Born George Armstrong Custer on December 5, 1839, in New Rumley, Ohio, the man best known for the disastrous defeat that resulted in his own death—as well as in the utter decimation of his entire command—was a flamboyant and mercurial character whose reckless acts can seem in turn heroic and foolhardy. A boyish hero of the American Civil War cut down in his prime by the overwhelming forces of the Sioux and their allies at the ill-conceived Battle of Little Bighorn, Custer’s name has in fact become synonymous in American folk wisdom and lore with immutable doom born of hubris. Moreover, the phrase “Custer’s Last Stand” has become shorthand in American English for certain death in the face of insurmountable odds.
General George Armstrong Custer is one of the legendary figures of the nineteenth century. He served in the U.S. Civil War as a cavalry officer and then later, the leader of a military expedition against the Lakota and Cheyenne. His actions at the Battle of the Little Bighorn have been the subject of much controversy since the battle itself in 1876. (Library of Congress)
An alumnus of the Class of 1861 at West Point—where he was a poor student just a few demerits shy of expulsion—Custer subsequently led a military career punctuated by great successes and remarkable failures, culminating in his iconic defeat and legendary demise at the Battle of Little Bighorn. Entering the Civil War upon his graduation from West Point, Custer rode his talents and exercised his extravagant personality as a cavalry officer, rising meteorically to the rank of major general by the tender age of twenty-five. After the war Custer was assigned to the Seventh Cavalry as a lieutenant colonel, suffering disastrous defeats in the Plains Wars in 1867. Court-martialed and disgraced, Custer was called back from a year’s forced leave to fight the Cheyenne. In late November 1868 Custer laid the foundation for his reputation as a wily and ruthless Indian fighter when he took Black Kettle and his people by surprise, devastating the Cheyenne at the Battle of Washita and indiscriminately slaughtering men, women, and children in the process. Five years later Custer was protecting the interests of the Northern Pacific Railroad in the Yellowstone Expedition, during which he came into conflict with Sioux followers of the great chief Sitting Bull. The next year, in 1874, the Black Hills Expedition under Custer’s command discovered gold in the Dakota Territory, starting a gold rush, effectively negating the treaty with the Sioux, and—in an ironic twist of fate—laying the groundwork for the legendary Battle of Little Bighorn, which would ever after be entwined in the American folkloric imagination with George Armstrong Custer and Custer’s Last Stand.
Contemporary newspaper reporters fanned the flames of Custer’s fame, embracing him early on as a boy hero, and punctuating accounts of his heroics and antics with descriptions of his flowing golden locks and the extravagant clothes that helped the young commander to cut such a memorable and dashing figure. Some accounts of Custer’s adventures, even those that seem credible, are larger than life and smack of the legendary, at times even bordering on the mythic archetype of the chosen one destined to be the doomed hero. The story of how Custer came to possess the “Toledo Blade,” his famous sword, evokes the legend of King Arthur, who as a boy pulled Excalibur from the stone and was therefore marked as special. Accounts of the acquisition of Custer’s iconic blade differ: In one he earns the sword as the only soldier in the command able to wield it, thus proving himself worthy of such a weapon; in another he claims a seemingly ownerless blade jangling at the side of a noble but riderless steed. If the first story seems most closely related to the Excalibur myth, the second seems to evoke the mystic and otherworldly, as if the horse in question had trotted onto the battlefield from another dimension at the behest of the Greek Fates or the Norse Valkyries to both empower and mark as doomed the boy general.
On June 25, 1876, Custer led his regiment of approximately 600 men toward an encampment of Sioux and Cheyenne in the rolling plains of the Little Bighorn valley. Custer’s Seventh Cavalry was to be part of a coordinated attack including troops under General Alfred Terry and Colonel John Gibbon, who joined forces on the Yellowstone River near the confluence with Rosebud Creek. Custer would march up the Rosebud and hit the Indian encampments in the Little Bighorn valley from the south; Terry and Gibbon, meanwhile, planned to lie in wait to ambush the Indians as they fled from Custer’s attack. Custer divided his force into three battalions, commanded by Custer himself, Major Marcus Reno, and Captain Frederick Benteen. Benteen was sent to look for enemies above the main village, while Custer and Reno moved to attack the village from two directions at once: Reno charged the village itself while Custer moved around, utilizing a line of bluffs for cover. Reno was almost immediately repulsed, driven across the stream, and forced to hold a small bluff against massively superior forces; he was later joined by Benteen, and they held out for a day and a half before being relieved. Custer, meanwhile, was trapped to the east of the river, where his command of some 225 men was completely annihilated within an hour by a force perhaps ten times its size. It seems likely that, despite the popular perception of a courageous stand in the face of certain death, Custer and his men were reduced to panic and despair as the enemy wore them down by attrition, picking off any who attempted to flee. Moreover, although in classic artistic renderings Custer is generally depicted atop a bluff within a falling ring of loyal troopers, his body was, in fact, found dead well below the ridgeline.
The facts of this utterly ignominious defeat notwithstanding, almost before his body was cool it seems that Custer’s legend was being actively recast in the vein of the Song of Roland, in which Charlemagne’s greatest champion and his men are slaughtered in detail through treachery and massive numbers of Saracen foes as they act as a rearguard for the Holy Roman Emperor. Indeed, given the nearly religious implications of the American doctrine of Manifest Destiny, this comparison seems particularly apt. Custer was portrayed in just such a light as a hero of both the Civil War and the Indian Wars, participating in a doomed hero trope as old as our civilization, hearkening back to Saul’s suicide in the face of certain humiliation at the hands of the Philistines on Mount Gilboa in I Samuel, and to the heroic defeat of the Spartans against the Persians at Thermopylae, famously rendered for the silver screen, first as The 300 Spartans (1962), and then simply as 300 (2006). In early American folklore, moreover, the most well-known antecedent of such valorous certain doom would be the story of the Alamo, with Davy Crockett (memorably played by John Wayne in the classic 1960 American cinematic interpretation) as the most notable among a cavalcade of heroes. In all these cases, heroic doom met with stoic resolve results in the archetypal apotheosis of the hero, who ascends from the ranks of mere mortals into the pantheon of the popular imagination.
One particularly macabre aspect of the Custer mythos was the subject of a poem by the iconic American poet Longfellow, perhaps best known to schoolchildren everywhere as he who valorized and romanticized the Native American spirit in The Song of Hiawatha. Drawing for his material upon popular but almost certainly false newspaper accounts of the Battle of Little Bighorn, Longfellow took a darker and more grotesque view of what he depicts as the bloodthirsty savagery of Custer’s foes. In “The Revenge of Rain-in-the-Face” (1876), Longfellow ends his lyrical account of the Little Bighorn with an assertion of the commonly held belief that one of Custer’s old enemies took vengeance on the fallen soldier (or on his brother) by ripping out and eating the man’s heart:
… Rain-in-the-Face, in his flight,
Uplifted high in air
As a ghastly trophy, bore
The brave heart, that beat no more,
Of the White Chief with yellow hair.
According to more credible popular accounts, Custer’s body was discovered without having been mutilated by his enemies; often Native American warriors would have scalped or otherwise mutilated the corpse of such a mighty and hated foe. According to legend, Custer had fathered a child among the Cheyenne, having taken as a lover a young and beautiful maiden who had served as his interpreter before the decimation of Black Kettle’s people. His Indian paramour was still besotted with Custer, the story tells us, and though she couldn’t save his life, she saved him from posthumous shame. Whether or not this story has any basis at all in truth is probably beside the point. Indeed, it may be both born of and certainly feeds the myth of Custer, who thus takes his place alongside other legendary and mythic heroes who have been spared from death or indignity because of love. The most famous American example of this trope may well be found in the story of Pocahontas and John Smith, a May-December romance that is more the stuff of popular sentiment—and of Disney fame—than of fact. In reality, this theme of the savior lover recurs throughout myth and legendary history from at least the time of the Greek epic hero Odysseus; it is recast through a Latin lens in the adventures of Aeneas, and recurs in medieval narratives of star-crossed lovers divided by faith during the Crusades.
The only survivors of Custer’s debacle were his Sioux foes and their allies, and their version of events has gained much attention in recent years through accounts of oral histories and attention to the work of Native Americans artists such as One Bull and Red Horse. Custer’s own words on the Black Hills campaign, on the other hand, were published as My Life on the Plains in 1874; even more significantly, Custer’s widow, Elizabeth Bacon Custer (1842–1933), whom he called “Libby,” wrote of their lives together in several books, perhaps most notably 1885’s Boots and Saddles. Indeed, many credit Libby’s indefatigable efforts on her dead husband’s behalf with the rehabilitation of his memory and his ascendance to a special place in the American popular imagination: Libby wrote volumes of text and went on the lecture circuit in this endeavor. Furthermore, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show brought fanciful reenactments of Custer’s Last Stand to towns throughout America, ending each performance with a call to avenge the fallen hero of Little Bighorn. The fact that Custer remains such a seminal figure of American folklore to this day attests to the rhetorical efficacy of Libby’s efforts and Buffalo Bill’s showmanship: Custer emerged through this revisionist recasting of his myth far more heroic in death than he had ever been in life.
C. Fee
See also Crazy Horse; Crockett, Davy; Hickok, James Butler “Wild Bill”; Pocahontas and John Smith
Further Reading
Connell, Evan S. 1984. Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn. New York: North Point Press.
National Park Service. 2015. “Lt Col George Armstrong Custer.” Little Bighorn Battlefield website. http://www.nps.gov/libi/learn/historyculture/lt-col-george-armstrong-custer.htm. Accessed August 27, 2015.
Powers, Thomas. 2010. “How the Battle of Little Bighorn Was Won.” Smithsonian.com. November. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-the-battle-of-little-bighorn-was-won-63880188/. Accessed August 27, 2015.
Robbins, James S. 2014. The Real Custer: From Boy General to Tragic Hero. Washington, DC: Regnery.
Wert, Jeffry D. 2006. “George Custer.” Civil War Times Magazine. March/April. http://www.historynet.com/george-custer. Accessed August 27, 2015.
Custer, George Armstrong—Primary Document
Custer’s Last Stand in the New York Times (1876)
Because General George Armstrong Custer was a very well-known and highly decorated veteran of the U.S. Civil War, it was very big news a decade later when reports began to circulate of his demise at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in the Great Sioux War in present-day Montana. In time, tales of Custer’s courage and derring-do became colored by warnings of overconfidence and recklessness, and Custer’s legend took on a more multifaceted complexion.
THE LITTLE HORN MASSACRE
The dispatches giving an account of the slaughter of Gen. Custer’s command, published by The Times of yesterday, are confirmed and supplemented by official reports from Gen. A. H. Terry, commanding the expedition. On June 25 Gen. Custer’s command came upon the main camp of Sitting Bull, and at once attacked it, charging the thickest part of it with five companies, Major Reno, with seven companies attacking on the other side. The soldiers were repulsed and a wholesale slaughter ensued. Gen. Custer, his brother, his nephew, and his brother-in-law were killed, and not one of his detachment escaped. The Indians surrounded Major Reno’s command and held them in the hills during a whole day, but Gibbon’s command came up and the Indians left. The number of killed is stated at 300 and the wounded at 31. Two hundred and seven men are said to have been buried in one place. The list of killed includes seventeen commissioned officers.
It is the opinion of Army officers in Chicago, Washington, and Philadelphia, including Gens. Sherman and Sheridan, that Gen. Custer was rashly imprudent to attack such a large number of Indians, Sitting Bull’s force being 4,000 strong. Gen. Sherman thinks that the accounts of the disaster are exaggerated. The wounded soldiers are being conveyed to Fort Lincoln. Additional details are anxiously awaited throughout the country.
DETAILS OF THE BATTLE
Chicago, July 6.—A special to the Times tonight from Bismarck, recounts most graphically the late encounter with the Indians on the Little Big Horn. Gen. Custer left the Rosebud on June 22, with twelve companies of the Seventh Cavalry, striking a trail where Reno left it, leading in the direction of the Little Horn. On the evening of the 24th fresh trails were reported, and on the morning of the 25th an Indian village, twenty miles above the mouth of the Little Horn was reported about three miles long and half a mile wide and fifteen miles away. Custer pushed his command rapidly through. They had made a march of seventy-eight miles in twenty-four hours preceding the battle. When near the village it was discovered that the Indians were moving in hot haste as if retreating. Reno, with seven companies of the Seventh Cavalry, was ordered to the left to attack the village at its head, while Custer, with five companies, went to the right and commenced a vigorous attack. Reno fell on them with three companies of cavalry, and was almost instantly surrounded, and after one hour or more of vigorous fighting, during which he lost Lieuts. Hodgson and McIntosh and Dr. Dewolf and twelve men, with several Indian scouts killed and many wounded, he cut his way through to the river and gained a bluff 300 feet in height, where he intrenched and was soon joined by Col. Benton with four companies. In the meantime the Indians resumed the attack, making repeated and desperate charges, which were repulsed with great slaughter to the Indians. They gained higher ground than Reno occupied, and as their arms were longer range and better than the cavalry’s, they kept up a galling fire until nightfall. During the night Reno strengthened his position, and was prepared for another attack, which was made at daylight.
The day wore on. Reno had lost in killed and wounded a large portion of his command, forty odd having been killed before the bluff was reached, many of them in hand to hand conflict with the Indians, who outnumbered them ten to one, and his men had been without water for thirty-six hours. The suffering was heartrending. In this state of affairs they determined to reach the water at all hazards, and Col. Benton made a sally with his company, and routed the main body of the Indians who were guarding the approach to the river. The Indian sharpshooters were nearly opposite the mouth of the ravine through which the brave boys approached the river, but the attempt was made, and though one man was killed and seven wounded the water was gained and the command relieved. When the fighting ceased for the night Reno further prepared for attacks.
There had been forty-eight hours’ fighting, with no word from Custer. Twenty-four hours more of fighting and the suspense ended, when the Indians abandoned their village in great haste and confusion. Reno knew then that succor was near at hand. Gen. Terry, with Gibbon commanding his own infantry, had arrived, and as the comrades met men wept on each other’s necks. Inquiries were then made for Custer, but none could tell where he was. Soon an officer came rushing into camp and related that he had found Custer, dead, stripped naked, but not mutilated, and near him his two brothers, Col. Tom and Boston Custer. His brother-in-law, Col. Calhoun, and his nephew Col. Yates. Col. Keogh, Capt. Smith, Lieut. Crittenden, Lieut. Sturgis, Col. Cooke, Lieut. Porter, Lieut. Harrington, Dr. Lord, Mack Kellogg, the Bismarck Tribune correspondent, and 190 men and scouts. Custer went into battle with Companies C, L, I, F, and E, of the Seventh Cavalry, and the staff and non-commissioned staff of his regiment and a number of scouts, and only one Crow scout remained to tell the tale. All are dead. Custer was surrounded on every side by Indians, and horses fell as they fought on skirmish line or in line of battle. Custer was among the last who fell, but when his cheering voice was no longer heard, the Indians made easy work of the remainder. The bodies of all save the newspaper correspondent were stripped, and most of them were horribly mutilated. Custer’s was not mutilated. He was shot through the body and through the head. The troops cared for the wounded and buried the dead, and returned to their base for supplies and instructions from the General of the Army.
Col. Smith arrived at Bismarck last night with thirty-five of the wounded. The Indians lost heavily in the battle. The Crow Scout survived by hiding in a ravine. He believes the Indians lost more than the whites. The village numbered 1,800 lodges, and it is thought there were 4,000 warriors. Gen. Custer was directed by Gen. Terry to find and feel of the Indians, but not to fight unless Terry arrived with infantry and with Gibbon’s column. The casualties foot up 261 killed and fifty-two wounded.
Source: The New York Times, July 7, 1876.