The Real Custer

by James S Robbins

  In September 1873, Custer attended a reunion of the Army of the Tennessee in Toledo, Ohio, to network with Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan. In the receiving line after the banquet, “a certain familiarity grew up between the visitors and ladies,” and the girls started kissing the generals. This “opened an excellent opportunity for the fair belles of Toledo and the sunny daughters of the rural districts to kiss the president and some of the military heroes of the late war,” the Toledo Commercial reported, “and they took advantage of the opportunity.” Sheridan and Custer competed to see who could get the most kisses, and George, “whose position was on the left, made a brilliant charge, and for ten minutes kissed every lady that passed him.” According to the reporter’s informal, tongue-in-cheek count, Custer won the contest 417–410, with President Grant coming in at 393, and Sherman with 297.8 Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper ran a full-page engraving of the scene entitled “The Generals Kissing the Girls,” with George accepting the attentions of a swooning maiden, a scandalized matron looking on.9 This event no doubt helped solidify George’s public reputation as a ladies’ man.

  There were less innocent accounts of Custer’s waywardness. One concerned a Board of Inquiry allegedly held late in the Civil War regarding a dozen or more prostitutes Custer had put on the Federal payroll, listing them as “mule skinners.” When it was uncovered, Custer was not punished but forced to repay the money. There was no finding that George personally availed himself of the women’s services. The records of the proceeding were made secret, but according to Harry S. Truman’s friend Keith Wilson Jr., the president enjoyed looking through old classified documents in his spare time and “got a big kick out of reading about Custer’s womanizing.”10

  A better-known story of George’s alleged waywardness concerned his relationship with a pregnant Indian woman captured at Washita named Meotzi, also known as Monahsetah or “Spring Grass,” daughter of the slain chief Little Rock. George called her “an exceedingly comely squaw, possessing a bright, cheery face, a countenance beaming with intelligence, and a disposition more inclined to be merry than one usually finds among the Indians.”11 Frederick Benteen said that Custer “slept with her all the time” in the winter of 1868–69 in camp and when she accompanied the campaign as a translator, and she was also allegedly intimate with Tom Custer. According to scout Ben Clark, Raphael Romero was put in charge of the rest of the captive squaws and sent them around to officers’ tents every night.12

  However, Clark’s and especially Benteen’s motives in telling these stories have been questioned, and there are no other such accounts. Cheyenne gossip attributed Meotzi’s eventual son to George, but since the timeline made no sense (the baby was born in January 1869), Custer was then called the father of a purported subsequent child, of which there is no record. But it is likely that George could not father children in any case, due to sterility caused by gonorrhea he had contracted during his 1859 West Point furlough.13 And if he was up to something with Meotzi, he was not very circumspect; he mentioned her extensively in My Life on the Plains and even wrote Libbie about her at the time. And whatever the truth of George’s relationships with other women, Libbie never sought greener pastures and never remarried after he was gone.

  The Custers had no children, and George never showed any indication of wanting to be a father. At news of a mutual friend’s new baby, he wrote Libbie that he “pitied him and congratulated myself that it was his wife and not mine who was the victim.” He said he had “love enough for you but none to spare upon someone who I have never seen and don’t want to see,” and who would give him “much more anxiety & troubles than pleasure. You are all I desire, let those who must then have children. You are my wife and my baby I ask for no more.”14 Perhaps George’s unsympathetic attitude was a rationalization of his disappointment in being unable to have children, since he probably would have been a loving and caring father.

  Instead, the 7th Cavalry became part of Custer’s extended family. Tom Custer was in the regiment, and George lobbied unsuccessfully for a commission for their young brother Boston. Bos later accompanied the unit on several expeditions as a civilian. Handsome Lieutenant James Calhoun—the shy “Adonis” of the regiment—met George’s sister Margaret in 1870, and they were married two years later. Captain Myles Moylan married Calhoun’s sister Charlotte. Fred Calhoun, James’s brother, married George’s niece Emma Reed, and Custer tried but failed to have him transferred to the unit. It was common for families to accumulate in regiments in those days, since under the old system an officer would sign on with a unit and stay with it for most if not all his career. Custer said service on the frontier amounted “almost to social exile,” so it was natural for officers to take a romantic interest in their colleagues’ eligible visiting sisters and cousins. Other friends and favorites of his included George W. Yates (who was from Monroe), Thomas B. Weir, and Algernon E. Smith.

  George did not play favorites with regimental members of the “Custer Clan.” He would even discipline brother Tom if it was warranted. But there was some resentment of what Lieutenant Charles W. Larned referred to as Custer’s “royal family” and the perception of favoritism. Libbie called the officers of the 7th Cavalry “a medley of incongruous elements,” among whom Custer had his critics and detractors.15

  “Custer is not making himself at all agreeable to the officers of his command,” Larned wrote at Camp Sturgis, Yankton, Dakota, in 1873. “He keeps himself aloof and spends his time in excogitating annoying, vexatious and useless orders which visit us like the swarm of evils from Pandora’s box, small, numberless and disagreeable.”16 Custer “wears the men out by ceaseless and unnecessary labor. . . . We all fear that such ill advised and useless impositions will result in large desertions when the command is paid off, as it will be tomorrow morning.” Larned said that “Custer is not belying his reputation—which is that of a man selfishly indifferent to others, and ruthlessly determined to make himself conspicuous at all hazards.”17

  Edward S. Godfrey recalled that “Gen. Custer in matters of discipline gave little or no attention to the enlisted men” but rather “held his officers responsible” for the infractions of the men and would punish whole units. Godfrey said that “those who sympathized with his principal aim, discipline, were at first dumbfounded and then outraged.”18 Colonel Sturgis’s periodic returns to the 7th were met with joy, according to Larned, “for how long no-one knows . . . perhaps only for a few days—any time would be a relief.” Sturgis said, “Custer was not a popular man among his troops, by any means. He was tyrannical, and had no regard for the soldiers under him.”19

  One of Custer’s most important critics was Captain Frederick William Benteen, a Virginian who had sided with the Union during the Civil War and fought bravely at Pea Ridge, Vicksburg, and other battles in the West.20 He ended the war the commander of the 138th Colored U.S. Volunteers, and after was assigned to the 7th Cavalry as a captain. “I’ve been a loser in a way, all my life,” Benteen wrote, “by rubbing a bit against the angles—or hair—of folks, instead of going with their whims; but I couldn’t go otherwise—’twould be against the grain of myself.”21 His contrarian spirit was certain to clash with Custer’s ego, and the two quickly developed an enduring enmity. Benteen took Custer to task for, as he saw it, abandoning Major Elliot at Washita. In 1873, during the Yellowstone expedition, Custer disallowed a request for emergency leave so Benteen could visit his desperately ill daughter, who later died. But Custer was not the only person with whom Benteen had bad blood; his private letters revealed him to be “a man of monumental vindictiveness and cancerous bitterness toward almost all his old comrades.”22

  Living in the West brought Custer in frequent close contact with Indians, especially the friendly tribes and bands that congregated near the forts, often for protection from the more warlike groups. “It is pleasant at all times, and always interesting, to have a village of peaceable Indians locate their lodges near our frontier posts or camps,” he wrote. “The
daily visits of the Indians, from the most venerable chief to the strapped pappoose, their rude interchange of civilities, their barterings, races, dances, legends, strange customs, and fantastic ceremonies, all combine to render them far more agreeable as friendly neighbors than as crafty, bloodthirsty enemies.”23

  Custer studied the people of the Plains and wrote accounts of their daily life and culture. He learned some of their sign language but mostly communicated through intermediaries, often mixed-race tribal members with a foot in both cultures. He forged good relationships with his scouts, often Osage, Delaware, Crow, and Arikara, frequent victims of larger and fiercer tribes, who worked with the Army against their traditional enemies. He respected the scouts and their innate knowledge of the Plains, and they generally liked and respected Custer. His Indian nicknames included Long Hair, Creeping Panther, and, after Washita, Son of Morning Star.

  Custer’s interest in Indian ways was partly intellectual but also practical. He needed to understand them to live among them, pacify them, and if necessary fight them. He was far from the stereotype later ascribed to him of a brutish Indian killer motivated by scorn and hatred. This is not to say he was without prejudice: Custer was a product of his times and had the predispositions of a white soldier, and he was also a believer in American civilization and progress, which in those days was synonymous with taming, settling, and harnessing the frontier.

  Custer wrote that “in studying the Indian character,” he was “shocked and disgusted by many of his traits and customs.”24 He critiqued the myth of the “noble savage,” which had been a staple of Western literature since the seventeenth century, and described Indian life as he observed it. “Stripped of the beautiful romance with which we have been so long willing to envelop him,” he wrote, “transferred from the inviting pages of the novelist to the localities where we are compelled to meet with him, in his native village, on the war path, and when raiding upon our frontier settlements and lines of travel, the Indian forfeits his claim to the appellation of the ‘noble red man.’” Custer said that the white men on the Plains saw the Indian “as he is, and, so far as all knowledge goes, as he ever has been, a savage in every sense of the word.” He added that the Indian was “not worse, perhaps, than his white brother would be similarly born and bred, but one whose cruel and ferocious nature far exceeds that of any wild beast of the desert.”

  Nevertheless, Custer said that among the Indians he found “much to be admired, and still more of deep and unvarying interest.”25 He said that Indian life, “with its attendant ceremonies, mysteries, and forms, is a book of unceasing interest. Grant that some of its pages are frightful, and, if possible, to be avoided, yet the attraction is none the weaker.” He believed that the Indian was a unique type of person possessing an enduring attraction. “Study him, fight him, civilize him if you can,” Custer wrote, “he remains still the object of your curiosity, a type of man peculiar and undefined, subjecting himself to no known law of civilization, contending determinedly against all efforts to win him from his chosen mode of life.”26

  Challenges arose from the Indians’ sense of nationalism. “The Indians have a strong attachment for the land containing the bones of their ancestors,” Custer wrote, “and dislike to leave it. Love of country is almost a religion with them. . . . there is a strong local attachment that the white man does not feel, and consequently does not respect.”27 This attachment to the land set up the fundamental conflict, since settlers, miners, and industrialists coveted the fields and the mineral wealth of the West. But Custer did not want perpetual war on the Plains. “I have yet to make the acquaintance of that officer of the army who, in time of undisturbed peace, desired a war with the Indians,” he wrote. “On the contrary, the army is the Indian’s best friend, so long as the latter desires to maintain friendship.”28

  Custer believed that the most enduring friendships with the Indians were based on interest. In dealing with any tribe, the whites had to first demonstrate that they could not be driven away, but then to act fairly and “observe strict justice in all dealings” with them. Indians “are naturally cruel to each other as well as to the whites,” Custer said. “It is their nature.” Achieving greatness through committing “acts of barbarity” was an idea “instilled into the Indian’s mind from his birth to his death.” Hence, force was needed to meet the Indians on their own terms and to make them “respect the whites and comprehend the power of the government.” But Custer noted that even when an Indian submitted to government power, “he keenly feels the injustice that has been done him, and being of a proud, haughty nature, he resents it.”29

  Like many if not most Army officers, Custer believed many of the Indian problems on the Plains were caused by whites, particularly corrupt bureaucrats in the Indian Bureau. A vast and expensive Federal apparatus was erected to manage the reservation system, which became, as it was said, a means for whites to use Indians to rob both whites and Indians. Graft, influence peddling, and kickbacks were common. Federal payments to the tribes became targets for private traders and those in government-mandated monopolies who sold overpriced food, clothing, and tools, not to mention whiskey, rifles, and other things that made life difficult for the soldiers. Custer summed up his skeptical view of Indian agents with an anecdote from a tribal chief, who asked him to “see the Great Father and make a statement of their wrongs.” Custer said he would do what he could, and maybe the government would send a new agent. “‘No,’ said the chief, ‘we don’t want a new agent. Agents come here poor and get rich in a few years. This one has everything he wants. If a new one comes we will have to make him rich also.’”30

  Custer criticized the reservation system for its effect on Indian character. He contrasted the Indian “where Nature placed him . . . the fearless hunter, the matchless horseman and warrior of the Plains,” with the denizen of the reservation, “grovelling in beggary, bereft of many of the qualities which in his wild state tended to render him noble, and heir to a combination of vices partly his own, partly bequeathed to him from the pale-face.” Subjected to a life shaped by white civilization, the Indian loses that which defined him and made him who he was; as Custer said, “He fades away and dies.”31

  The Indians’ natural identity was what Custer most admired about a people whom fate had made his enemies. “If I were an Indian,” he wrote, “I often think that I would greatly prefer to cast my lot among those of my people who adhered to the free open plains, rather than submit to the confined limits of a reservation, there to be the recipient of the blessed benefits of civilization, with its vices thrown in without stint or measure.”32 To Custer, the renegades, the Indians who kept far from the reservations, the bands who would follow Sitting Bull into the wilderness to live the traditional way of life and await the white cavalrymen, represented freedom. They were motivated by the same spirit that animated him, the thirst for life, adventurous and unbounded. He saw them as he saw himself—fearless hunter, matchless horseman, and warrior of the Plains.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  THE GREAT BUFFALO HUNT

  In the winter of 1871–72, Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich of Russia, the twenty-one-year-old fourth son of Tsar Alexander II, arrived for a grand tour of the United States. Diplomatic visits of this level were rare in the American interior, and at the time Russia was well regarded, if mysterious.1 The duke was greeted with acclaim in every city he visited, across the Northeast, throughout the Great Lakes, and into the Midwest. Crowds turned out to see the handsome, young Russian royal, and local politicians rushed to be seen with him. “Alexis fever” broke out; during his visit to West Point, one newspaper reported, “by some happy combination of circumstances the company included an extraordinarily large proportion of very beautiful ladies.”2

  Alexis met with President Grant and other political leaders in Washington, and during a White House dinner Sheridan suggested the grand duke take a trip to the American West to participate in a buffalo hunt. Alexis agreed, and Sheridan notified George Cu
ster, then on temporary duty in Kentucky, that he would be master of the hunt.3

  The Custers were the couple of choice to entertain visiting politicians and other dignitaries on the frontier. They gave their company a taste of the open Plains, seeing and meeting actual Indians and witnessing the pageantry of the cavalry drill. For the Custers it was an opportunity to maintain their links to the East and reinforce George’s celebrity status. Custer’s natural sense of showmanship, and personal charm, guaranteed a memorable time.

  Alexis arrived in America just in time to see the vanishing West. The plains were changing, and the frontier of old was giving way to civilization and order. The expression “the Wild West,” first popularized in the 1830s, paradoxically grew more common as the West became less wild. By the 1870s most of the country had been surveyed and mapped, and with maps came boundaries. The West was being tamed and contained. Railroads brought settlers and commerce. Barbed wire enclosed vast tracts of land. The remaining Plains Indian tribes were being herded onto reservations. Yellowstone National Park was founded in March 1872 in an effort to preserve some of the dwindling wilderness. The Witchita Eagle editorialized, “Here, where five years ago the buffalo had scarcely disappeared, and Texas herds roamed at will, great fields of wheat of brightest green now greet the eye, and young orchards and forest trees are growing finely. Thus is the wilderness tamed. Thus are new empires formed.”4 Poet John Greenleaft Whittier wrote of the march of progress,

  Behind the scared squaw’s birch canoe,

  The steamer smokes and raves;

  And city lots are staked for sale

  Above old Indian graves.5

  By the 1870s, whites who wanted to experience the romance of buffalo hunting had to hurry. An 1859 travel guide to the Plains noted that the “monarch of the prairies” was fast disappearing. “Not many years since they thronged in countless multitudes over all that vast area lying between Mexico and the British possessions,” Captain Randolph B. Marcy noted, “but now their range is confined within very narrow limits, and a few more years will probably witness the extinction of the species.”6