The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn (54 page)

Hunter writes of a Missouri riverboat’s “amphibian role, literally crawling along the river bottom,” p. 251; he also writes of how “the western steamboat, like the American ax, the revolver, and barbed wire, was a typical mechanical expression of a fluid and expanding frontier society,” p. 65. Joseph Mills Hanson in
The Conquest of the Missouri
(subsequently referred to as Hanson) provides the specifications of the
Far West,
p. 238. Hiram Chittenden in
History of Early Steamboat Navigation on the Missouri River
notes that the invention of the balanced rudder, with part of the blade forward of the rudder post, allowed for the replacement of two side wheels with a single stern wheel, p. 112. Hunter describes a Missouri riverboat as an “engine on a raft, with $11,000 worth of jig-saw work,” p. 62; he also writes of the “explosive exhaust of the high pressure engine,” p. 141, and of how the lightness of a riverboat’s construction meant that “every distinct motion of the propulsive power was vibrated through the entire frame,” p. 81. My description of “grasshoppering” is based on Hunter, p. 254, and Lass, who compares a riverboat perched on its two forward spars to a “squatting grasshopper,” in
A History of Steamboating on the Upper Missouri River,
p. 12.

Hanson writes of Grant Marsh’s experiences in the 1860s, p. 80; Lass claims that $24 million worth of gold was taken down the Missouri during the Montana gold rush in the 1860s,
A History of Steamboating,
pp. 67–68. The town of Bismarck was named for the chancellor of Germany in the unrequited hope that he would invest in the Dakota Territory; see Lass,
A History of Steamboating,
p. 80. According to Lass, the Dakotas in the mid-1870s were “one of the last lucrative steamboat frontiers in the nation,” p. 89. Edward Lazarus in
Black Hills White Justice: The Sioux Nation Versus the United States, 1775 to the Present
puts the national debt in 1874 at $2 billion, p. 78. My description of Custer’s Black Hills Expedition is based on Sven Froiland’s
Natural History of the Black Hills and Badlands
and Ernest Grafe and Paul Horsted’s
Exploring with Custer
. Charles Windolph in
I Fought with Custer,
edited by Frazier and Robert Hunt, wrote of the incredible profitability of the Homestake Mine in Lead, South Dakota, p. 40. On Custer’s testimony before Congress in the spring of 1876, see Robert Utley’s
Cavalier in Buckskin,
pp. 152–54. Hanson reported that Marsh and the
Far West
were paid $360 a day by the U.S. Army, p. 239.

My account of the Centennial Exhibition is based largely on Dorothy G. Beersin’s “The Centennial City,” pp. 461–68, in
Philadelphia: A 300-Year History,
edited by Russell F. Weigley. The opening ceremony of the exhibition is described in Robert Rydell’s
All the World’s a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 1876–1916,
pp. 14–17. Custer’s troubles with his horse during the Grand Review at the conclusion of the Civil War are described in Jeffrey Wert’s
Custer: The Controversial Life of George Armstrong Custer,
p. 228; Jay Monaghan’s
Custer: The Life of General George Armstrong Custer,
pp. 248–51; Frederick Whittaker’s
A Life of Major General George A. Custer,
pp. 311–14; and Lawrence Frost’s
General Custer’s Libbie,
p. 47. The
New York Herald
’s reference to Grant as the “modern Caesar” is in James Wengert’s
The Custer Despatches,
p. 5. William Dean Howells referred to the “silent indifference” of the crowd’s response to Grant and added, “Ten years ago earth and sky would have shaken with the thunder of his welcome. What a sublime possession to have thrown away, the confidence and gratitude of a nation!” in William Randel’s
Centennial: American Life in 1876,
p. 291. Robert Utley in
The Indian Frontier of the American West, 1846–1890
writes of Grant’s Indian policy, pp. 129–31.

General Terry described the logistics of the campaign in a May 17, 1876, letter to his sister Polly Jane in
The Terry Letters,
edited by James Willert, p. 1. Mark Kellogg wrote of the scouting report placing Sitting Bull’s village on the Little Missouri River in the May 18, 1876,
Bismarck Tribune;
see also Terry’s May 15, 1876, letter to General Sheridan, cited in Gray,
Centennial Campaign,
p. 89; Gray puts the total size of the column, including both the Seventh Cavalry and the infantry columns at 879, p. 97. Custer’s boast that the Seventh “could whip and defeat all the Indians on the plains” appeared in J. R. Perkins,
Trails, Rails and War: The Life of General G. M. Dodge,
who added that Custer “went not only to fight the Indians but determined to wipe out the disgrace of his arrest,” p. 193. Frost in
General Custer’s Libbie
referred to the two canaries for Libbie; the reference to Custer being as “happy as a boy with a new red sled” is in Windolph,
I Fought with Custer,
p. 50. In
Boots and Saddles,
Libbie Custer wrote that prior to the departure of the Seventh in May 1876 Custer’s “buoyant spirits made him like a boy,” p. 219.

Custer’s 150-mile sprint to Libbie in 1867 is described by Frost,
General Custer’s Libbie,
p. 169. Libbie Custer referred to that “one long perfect day” in
Tenting on the Plains,
p. 403. When the legendary scout Jim Bridger heard about Sheridan’s plan for a winter campaign against the Cheyenne, he felt compelled to travel to Fort Hays to dissuade the general: “You can’t hunt Indians on the plains in winter,” he said, “for blizzards don’t respect man or beast,” in Carl Rister,
Border Command,
p. 92. As Perry Jamieson in
Crossing the Deadly Ground: United States Army Tactics, 1865–1899
points out, the concept of a winter campaign was nothing new, pp. 37–38. Although Jamieson cites examples as far back as the eighteenth century, there are even earlier precedents. During the winter of 1675, New England colonial forces launched a winter campaign against the Narragansett Indians; see my
Mayflower,
pp. 265–80. Benteen described his confrontation with Custer concerning his article about the Washita in a Feb. 22, 1896, letter to Goldin in John Carroll,
Benteen-Goldin Letters,
p. 280.

In a March 24, 1869, letter to Libbie, Custer wrote of his deliberate plan to answer the critics of his Washita campaign with diplomacy: “[M]y command, from highest to lowest, desired bloodshed. . . . I paid no heed but followed the dictates of my own judgment upon which my beloved commander [General Sheridan] said he relied for the attainment of the best results. . . . And now my most bitter enemies cannot say that I am either blood-thirsty or possessed of an unworthy ambition,” in Elizabeth Custer’s
Following the Guidon,
pp. 56–57. Utley in
Cavalier in Buckskin
quotes Custer’s letter to Libbie concerning “Custer luck,” pp. 104–5. Libbie wrote of the “aimlessness” of Custer’s time in Kentucky in
Boots and Saddles,
p. 123; she also wrote of how smashing chairs was typical of how he “celebrated every order to move with wild demonstrations of joy,” p. 5. The officer’s reference to how Custer was “making himself utterly detested” during the march up the Missouri in 1873 is cited in Roger Darling’s
Custer’s Seventh Cavalry Comes to Dakota: New Discoveries Reveal Custer’s Tribulations Enroute to the Yellowstone Expedition,
p. 177.

Benteen’s account of his conversation with Custer concerning his cousin Lawrence Gobright is in his Feb. 22, 1896, letter to Goldin in John Carroll,
Benteen-Goldin Letters,
pp. 281–82. The surgeon James DeWolf wrote of Benteen in his diary, edited by Edward Luce: “He has silver gray hair and is very easy spoken,” “Diary and Letters of Dr. James M. DeWolf,” p. 67. In a Mar. 10, 1897, letter to the photographer D. F. Barry, Benteen wrote, “Mrs. Custer knows that I am one of the few men who thoroughly understood her husband,”
D. F. Barry Correspondence,
edited by John Carroll, p. 44. Benteen wrote of his “happy facility of making enemies” in a Mar. 23, 1896, letter to Goldin in John Carroll,
Benteen-Goldin Letters,
p. 293. In a Nov. 17, 1891, letter Benteen wrote, “I’ve been a loser in a way, all my life 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,” in John Carroll,
Benteen-Goldin Letters,
p. 206. In a Nov. 10, 1891, letter to Goldin, he wrote of how Custer “wanted me badly as a friend,” in John Carroll,
Benteen-Goldin Letters,
p. 199; he wrote of Libbie as “cold-blooded” in a Feb. 17, 1896, letter, p. 262; the reference to “wheels within wheels” is from Benteen’s Feb. 22, 1896, letter to Goldin, p. 282.

Marguerite Merington in her collection of correspondence titled
The Custer Story
(subsequently referred to as Merington) wrote of Custer reading
The Anatomy of Melancholy,
p. 204; Libbie described Custer as a “self-appointed hermit” in
Boots and Saddles,
p. 118. Glenwood Swanson’s
G. A. Custer
has a picture of Custer’s “THIS IS MY BUSY DAY” card, p. 59. Libbie described Custer’s study in
Boots and Saddles,
p. 149. Libbie recounted Custer’s words during his meeting with Terry on May 16, 1876, in a letter to Custer’s friend Jacob Greene; quoted by Greene in a Sept. 1, 1904, Greene letter reprinted in Cyrus Townsend Brady’s
Indian Fights and Fighters,
p. 393. Custer’s Mar. 29, 1876, testimony before Congress on the “Sale of Post Traderships” is in House of Representatives, 44th Cong., 1st Sess., Report 799. For an account of these hearings that is sympathetic to Custer, see John Hart’s “Custer’s First Stand: The Washington Fight.” But as even Hart admits, Custer did recant the only substantive part of his testimony.

In the article “Campaign Against the Sioux in 1876,” General Terry’s aide and brother-in-law Robert Hughes claimed that Terry told him how Custer “with tears in his eyes, begged my aid. How could I resist it?” p. 12; Hughes also wrote of Custer’s encounter with Terry’s good friend William Ludlow and his intention to “swing clear of Terry.”

In describing the regiment’s departure from Fort Lincoln on May 17, I’ve looked to James Willert’s
Little Big Horn Diary,
pp. 2–8, and L. J. Chorne’s
Following the Custer Trail,
pp. 10–27. Several research trips to North Dakota during the wet spring months have given me a firsthand knowledge of what Don Rickey in
Forty Miles a Day on Beans and Hay
describes as “a semi-liquid gumbo quagmire,” p. 259. The account of the “weird something” felt by Lieutenant Gibson’s wife is recounted in Katherine Gibson Fougera’s
With Custer’s Cavalry,
p. 252. Annie Yates’s account of Custer’s statement that he “cannot die before my time comes” is in
A Summer on the Plains with Custer’s 7th Cavalry,
edited by Brian Pohanka, p. 154. John Burkman’s description of Libbie telling Custer “I wish Grant hadn’t let you go” is in Glendolin Damon Wagner’s
Old Neutriment
(subsequently referred to as Wagner), p. 119. Libbie wrote of the regiment’s tearful departure in
Boots and Saddles,
pp. 217–18. My discussion of the phenomenon of the superior image is based in part on W. J. Humphreys’s
Physics of the Air,
pp. 470–71.

Libbie’s description of Custer’s first extended kiss is in Frost,
General Custer’s Libbie,
p. 80. In a letter written early in their marriage, Libbie wrote, “He brushes his teeth
after every meal
. I always laugh at him for it, also for washing hands so frequently,” Merington, p. 109. She wrote of Custer’s sensitive stomach in
Boots and Saddles,
p. 76. Another one of Custer’s idiosyncratic traits was his love of raw onions, which he bit into like apples. In
Boots and Saddles,
Libbie wrote, “[O]nions were permitted at our table, but after indulging in them, [Custer and Tom] found themselves severely let alone, and that they did not enjoy,” p. 267. Concerning Custer’s silences, Annie Yates wrote that “like all unusual and original men, he had moods of silence when he seemed too full of earnest serious thoughts for words,” Pohanka,
A Summer on the Plains,
p. 154. Rebecca Richmond also wrote of Custer’s silences in Frost,
General Custer’s Libbie,
p. 233. John Burkman told of Custer’s gambling, in Wagner, p. 93. At one point Custer wrote Libbie: “Am I not right darling to tell of my faults and tell you I have discarded them forever,” Frost,
General Custer’s Libbie,
p. 85. Benteen made repeated references to Custer’s relationship with the Cheyenne captive Monahsetah and his African American cook in John Carroll,
Benteen-Goldin Letters,
pp. 30, 258, 262, 271, 276; see also Jeffrey Wert’s
Custer,
p. 291. In an 1868 letter to Vinnie Ream, Custer wrote, “Please have your servant examine the floor of your studio to see if my wallet (not my pistol) was not [left] there last night,” in the Vinnie Ream Hoxie Collection, LOC. See Edward Cooper’s
Vinnie Ream
on her affair with Sherman, pp. 178–80.

The letter fragment in which Custer refers to his “erratic, wild, or unseemly” conduct is at the Beinecke Library at Yale; see Barnett’s
Touched by Fire,
pp. 198–200, for an excellent discussion of this letter. Libbie’s possible relationship with Thomas Weir in 1867 is discussed by Robert Utley in
Cavalier in Buckskin,
pp. 106–8; by Shirley Leckie in
Elizabeth Bacon Custer and the Making of a Myth,
pp. 102–3; and by Louise Barnett in
Touched by Fire,
p. 139. Frost discusses Libbie’s potential interest in Myles Keogh,
General Custer’s Libbie,
p. 192. In his fascinating biography of Custer,
Glory-Hunter,
Frederic Van de Water quotes extensively from Custer’s letter about his ambition “not to be wealthy, not to be learned, but to be great.” As Van de Water quite rightly comments, “This is not a march-worn husband writing to his wife. This is adolescence engaged in autobiography,” p. 161. Libbie’s comments about “making history” are recorded in Katherine Fougera’s
With Custer’s Cavalry,
p. 137. Frost cites the letters from Libbie about her ambitions for Custer in
General Custer’s Libbie,
p. 205.