The Last Stand

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  Libbie Custer touched briefly on how she received word of the disaster in Boots and Saddles, pp. 221–22. Gurley’s account of delivering the news to Libbie and her sister-in-law is in Hanson, pp. 312–14, as is Marsh’s account of turning down Libbie’s invitation to visit her and the other widows. See also Dennis Farioli and Ron Nichols’s “Fort A. Lincoln, July 1876,” pp. 11–16. In an Oct. 3, 1876, letter to his wife, Lawrence Barrett said that an officer who saw Libbie on her way from Fort Lincoln to Monroe, Michigan, “says that he believes she will become insane—that her nervous energy will support her for a time, but when the strain has weakened her strength, her brain will give way,” in Sandy Barnard’s “The Widow Custer: Consolation Comes from Custer’s Best Friend,” p. 4. Barrett’s description of his visit with Libbie is in an Oct. 25, 1876, letter to his wife, p. 3.

  DeRudio told Camp that at the RCI “there was a private understanding between a number of officers that they would do all they could to save Reno,” in Hardorff’s On the Little Bighorn, p. 241. In 1904, a story in the Northwestern Christian Advocate claimed that Reno had admitted to a former editor of the Advocate that “his strange actions” both during and after the Battle of the Little Bighorn were “due to drink,” in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, pp. 338–39. Thomas French, one of the other heavy drinkers in the regiment, died of alcoholism on Mar. 27, 1882. For the linkage between the article that appeared in the Jan. 3, 1887, Kansas City Times and Benteen’s ultimate court-martial, as well as the parallels between that article and the one Benteen penned about Custer and the Battle of the Washita, see John Carroll’s The Court Martial of Frederick W. Benteen, especially p. vi. Benteen compared his literary outpourings about Custer to “a goose doing his mess by moonlight” in a Mar. 23, 1896, letter to Goldin, in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, p. 295. Benteen’s comment that “[t]he Lord . . . had at last rounded the scoundrels up” is in a Feb. 17, 1896, letter to Goldin, in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, p. 271. Colonel Samuel Sturgis’s criticisms of Custer appeared in the July 22, 1876, issue of the Army and Navy Journal. On Libbie’s role as guardian of her husband’s reputation, see Louise Barnett’s Touched by Fire, pp. 351–72, and Shirley Leckie’s Elizabeth Bacon Custer, pp. 256–306. On Custer and the myth of the Last Stand, see Richard Slotkin’s The Fatal Environment, especially the chapter “To the Last Man: Assembling the Last Stand Myth, 1876,” pp. 435–76, as well as Slotkin’s Gunfighter Nation, especially the chapter “The White City and the Wild West: Buffalo Bill and the Mythic Space of American History, 1880–1917,” pp. 63–87. Benteen told of attending the lecture about the LBH, then insisted, “I’m out of that whirlpool now,” in a May 26, 1896, letter to Goldin, in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, p. 302. He died two years later on June 22, 1898.

  In his notes, Camp recorded that the three slabs of stone used to construct the Custer monument weighed five, six, and seven tons and were “hauled one piece at a time to Custer battlefield during winter in a wooden drag or sled pulled by 24 mules, 4 abreast, crossed LBH 3 times on ice. Derrick of ash used to put stones in place. W. B. Jordan says no steamboat pilot wanted to take monument. Finally Grant Marsh took it on F. Y. Batchelor, put it in bow of his boat and took it to Fort Custer,” in box 6, folder 2, #57, Camp Papers, BYU. See also Jerome Greene’s Stricken Field, pp. 30–33.

  Epilogue: Libbie’s House

  My account of the meeting between Steve Alexander and Ernie LaPointe is based on “A Visit of Peace” by Dean Cousino in the Sept. 30, 2006, Monroe News. Alexander’s Web site address is Georgecuster.com. Also see Michael Elliott’s Custerology, pp. 90–101. Elliott’s probing analysis of the meaning of the battle in modern society and culture has deeply influenced my own thinking about the LBH. See also Paul Hutton’s “From Little Bighorn to Little Big Man,” pp. 19–45. Vine Deloria refers to Custer as “the Ugly American” in Custer Died for Your Sins, p. 148. He Dog’s statement that “the cause of that trouble” was in Washington, D.C., is in Hardorff’s Lakota Recollections, p. 78. White Man Runs Him’s claim that Custer said, “I have an enemy back where many white people live that I hate,” was recorded by Edward Curtis, in The Papers of Edward S. Curtis, edited by James Hutchins, p. 41. The passage in which Custer expresses his sympathies for the Indians who “adhered to the free open plains” is in My Life on the Plains, p. 22. Even Custer’s peers recognized that Custer was a cultural chameleon; according to John Wright, one of Custer’s classmates at West Point: “Custer was only meeting the demands of the country when he met his fate, his fault was the fault of his times and people,” Recollections of John M. Wright, LBHBNM Collection, cited in Lisa Adolf’s “Custer: All Things to All Men,” p. 16. In Moby-Dick, Melville writes, “Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease,” p. 82.

  DeMallie links Bull Head’s and Kate Bighead’s uses of the term “no ears,” in “ ‘These Have No Ears,’ ” p. 534. According to Utley in The Lance and the Shield, “Sitting Bull defiantly swore to all that . . . he would rather die like Crazy Horse than leave his new home at Standing Rock,” p. 240. No one at Standing Rock felt, however, that Sitting Bull had a death wish in the last years of his life. According to Stanley Vestal, “As to his wanting to die and wanting to fight, the old men say it is false. They say, ‘If he had wished to die fighting, he . . . had only to take his rifle, ride to Fort Yates, and begin shooting at the soldiers,’ ” in Vestal, New Sources, p. 312. On Sitting Bull’s relationship with Catherine Weldon, see Eileen Pollack’s Woman Walking Ahead. Weldon’s letter to McLaughlin saying that she respects Sitting Bull “as . . . my own father” is in Vestal, New Sources, p. 100. James Carignan’s report to McLaughlin that Sitting Bull “has lost all confidence in the whites” is in Vestal, New Sources, p. 10. Ernie LaPointe’s account of his great-grandfather’s death is in Sitting Bull, pp. 102–7. According to LaPointe, the crying child that the agency police claimed was Crowfoot was actually Crowfoot’s twelve-year-old half brother William, p. 104. In Woman Walking Ahead, Eileen Pollack writes about the staged reenactment of Sitting Bull’s death, p. 290, and of “Sitting Bull’s Death Cabin” at the midway in Chicago, p. 295. Custer’s essay “The Red Man” is in E. Lisle Reedstrom’s Bugles, Banners and War Bonnets, p. 311. The 1890 census report read: “At present, the unsettled area has been so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a frontier line,” cited in Utley, The Last Days of the Sioux Nation, p. xvii. For an account of how the dams associated with the Pick-Sloan Plan affected the tribes along the Missouri River, especially the Fort Berthold Indians, see Michael Lawson’s Dammed Indians, pp. 59–62. Gerard Baker described the tribal elders mourning beside the artificially created lake at Fort Berthold in Herman Viola’s Little Bighorn Remembered, pp. x–xi. Like his great-grandfather before him, Ernie LaPointe has seen a vision of the future: “I was told through ceremony that what the Americans have done will come back to them four times. This is why I ask the creator to have pity on them. It doesn’t matter what they have done. I do not wish what is coming from the future on anyone” (personal communication to the author).

  Thomas Coleman’s description of how Custer “[l]ay with a smile on his face” is in I Buried Custer, edited by Bruce Liddic, p. 21. Larry Mc Murtry used a phrace from Coleman’s journal as the title of his excellent examination of massacres in the American West, Oh What a Slaughter. The July 25, 1876, Helena (Montana) Herald contained a letter from Lieutenant James Bradley in which he described Custer in death: “Probably never did [a] hero who had fallen upon the field of battle appear so much to have died a natural death. His expression was rather that of a man who had fallen asleep and enjoyed peaceful dreams, than of one who had met his death amid such fearful scenes as that field had witnessed, the features being wholly without ghastliness or any impress of fear, horror, or despair. He had died as he lived—a hero—and excited the remark from those who had known him and saw him there, “ ‘You could almost imagine him standing before you!’ �
� Godfrey wrote of Custer’s “almost triumphant expression,” in “Address by General E. S. Godfrey,” Custer Battle Files, Billings [Montana] Public Library, cited by Richard Hardorff in The Custer Battle Casualties, p. 24. In Archaeology, History, and Custer’s Last Battle, Richard Fox argues that the term “Last Stand” cannot be properly applied to the Battle of the Little Bighorn given the rapidity with which Custer’s force collapsed. In an interview recorded in March 23, 2000, on The Paula Gordon Show, Richard Slotkin speaks eloquently about the inadequacy of the myth of the Last Stand in our modern age: http://www.paulagordon.com/shows/slotkin/.

  Bibliography

  Albers, Patricia, and Beatrice Medicine, eds. The Hidden Half: Studies of Plains Indian Women. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1983.

  Alfield, Philip L. “Major Reno and His Family in Illinois.” English Westerners’ Brand Book, July 1971, pp. 4–6.

  Alt, David, and Donald W. Hyndman. Roadside Geology of Montana. Missoula, Mont.: Mountain Press, 2006.

  Alter, J. Cecil. Jim Bridger. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962.

  Ambrose, Stephen E. Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors. New York: Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1996.

  Amiotte, Arthur. “Our Selves: The Lakota Dream Experience.” Parabola 6 (1982), pp. 26–32.

  Anderson, Gary C. Sitting Bull and the Paradox of Lakota Nationhood. New York: Longman, 1996.

  Anderson, Harry H. “The Benteen Base Ball Club: Sports Enthusiasts of the Seventh Cavalry.” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 20, no. 3 (Summer 1970), pp. 82–87.

  ———. “Cheyennes at the Little Big Horn—A Study of Statistics.” North Dakota History 27, no. 2 (Spring 1960), pp. 81–93.

  ———. “Indian Peace Talkers and the Conclusion of the Sioux War of 1876.” Nebraska History, December 1963.

  Andrist, Ralph K. The Long Death: The Last Days of the Plains Indian. New York: Collier, 1964.

  Arnold, Steve. “Cooke’s Scrawled Note.” Greasy Grass 14 (May 1998), pp. 18–26.

  Arp, Carl O. “Steamers on the ‘Big Muddy.’ ” Frontier, April–May 1963, pp. 35, 74.

  Asay, Karol. Gray Head and Long Hair: The Benteen-Custer Relationship. New York: Mad Printers of Mattituck, 1983.

  Athearn, Robert G. Forts of the Upper Missouri. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982.

  ———. William Tecumseh Sherman and the Settlement of the West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1956.

  Bailey, John. Pacifying the Plains: General Alfred Terry and the Decline of the Sioux. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979.

  Bailly, E. C. “Echoes from Custer’s Last Fight.” Military Affairs 1 (1953), pp. 170–79.

  Bain, David Haward. Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad. New York: Viking, 1999.

  Baird, Andrew T. “Into the Valley Rode the Six Hundred: The 7th Cavalry and the Battle of the Little Bighorn.” Vulcan Historical Review 4 (Spring 2000), pp. 83–104.

  Barnard, Sandy. Custer’s First Sergeant John Ryan. Terre Haute, Ind.: AST Press, 1996.

  ———. Digging Into Custer’s Last Stand. Terre Haute, Ind.: AST Press, 2004.

  ———. I Go with Custer: The Life and Death of Reporter Mark Kellogg. Bismarck, N.D.: Bismarck Tribune, 1996.

  ———, ed. Speaking About Custer. Terre Haute, Ind.: AST Press, 1991.

  ———, ed. Ten Years with Custer: A 7th Cavalryman’s Memoirs. Fort Collins, Colo.: Citizen Printing, 2001.

  ———. “The Widow Custer: Consolation Comes from Custer’s Best Friend.” Greasy Grass 17 (May 2001), pp. 2–7.

  Barnett, Louise. “Powder River.” Greasy Grass 16 (May 2000), pp. 2–8.

  ———. Touched by Fire: The Life, Death, and Mythic Afterlife of George Armstrong Custer. New York: Holt, 1996.

  Barry, David F. Indian Notes on the Custer Battle. Edited by Usher L. Burdick. Baltimore: Proof Press, 1937.

  Bass, Althea. Arapaho Way: A Memoir of an Indian Boyhood. New York: Clarkson Potter, 1966.

  Bates, Charles Francis. Custer’s Indian Battles. Bronxville, N.Y., 1936.

  ———. “Terry’s Last Order to Custer.” In 50th Anniversary Celebration, compiled by Tom O’Neil. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Arrow and Trooper Publishing, 1991.

  Beardsley, J. L. “Could Custer Have Won?” Outdoor Life 71, no. 3 (March 1933), pp. 10–11, 56–57.

  Beck, Paul. Inkpaduta: Dakota Leader. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008.

  Bede, Aaron McGaffey. Sitting Bull–Custer. Bismarck, N.D., 1913.

  Beersin, Dorothy G. “The Centennial City.” In Philadelphia: A 300-Year History, edited by Russell F. Weigley. New York: Norton, 1982, pp. 417–70.

  Belitz, Larry. Brain Tanning the Sioux Way. Hot Springs, S.D.: Larry Belitz, 2006.

  Benedict, Ruth. “The Vision in Plains Culture.” American Anthropologist 24 (1922), pp. 1–23.

  Benham, D. J. “The Sioux Warrior’s Revenge.” Canadian Magazine 43 (September 1914), pp. 455–63.

  Benke, Arthur C., and Colbert E. Cushing. Rivers of North America. Amsterdam and Boston: Elsevier Academic Press, 2005.

  Billings, John D. Hardtack and Coffee: The Unwritten Story of Army Life. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1993.

  Bird, Roy. In His Brother’s Shadow: The Life of Thomas Ward Custer. Paducah, Ky.: Turner Publishing, 2002.

  Blake, Michael. Indian Yell: The Heart of an American Insurgency. Flagstaff, Ariz.: Northland Publishing, 2006.

  Blish, Helen. A Pictographic History of the Oglala Sioux. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967.

  Blouet, Brian W., and Frederick C. Luebke. The Great Plains: Environment and Culture. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1977.

  Bourke, John Gregory. On the Border with Crook. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1971.

  Boyd, O. B. Cavalry Life in Tent and Field. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1982.

  Boyes, Walter F. “White Renegades Living with the Hostiles Go Up Against Custer.” Research and Review 23, no. 1 (Winter 2009), pp. 11–19, 31.

  Braatz, Timothy. “Clash of Cultures as Euphemism: Avoiding History at the Little Bighorn.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 28, no. 4 (2004), pp. 107–30.

  Brackett, William S. “Custer’s Last Battle on the Little Big Horn in Montana, June 25, 1876.” Contributions to the Historical Society of Montana 4 (1903), pp. 259–76.

  Braden, Charles. “An Incident of the Yellowstone Expedition of 1873.” Journal of the United States Cavalry Association 15, no. 54 (October 1904), pp. 289–301.

  ———. “The Yellowstone Expedition of 1873.” Journal of the United States Cavalry Association 16 (October 1905), pp. 218–41.

  Bradley, James H. “Journal of the Sioux Campaign of 1876 Under the Command of General John Gibbon.” Contributions to the Historical Society of Montana 4 (1903), pp. 140–228.

  ———. The March of the Montana Column: A Prelude to the Custer Disaster. Edited by Edgar I. Stewart. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961.

  Brady, Cyrus T. Indian Fights and Fighters. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1971.

  Branch, E. Douglas. The Hunting of the Buffalo. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1962.

  Bray, Kingsley M. Crazy Horse: A Lakota Life. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006.

  ———. “Teton Sioux Population History, 1655–1881.” Nebraska History 7 (Summer 1994), pp. 165–88.

  Brigham, Earl K. “Custer’s Meeting with Secretary of War Belknap at Fort Abraham Lincoln.” North Dakota Historical Quarterly 19, no. 2 (April 1952), pp. 129–31.

  Brill, Charles J. Conquest of the Southern Plains: Uncensored Narrative of the Battle of the Washita and Custer’s Southern Campaign. Millwood, N.Y.: Kraus Reprint, 1975.

  Brininstool, E. A. Troopers with Custer: Historic Incidents of the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1989.

&n
bsp; Britt, Albert. “Custer’s Last Fight.” Pacifi c Historical Review 13, no. 1 (1944), pp. 12–20.

  Brizée-Bowen, Sandra L. For All to See: The Little Bighorn in Plains Indian Art. Spokane, Wash.: Arthur H. Clark, 2003.

  Broome, Jeff. “In Memory of Lt. James Sturgis.” Guidon 3, no. 3 (June 2000), p. 21.

  Brown, Dee. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West. New York: Holt, 2001.

  ———. Showdown at Little Big Horn. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004.

  Brown, Jerold E. “Custer’s Vision.” In Studies in Battle Command. Fort Leavenworth, Kans.: Combat Studies Institute, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, pp. 75–78.

  Brown, Jesse, and A. M. Willard. The Black Hills Trails: A History of the Struggles of the Pioneers in the Winning of the Black Hills. Rapid City, S.D.: Rapid City Journal, 1924.

  Brown, Joseph Epes. The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk’s Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1953.

  Brown, Mark H. The Plainsmen of the Yellowstone: A History of the Yellowstone Basin. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961.

  Brust, James. “Lt. Oscar Long’s Early Map Details Terrain, Battle Positions.” Greasy Grass 11 (May 1995), pp. 5–13.

  Brust, James, Brian C. Pohanka, and Sandy Barnard. Where Custer Fell: Photographs of the Little Bighorn Battlefield Then and Now. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2005.

  Buechel, Eugene A., and Paul I. Manhart. Lakota Tales and Texts. Chamberlain, S.D.: Tipi Press, 1998.