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

Indeed, Custer had gained a reputation as one of the Union’s greatest cavalry officers. Wearing a sombrero-like hat, with long blond ringlets flowing down to his shoulders, he proved to be a true prodigy of war—charismatic, quirky, and fearless—and by the age of twenty-three, just two years after finishing last in his class at West Point, he had been named a brigadier general.
    In the two years since Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, Custer had come to long for the battlefield. Only amid the smoke, blood, and confusion of war had his fidgety and ambitious mind found peace. But now, in the spring of 1867, as his trusted horse galloped to within shooting range of the buffalo, he began to feel some of the old wild joy. Amid the beat of hooves and the bellowslike suck and blast of air through his horse’s nostrils emerged the transcendent presence of the buffalo: ancient, vast, and impossibly strong in its thundering charge across the infinite plains. He couldn’t help but shout with excitement. As he drew close, he held out his pearl-handled pistol and started to plunge the barrel into the dusty funk of the buffalo’s fur, only to withdraw the weapon so as to, in his own words, “prolong the enjoyment of the race.”
    After several more minutes of pursuit, he decided it was finally time for the kill. Once again he pushed the gun into the creature’s pelt. As if sensing Custer’s intentions, the buffalo abruptly turned toward the horse.
    It all happened in an instant: The horse veered away from the buffalo’s horns, and when Custer tried to grab the reins with both hands, his finger accidentally pulled the trigger and fired a bullet into the horse’s head, killing him instantly. Custer had just enough time to disengage his feet from the stirrups before he was catapulted over the neck of the collapsing animal. He tumbled onto the ground, struggled to his feet, and faced his erstwhile prey. Instead of charging, the buffalo simply stared at this strange, outlandish creature and stalked off.
    Horseless and alone in Indian country—except for his panting dogs—George Custer began the long and uncertain walk back to his regiment.

    L ike many Americans, I first learned about George Custer and the Battle of the Little Bighorn not in school but at the movies. For me, a child of the Vietnam War era, Custer was the deranged maniac of Little Big Man . For those of my parents’ generation, who grew up during World War II, Custer was the noble hero played by Errol Flynn in They Died with Their Boots On . In both instances, Custer was more of a cultural lightning rod than a historical figure, an icon instead of a man.
    Custer’s transformation into an American myth had much to do with the timing of the disaster. When word of his defeat first reached the American public on July 7, 1876, the nation was in the midst of celebrating the centennial of its glorious birth. For a nation drunk on its own potency and power, the news came as a frightening shock. Much like the sinking of the unsinkable Titanic thirty-six years later, the devastating defeat of America’s most famous Indian fighter just when the West seemed finally won caused an entire nation to wonder how this could have happened. We have been trying to figure it out ever since.
    Long before Custer died at the Little Bighorn, the myth of the Last Stand already had a strong pull on human emotions, and on the way we like to remember history. The variations are endless—from the three hundred Spartans at Thermopylae to Davy Crockett at the Alamo—but they all tell the story of a brave and intractable hero leading his tiny band against a numberless foe. Even though the odds are overwhelming, the hero and his followers fight on nobly to the end and are slaughtered to a man. In defeat the hero of the Last Stand achieves the greatest of victories, since he will be remembered for all time.
    When it comes to the Little Bighorn, most Americans think of the Last Stand as belonging solely to George Armstrong Custer. But the myth applies equally to his legendary opponent Sitting Bull. For while the Sioux and Cheyenne were the victors that day, the battle marked the beginning of their own Last Stand. The shock and outrage surrounding Custer’s stunning defeat allowed the Grant administration to push through measures that the U.S. Congress would not have funded just a few weeks before. The army redoubled its efforts against the Indians and built several forts on what had