Bill O'Reilly's Legends and Lies

by David Fisher

  The army’s inability to gain control over all the tribes eventually led to a change in strategy. Rather than capturing the Indians, the army would destroy their source of food—the Plains buffalo. The government planned to starve the Indians onto reservations. Unlike the Indians, buffalo were a very easy target. It is estimated that more than four and a half million buffalo were killed by 1872.

  The ambitious George Custer clearly understood the value of publicity, often allowing reporters to ride with his troops. This portrait seems to illustrate the no-nonsense attitude that caused him to reject a cautious approach when his scouts discovered the encampment at Little Bighorn.

  Colonel Custer remained a valuable public-relations tool for the government during this period. When Grand Duke Alexis of Russia wanted to tour the West and see wild Indians, for example, Custer and Buffalo Bill Cody were assigned to make all the arrangements. To ensure the grand duke’s safety, Custer supposedly recruited some reservation Indians to “attack” the train, with all the requisite whooping and hollering. Before this event began, these Indians were given a considerable amount of beer; so much beer, in fact, that those show Indians got carried away and seemed to actually be attacking the train. Alexis was so convinced the attack was real that he had to be restrained from shooting at them.

  To an ambitious man like Custer, who lived for the battle—and for the acclaim that came with victory—these assignments must have been terribly boring. But Custer’s Luck held once again—and he managed to turn a mundane task into career gold: The military was needed to protect the men who were building America’s railroads as they expanded into Indian lands. In 1873, the Northern Pacific approached the Black Hills, the sacred lands promised to the Sioux forever in the Fort Laramie treaty of 1868. That expansion came to an unexpected halt when the company went bankrupt, taking with it numerous other businesses and precipitating the Panic of 1873, the worst economic crisis in the early history of America. Unemployment skyrocketed and the government became desperate to find new sources of revenue. For several years, there had been rumors of vast gold deposits in the Black Hills—exactly what was needed to restore the failing economy. On July 2, 1874, Custer led a thousand troops out of Fort Rice on the Missouri River into the Black Hills to protect the surveyors searching for gold.

  Naturally, accompanying this expedition were eager young newspapermen from New York and Philadelphia anxious to report the news of a new American gold rush—and to bestow the proper credit on the stalwart Colonel Custer, who was leading the way into the future.

  On July 27, the first strike was reported on French Creek. In what can accurately be described as a masterstroke of public relations, somehow George Custer, a military officer who had never touched a shovel, managed to receive at least partial credit for the gold strike. Within days, the Bismarck Tribune reported, “Gold in the Grass Roots and in Every Panful of Earth Below: Anybody Can Find It—No Former Experience Necessary.”

  For Custer, the timing seemed perfect: Within months, his colorful autobiography, My Life on the Plains, was published. This supposedly true tale of the adventures of a fighting man on the frontier sold well and was met with critical acclaim, going a long way toward restoring his image. Only those who were with him during those times knew the truth, and the increasingly bitter Benteen suggested the book might more accurately be titled My Lie on the Plains.

  Within a year, more than fifteen thousand miners raced west to the Black Hills to find their fortunes. Initially, the government attempted to lease or even buy this land from the Sioux, but the tribe rejected every offer. There was no price for sacred land. Fighting for the last part of their traditional lands that they still held, bands of Sioux warriors began attacking prospectors. The government ordered the Sioux to return to their reservation within sixty days, warning that if they resisted, force would be brought against them. When the Indians refused, General Sheridan ordered three battalions—one of them Custer’s Seventh Cavalry—to find and surround the Indian camps and round them up—or wipe them out.

  For the Indian fighter George Custer, this was an opportunity to get back in the saddle and ride to what he must have believed would be the greatest victory of his career. He was so confident, that when he was offered additional troops and two Gatling guns—essentially machine guns and the most fearsome weapon on the Plains—he turned them down, believing those weapons weren’t needed and would only slow down his advance. The possibility that his mostly inexperienced and undertrained troops might be outnumbered did not shake him; the Plains Indians had never defeated a force the size of his Seventh Cavalry.

  Custer simply did not appreciate the determination of the tribes camped on the banks of the Little Bighorn River. This was not only a battle for their sacred land, but their last chance to protect their way of life. Freedom to roam the plains was being taken from them. They weren’t fighting for something; they were fighting for everything. Sitting Bull was their great chief, which meant he was in charge of the civil affairs, including all negotiations with the United States government, but when the fighting began, Crazy Horse was in command. Crazy Horse was himself a great warrior, a veteran of many indigenous battles, and an excellent tactician. He is credited with devising some of the basic strategies of guerrilla warfare on which special operations are still based. And in his daring and bravery, he was at least the equal of Custer.

  Both sides seemed to know this battle was coming. As Custer prepared to mount up and leave, Libbie had a nightmare that he would die in battle and be scalped, so she pleaded with him to cut his long golden hair. To please her, he did. And during a sacred ceremony, a Sun Dance, Sitting Bull too had a vision: He had seen soldiers and their horses falling upside down from the sky like grasshoppers into his camp. This, he told his people, meant there would be a great victory.

  Historians also wonder about one additional premonition: The night before the battle, Custer supposedly ordered his men to finish their whiskey rations, perhaps trying to help his raw troops find their courage; or, as some have suggested, he knew what was waiting for him.

  There is no question that when planning his attack, Custer drew on his success at the Washita River. He divided his forces into three components; he commanded the largest force, while Major Reno and Captain Benteen were in charge of smaller units. He might not have liked Benteen, but obviously he thought him a capable officer. Reno was ordered to charge into the village, presumably to create the diversion that would allow Custer to take hostages. Custer and Reno anticipated that the Indians would flee when attacked, as they had done previously; this was a grievous miscalculation. The warriors so outnumbered Reno’s troops that rather than flee, they initiated their own counterattack, trapping Reno.

  Custer had dressed in a white buckskin suit with a bright red tie around his neck for the battle. As Reno’s troops swept down on the camp, Custer waved his gray hat at him in approval. But by the time Reno’s advance had been stopped and his troops were in retreat, Custer was moving along the ridgeline to launch his own attack and was not aware of what was happening.

  After Benteen received Custer’s message, “Come quick,” he moved forward with his supply train, but when he reached the battlefield, the besieged Reno ordered him to stay there and reinforce his troops. The appearance of these reinforcements forced the native warriors to cease their attack. But rather than trying to ascertain Custer’s situation and perhaps provide the timely assistance that might have saved him, Reno and Benteen remained in their defensive position much too long. Late in the battle, an officer in Reno’s command, Captain Weir, insisted that they find Custer. When Reno refused, Weir took the initiative and led his company toward Custer’s position. Far away in the swirling dust he saw riders and got ready to attack—and then he realized that all those riders were Indians and they were riding in a circle, shooting at the ground. Reno and Benteen had followed Weir, but when they discovered it was too late, they retreated to their defensive position and fought it out for the rest of the
day.

  Custer often wore a fringed white buckskin jacket, like this one in the Smithsonian, reportedly so that his troops could easily identify him during a battle.

  Although the massacre shocked the nation in the midst of its centennial celebration, by 1889, Custer’s heroic last fight was being celebrated in one of the very first beer advertisements, a colored lithograph that hung in saloons throughout the country and helped create the enduring image of the brave soldiers. Many of the details are wrong. The original painting, donated to the Seventh Cavalry, was destroyed in a barracks fire.

  It will never be known whether Custer fully understood Reno’s predicament. But at some point, he must have realized that his only hope of victory lay in taking sufficient hostages to force the warriors to lay down their weapons. When it became apparent that Sioux warriors blocked his path, it was no longer a matter of victory—he was fighting for survival. He retreated up the slope, trying to reach high ground. There was no cover for his troops, so he ordered them to kill their horses to provide some defense. But it was hopeless. His soldiers were rapidly overwhelmed by a massive force attacking with guns, arrows, clubs, and lances. Custer was shot in his breast, and then in his temple, the second shot killing him.

  In about twenty minutes, all 225 of Custer’s men were dead. Sitting Bull supposedly once told an interviewer that Custer laughed in the last moment of his life, although that’s doubtful, because evidence indicates that the Indians were not even aware that Custer was among the dead. In addition to George Custer, his brothers Tom and Boston and his nephew Henry Reed died on what has become known as Last Stand Hill. An Associated Press reporter sent to cover Custer’s victory was the first AP reporter to die in combat. His notes were found on his body, concluding, “I go with Custer and will be at the death.”

  The nation, celebrating its centennial, was stunned and shaken by the unexpected news of Custer’s Last Stand. It was said that America’s heart was broken. The day after the battle, the Indians packed up their camp and began moving. But this great victory soon proved to be the last major battle of the Indian wars: The defeat caused the army to increase its efforts to subdue the tribes, and within five years, almost all Sioux and Cheyennes would be settled on reservations.

  The nation replayed the battle of Little Bighorn for many years, trying to understand how one of its most brilliant leaders had been so brutally slaughtered. Benteen was criticized for reinforcing Reno rather than Custer, and people wondered if the animosity between the two men had played any role in his decision. But, in fact, he had little choice: Reno was his commanding officer and had ordered him to stay. Reno himself was accused of both cowardice and drunkenness at Little Bighorn. He demanded a court of inquiry be convened; while it did not sustain the charges, it also offered no rebuttals to the claims made against him. But as William Taylor, a soldier who served at Little Bighorn under Reno, later wrote bitterly, “Reno proved incompetent and Benteen showed his indifference—I will not use the uglier words that have often been in my mind. Both failed Custer and he had to fight it out alone.”

  Painted only six years after the battle, this lithograph already demonstrates the esteem with which the heroic Custer, standing taller than all his men, a pistol in one hand and a sword in the other, was being portrayed.

  Did General Custer’s hubris cause him to underestimate his enemy and lead his men into a massacre? Although no one ever questioned George Custer’s bravery, military historians have been critical of Custer’s tactical decisions, from his initial refusal to accept additional men and weapons to his choice to split up his already outnumbered force and attack without sufficient intelligence.

  Years earlier, Custer had written, “My every thought was ambitious. I desired to link my name with acts and men, and in such a manner as to be a mark of honor, not only to the present but to future generations.” Although he achieved his aim to be remembered in history, it is not as he had hoped, because the name George Armstrong Custer will always be associated with one of the most devastating defeats in American history.

  THE REALITY OF AN “INDIAN SUMMER”

  Few things are as welcome as an Indian summer, that sudden and unexpected change in the fall weather after the first frost that brings a brief return to the balmy temperatures of summer. But originally, rather than being welcomed, the possibility of an Indian summer was absolutely terrifying. In the early days of the West, the fear of Indian raids forced settlers to live together in walled forts from spring through the early fall. At the first frost, the Indians would pack up, leave their villages, and move to their winter camping grounds. When they were gone, the settlers would return to their homesteads and make preparations for the winter. For those settlers, after spending months in crowded, confined surroundings, it was like being released from prison. They actually looked forward to the cold of winter.

  Unlike the mood depicted in this pastoral watercolor of Indians camping outside Fort Laramie in about 1860, the early settlers lived in terror of Indian raids.

  When the early settlers tried to bring European values to the Native Americans, the Indians resisted. The first recorded Indian attack took place in March 1622, when Powhatans killed 347 men, women, and children in Jamestown in their houses and fields.

  But as sometimes happened, the weather would turn once again, bringing back the warm sun to melt the snows—and with it would come the Indians. “Indian summer” meant Indian attack. As Henry Howe wrote, “The melting of the snow saddened every countenance and the general warmth of the sun filled every heart with horror. The apprehension of another visit from the Indians, and being driven back to the detested fort, was painful in the highest degree.”

  But as the country grew and the Indians were forced onto reservations, these fears diminished, and over time the term evolved to refer solely to the delightful change in the weather, as it does today.

  BUFFALO BILL

  AND

  ANNIE OAKLEY

  The Radical Opportunists

  The Deadwood stage was bouncing over rough terrain, trying to make time. Inside the coach, five very important men were holding on to the straps for dear life. Up on the box, the driver and shotgun were nervously craning their necks, scanning the horizon for any sign of trouble. They’d heard tell that Indians had been seen in these parts and feared an attack. The driver whipped his team, trying to coax a little more speed out of them—and then they heard the first terrible cry.

  Indians were closing in fast from both sides, screaming their bloodcurdling war whoops, firing their weapons, and waving their war lances as they raced in for the kill. The driver whipped his team again. The guard turned in his seat and counted six pursuers. He let loose with his first volley, knocking one of the attackers right out of his saddle. The coach was bouncing crazily over the hard ground. “Hold tight,” the driver shouted to his passengers, “and keep your heads down!”

  The Indians were shooting back; the driver hunched low in his seat. The guard had reloaded and fired again. A second attacker went sprawling. For a few seconds, the Indians seemed to be closing the gap, but by then the stage was up to full speed, spewing clouds of dust. The driver whipped his horses again and again. With one last Hey-yaa! from the driver, the stage pulled away. The Indians pulled up short. One of them angrily stabbed his long lance into the ground, and then they turned and trotted back from where they had come, leaving the banners on the lance ruffling in the wind.

  After a few seconds of silence, all twenty thousand people in the audience began cheering. The driver, Buffalo Bill, spun the stagecoach around, creating a dust devil, and brought it to a stop directly in front of the grandstand. He hopped down and opened the door, and the king of Denmark, the king of Belgium, the king of Greece, and the king of Saxony—all in London to celebrate Queen Victoria’s jubilee—climbed out to the loud hurrahs of the audience and waved, and then a mighty roar erupted as the future king, Edward, Prince of Wales, emerged. When the cheering stopped, he said to Bill Cody, in a voice lo
ud enough for all to hear, “Colonel, you never held four kings like these before, have you?”

  For more than three decades, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows thrilled America and Europe, as seen in this 1907 reenactment of a battle from the Indian wars.

  Buffalo Bill responded, just as loudly, “I’ve held four kings, but four kings and the Prince of Wales makes a royal flush such as no man has ever held before!” And with a great wave of his hat, Bill Cody ended the show.

  Some courageous men explored and settled the West, and other brave settlers fought the Native American warriors for the right to live there, but William “Buffalo Bill” Cody, with important assistance from Annie Oakley, Sitting Bull, and Geronimo, successfully merchandised it. For three decades, Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West brought the spirit and the adventure of life on the frontier to audiences around the world, successfully creating the romantic, rip-roaring image of the Old West that persists to this day. Presidents, kings, Queen Victoria, and Pope Leo XIII were all captivated by the action-packed performance.