Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Custer’s Last Stand: Portraits in Time
    Custer’s Last Stand: Portraits in Time
    Custer’s Last Stand: Portraits in Time
    Ebook103 pages2 hours

    Custer’s Last Stand: Portraits in Time

    By Charles A. Mills

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

         Since his death along the bluffs overlooking the Little Bighorn River, in Montana, on June 25, 1876, over five hundred books have been written about the life and career of George Armstrong Custer.   The earliest works portrayed Custer as a romantic, knightly figure, a paragon of virtue and chivalry.  Custer was the valorous paladin killed in the cause of Christian civilization and American Manifest Destiny.

         Views of Custer have changed over succeeding generations.  Custer has been portrayed as a callous egotist, a bungling egomaniac, a genocidal war criminal, and the puppet of faceless forces.  For almost one hundred and fifity years, Custer has been a Rorschach test of American social and personal values.  Whatever else George Armstrong Custer may or may not have been, even in the twenty-first century, he remains the great lightning rod of American history.  This book presents portraits of Custer and the Battle of the Little Bighorn as they have appeared in print over successive decades and in the process demonstrates the evolution of American values and priorities.

         The broader importance of the controversy that rages around the Battle of the Little Bighorn centers on the nature of truth.  The battle (which by modern standards would be classified as little more than a frontier skirmish) lasted at most six hours, and yet, after almost one hundred and fifty years, we cannot agree upon what happened, why, or who was responsible.  This roiling controversy forces us to ask, "How do we know what we know, and how do we know if it is true?"

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCharles A. Mills
    Release dateMar 6, 2014
    ISBN9781501412189
    Custer’s Last Stand: Portraits in Time
    Author

    Charles A. Mills

    Chuck Mills has a passion for history. He is the author of Hidden History of Northern Virginia, Echoes of Manassas, Historic Cemeteries of Northern Virginia and Treasure Legends of the Civil War and has written numerous newspaper and magazine articles on historical subjects. Chuck is the producer and cohost of Virginia Time Travel, a history television show that airs to some 2 million viewers in Northern Virginia. He lives on the banks of the Potomac River on land once owned by George Washington.

    Read more from Charles A. Mills

    Related to Custer’s Last Stand

    Related ebooks

    United States History For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Hard-luck Regiment

      Aug 24, 2021

      Hard-luck Regiment
      4 min read

    • Article

      Death Comes To Eden

      Mar 24, 2020

      Death Comes To Eden
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Life Of A Rascal

      Dec 18, 2019

      The Life Of A Rascal
      7 min read

    • Article

      Must See, Must Read

      Aug 22, 2023

      Must See, Must Read
      11 min read

    • Article

      Van Halen

      May 28, 2019

      Van Halen
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Unknown Who Wasn’t

      Aug 9, 2022

      The Unknown Who Wasn’t
      13 min read

    • Article

      Into The Abyss

      Aug 9, 2022

      Into The Abyss
      1 min read

    • Article

      Seas of Change

      Mar 5, 2018

      Seas of Change
      10 min read

    • Article

      The Other 7th Cavalry

      Jan 28, 2020

      The Other 7th Cavalry
      11 min read

    • Article

      The Kid An ‘Outlaw’?

      Aug 9, 2022

      Your informative magazine has lots of stories about incidents that are not well known, but boy, oh boy, you got it wrong with your December 2021 cover that calls Jesse James and Billy the Kid Iconic Outlaws. As far as Billy is concerned, that’s 180 d

      4 min read

    • Article

      A View Of Mount Suribachi

      Feb 20, 2020

      A View Of Mount Suribachi
      3 min read

    • Article

      Films Of The Year

      Nov 11, 2021

      Films Of The Year
      7 min read

    • Article

      Return Of The Pilgrim

      Mar 30, 2020

      Return Of The Pilgrim
      10 min read

    • Article

      Heart Of A Regiment

      Aug 24, 2021

      This is the story of the 107th Ohio Infantry, just more than a thousand men in an army of just over two million, and mainly composed of ethnic Germans from northeast Ohio. It’s the story of fear, perseverance, and dedication to duty. Brian Jordan cra

      2 min read

    • Article

      John Boorman

      Jan 17, 2020

      John Boorman
      2 min read

    • Article

      Whistler’s Murder

      Jul 24, 2018

      Whistler’s Murder
      4 min read

    • Article

      Supertramp Breakfast In America

      Jul 17, 2020

      With anywhere between 18 and 20 million copies sold worldwide, Breakfast In America is arguably the biggest-selling prog album of all time after The Dark Side Of The Moon. Not that it was all-out prog – the sleeve featured a waitress pretending to be

      7 min read

    • Article

      Civilizational Evolution

      Oct 29, 2020

      Civilizational Evolution
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Defiant One

      Jun 17, 2021

      The Defiant One
      13 min read

    • Article

      THE TERRIBLE McWATERS

      Sep 29, 2020

      THE TERRIBLE McWATERS
      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Custer’s Last Stand

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Custer’s Last Stand - Charles A. Mills

      Custer’s Last Stand: Portraits in Time

      By Charles A. Mills

      Copyright 2014, Charles A. Mills

      Introduction

      Since his death along the bluffs overlooking the Little Bighorn River, in Montana, on June 25, 1876, over five hundred books have been written about the life and career of George Armstrong Custer.  The earliest works portrayed Custer as a romantic, knightly figure, a paragon of virtue and chivalry.  Custer was the valorous paladin killed in the cause of Christian civilization and American Manifest Destiny.

      Views of Custer have changed over succeeding generations.  Custer has been portrayed as a callous egotist, a bungling egomaniac, a genocidal war criminal, and the puppet of faceless forces.  For almost one hundred and fifty years, Custer has been a Rorschach test of American social and personal values.  Whatever else George Armstrong Custer may or may not have been, even in the twenty-first century, he remains the great lightning rod of American history.  This book presents portraits of Custer and the Battle of the Little Bighorn as they have appeared in print over successive decades and in the process demonstrates the evolution of American values and priorities.

      The broader importance of the controversy that rages around the Battle of the Little Bighorn centers on the nature of truth.  The battle (which by modern standards would be classified as little more than a frontier skirmish) lasted at most six hours, and yet, after almost one hundred and fifty years, we cannot agree upon what happened, why, or who was responsible.  This roiling controversy forces us to ask, How do we know what we know, and how do we know if it is true?

      Chapter 1

      The Last Stand: Overview

      In 1868 the United States Government signed a treaty at Fort Laramie, Wyoming with the Sioux, Cheyenne and other tribes of the Great Plains, by which a huge portion of eastern Wyoming was designated a permanent Indian reservation.  The treaty promised the land would belong to the Indians for, as long as the grass shall grow and the buffalo shall roam.  The government promised to protect the Indians, against the commission of all depredations by people of the United States.

      In 1874 gold was discovered in the Black Hills, the heart of the new Indian reservation.  Thousands of eager gold prospectors swarmed into the region in violation of the Fort Laramie treaty.  The government made little effort to stem the invasion.  Indians began leaving the reservation and attacking travelers along its fringes.  Increasing numbers of reservation Indians began to ride with roaming Indians who had never accepted the Treaty of Laramie. 

      Foremost among the non-treaty Sioux was the Hunkpapa medicine man, Sitting Bull.  During the early part of 1876, thousands of Indians from the many tribes of the Sioux nation: Hunkpapa, Brule, Ogalalla, Minneconjou, Sans Arc, Yankotonnais, Santee, and Blackfoot, flocked to Sitting Bull in the Rosebud Creek country in southeastern Montana.  The Cheyenne and Arapahoe, allied nations, were also represented.

      In December 1875, the government issued an order that all Indians who did not return to the reservations by January 31, 1876, would be considered hostiles and subject to action by the U.S. Army.  The Sioux and Cheyenne either ignored the order or were too far away and impeded by deep snows to comply.

      The army converged on the Sioux and Cheyenne from three different directions.   Brigadier General Alfred H. Terry led a column of 1,100 men marching west out of North Dakota with the intention of linking up with columns commanded by Brigadier General George Crook (1,300 men) moving up from the south and Colonel John Gibbon (400 men) moving eastward from western Montana. The strategic plan for defeating the Indians called for the three columns to trap the bulk of the Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne warriors between them in a so called hammer and anvil deployment.  Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer (a brevet or temporary major general during the Civil War) was originally designated to lead one of the three columns (the one eventually commanded by Terry in person), but was relieved of command by President Ulysses S. Grant for meddling in politics.  After much pleading on the part of Custer and others, the president allowed Custer to rejoin the campaign but only as commander of his own regiment, the Seventh U.S. Cavalry.

      Terry’s column marched from Fort Abraham Lincoln, near Bismarck, North Dakota on May 17, 1876, and reached a point along the Yellowstone River, some twenty-five miles above the mouth of the Powder River, on June 10, 1876.  Here, Terry sent Major Marcus Reno (a brevet or temporary brigadier general during the Civil War) and elements of the Seventh Cavalry to scout the valleys of the Powder and Tongue Rivers in search of hostiles.  Exceeding his orders, Reno swung west as far as the Rosebud Creek, and there discovered the fresh trail of hostile Indians heading south, up the stream.  Reno followed the trail a short distance, then retraced his steps and returned to the column to make his report.

      Meanwhile, General Crook’s column battled a force of some one thousand Indians in the Rosebud Valley on June 17.  Crook’s progress was checked and he fell back.  Gibbon and Terry were unaware of Crook’s setback.

      Gibbon’s column joined Terry’s on June 21.  Terry held a conference on board the supply steamer Far West, and laid out the plan of operation to Gibbon and Custer.  A Gibbon/Terry column would march fifty miles west to the Bighorn River and then move south, while Custer and the entire Seventh Cavalry (31 officers and 566 enlisted men) would ride south, up the Rosebud, until they reached the trail which Reno had discovered.  Custer was then to determine in which direction the trail led; and if it led to the valley of the Little Bighorn River as Terry suspected it would, Custer was to follow the trail no further, but was to proceed south until he reached the headwaters of the Tongue River, and then swing west and north, timing his marches to conform to the estimated progress of the Gibbon/Terry column, so that the two would reach the vicinity of the Little Bighorn Valley at about the same time on the 26th of June, and so be in a position to cooperate with each other in any fighting that might occur.  Terry’s orders were broad, allowing Custer a large measure of discretion:

      "Colonel,

      The Brigadier-General Commanding directs that, as soon as your regiment can be made ready for the march, you will proceed up the Rosebud in pursuit of the Indians whose trail was discovered by Major Reno a few days since. It is, of course impossible to give you any definite instructions in regard to this movement, and were it not impossible to do so the Department Commander places too much confidence in your zeal, energy, and ability to wish to impose upon you precise orders which might hamper your action when nearly in contact with the enemy. He will, however, indicate to you his own views of what your action should be, and he desires that you should conform to them unless you shall see sufficient reason for departing from them. He thinks that you should proceed up the Rosebud until you ascertain definitely the direction in which the trail above spoken leads. Should it be found (as appears almost certain that it will be found) to turn towards the Little Horn, he thinks that you should still proceed southward, perhaps as far as the headwaters of the Tongue, and then turn towards

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1