Review: Gray, Centennial Campaign (1976)

[truepenny]

Centennial Campaign: The Sioux War of 1876 by John Stephens Gray

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book is the result of exhaustive research in primary sources about the campaign in which George Armstrong Custer and all his men lost their lives. As with his other book, CUSTER'S LAST CAMPAIGN, Gray has devoted himself to accurate time-and-motion studies to figure out who was where when, for both the US Army and the Native Americans they were trying to fight. One of the things Gray reveals this way is that, during a four month campaign, the Army encountered Indians on only four days. And, he does not add although he could, three of those days were disasters for the Army.

I suspect this is the sort of book that is only interesting if you are already interested in Custer or the Battle of the Little Big Horn or white Americans' shameful treatment of Indians in (though not exclusive to) the 1870s. It is a very thorough book, cross-referencing official Army reports and diaries and newspaper articles and Indian accounts. He does some very careful and extensive math to figure out how many people there actually were on each side of the Little Big Horn fight and it's hard to argue with his conclusion that there's no mystery about why the Native Americans won. Custer and his men were just horribly outnumbered.



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