The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Big Horn

Noon . In combining the many strands of Native testimony into a rich and coherent narrative, the relevant portions of Peter Powell’s chronicle of the Cheyenne, People of the Sacred Mountain, are a tour de force.
    Anyone writing about the battle owes a huge debt to the indefatigable researchers who interviewed many of the participants: Walter Mason Camp, Eli Ricker, W. A. Graham, E. A. Brininstool, Orin Libby, and others. Researchers John Carroll, Kenneth Hammer, Jerome Greene, and Richard Hardorff have been instrumental in making vast amounts of this previously unpublished material accessible as well as bringing other important sources to light.
    When it comes to my use of previously unpublished material relating to Private Peter Thompson, I am indebted to the Thompson family, especially Thompson’s granddaughter June Helvie, and to Rocky Boyd, who made available his unparalleled collection of Thompson material, as well as the edition of Thompson’s narrative edited by himself and Michael Wyman.
    The proceedings of the Reno Court of Inquiry (RCI) appear in several different forms. The most accessible is W. A. Graham’s The Reno Court of Inquiry: Abstract of the Official Record of Proceedings . The most comprehensive single volume is that compiled and edited by Ronald Nichols. Perhaps the most useful account, however, is that contained in The Reno Court of Inquiry: The Chicago Times Account, with an introduction by Robert Utley, which contains testimony and context that never made it into the official transcript. In the notes that follow, I refer at different times to all three versions of the RCI testimony.
    A brief word on the testimony of Private John Burkman found in Glendolin Damon Wagner’s Old Neutriment: Wagner made the unfortunate decision to translate Burkman’s memories (as recorded by Burkman’s friend I. D. O’Donnell) into a stilted vernacular. In comparing Wagner’s text with the notes on which they are based (which are scattered between the archives at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument and Montana State University), it seems clear that Wagner did little, if anything, to alter the essence of what Burkman said. I’ve nevertheless chosen to return Burkman’s statements to a pre-Wagner, vernacularless state; see Brian Dippie’s excellent introduction to Wagner’s book, especially pp. xiii–xiv. In other instances, I’ve taken the liberty of adjusting the spelling and punctuation of participants’ accounts to bring them in line with modern usage.

    Preface: Custer’s Smile
    Custer describes the incident with the buffalo in My Life on the Plains, pp. 49–53. Of interest is that instead of portraying himself as a levelheaded hero, Custer (who is the only source for this story) admits to being “rashly imprudent”—indeed, he seems to revel in the inappropriateness of his behavior.
    Elsewhere in My Life Custer talks of the similarities between the plains and the ocean and the temptation “to picture these successive undulations as gigantic waves, not wildly chasing each other to or from the shore, but standing silent and immovable, and by their silent immobility adding to the impressive grandeur of the scene. . . . The constant recurrence of these waves, if they may be so termed, is quite puzzling to the inexperienced plainsman. He imagines, and very naturally too, judging from appearances, that when he ascends to the crest he can overlook all the surrounding country. After a weary walk or ride of perhaps several miles . . . he finds himself at the desired point, but discovers that directly beyond, in the direction he desires to go, rises a second wave, but slightly higher than the first,” p. 5. Francis Parkman also had trouble navigating the plains; in The Oregon Trail, he wrote, “I might as well have looked for landmarks in the midst of the ocean,” p. 57. Custer once stated that “nothing so nearly approaches a cavalry charge and pursuit as a buffalo chase,” in Frost’s General Custer’s Libbie, p. 162.
    I’m by no means the first to compare Custer’s Last Stand to the Titanic disaster. See, for example, Steven Schlesser’s The Soldier, the Builder, and the Diplomat: Custer, the Titanic , and World War One . For a probing analysis of how the Battle of the Little Bighorn fits into the mythic tradition of the Last Stand, see Bruce Rosenberg’s Custer and the Epic of Defeat, particularly the chapter titled “The Martyred Heroes,” pp. 155–216, and Richard