricken Field: The Little Bighorn since 1876. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
• Hardorff, R. Dutch. 1984. “Burials, Exhumations and Reinterments: A View of Custer Hill.” In Custer and His Times, Book Two, edited by John M. Carroll, 41–84. Fort Worth, TX: Little Bighorn Associates.
• Josephy, Alvin M., Jr. 1971. “The Custer Myth.” Life 71 (1): 49–52, 55–59.
• King, C. Richard. 1996. “Segregated Stories: The Colonial Contours of the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument.” In Dressing in Feathers: The Construction of the Indian in American Popular Culture, edited by S. Elizabeth Bird, 167–180. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
• Linenthal, Edward T. 1983. “Ritual Drama at the Little Bighorn: The Persistence and Transformation of a National Symbol.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion