Technical Difficulties

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.



View all my reviews

The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn by Nathaniel Philbrick

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is an excellent book about the Battle of Little Bighorn. Philbrick has done extensive, careful research on both sides: Custer and the 7th Cavalry on the one hand, Sitting Bull and the Lakota and Cheyenne on the other. (Despite Stephen Ambrose's pairing of Crazy Horse and Custer, current historiography recognizes Sitting Bull as the leader of this piece of the resistance to white American imperialism.) He really digs into his sources, which I appreciate, and he assesses them carefully, although I think he's a little too willing to believe what Benteen says about Custer, and this credulity even though he talks about the obsessive, irrational quality of Benteen's hatred.

Philbrick is very readable, and he weaves together his widely disparate sources with respectful attention.



View all my reviews

Archaeological Perspectives on the Battle of the Little Bighorn by Douglas D. Scott

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


One of the delightful things about used bookstores is that sometimes you find something you thought you'd never see. This book is one of those.

This book is the compiled results of the 1983-85 archaeological investigations at the two sites of the Battle of the Little Bighorn: the field where Custer and all of his men were killed and the hill where Reno and Benteen (mostly Benteen) kept their men together through a two-day siege. The archaeologists go over everything they found: human bones, animal bones, bullets, cartridge cases, buttons, tin cans, spurs, arrowheads, pocket knives ..., and they wring every last drop of information out of their finds. (One of the authors, Richard Fox, would go on to write one of my favorite books about the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Archaeology, History, and Custer's Last Battle, in which he uses the bullets and cartridge cases to trace the course of the battle; two others, Douglas Scott and Melissa Connor, with a third author, P. Willey, wrote They Died with Custer, about the human bones.) They discuss a number of mysteries and theories about the battle and bring their evidence to bear. Extractor failure is not supported as a major factor in the defeat; there is no evidence for mass suicide. The men who may or may not be buried in Deep Ravine, the archaeologists conclude, have been buried so deeply by the vagaries of erosion and deposition that metal detectors can't see them and the excavations they were able to do couldn't go deep enough to find them.

This is an academic book and is concommitantly dry, but it's an excellent snapshot of what archaeology does and a valuable factual perspective on the Battle of the Little Bighorn.



View all my reviews

Touched by Fire: The Life, Death, and Mythic Afterlife of George Armstrong Custer by Louise Barnett

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Barnett offers a panorama of George Armstrong Custer's life and the second half of the nineteenth century; she's interested as much in what happened to Custer's image after he died as she is in his life. She also gives nearly equal billing to Libbie Bacon Custer, who was professionally Custer's widow for over 50 years, accepting at face value Libbie's portrayal of herself in her writing, as timid, vulnerable, naive, and always madly in love with Custer. (Other biographers, like T. J. Stiles, are more skeptical.) This is an excellent read.



View all my reviews

Keep the Last Bullet for Yourself: The True Story of Custer's Last Stand by Thomas B. Marquis

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Thomas B. Marquis was a doctor who worked on the Cheyenne reservation in Montana in the 1920s, learned their sign language, and talked extensively with warriors who had fought at the Little Big Horn. Based on their accounts, he came up with a then-shocking theory: the men of the Seventh Cavalry had not fought a brave but doomed "last stand" action at the Little Big Horn, but rather had panicked and many of them had shot themselves (that being the meaning of the title). Subsequent researchers have tempered Marquis' assessment, but the idea that the defeat of the Seventh was caused by what archaeologist Richard Fox calls "tactical instability" is now accepted by, e.g., a popularizing historian like James Donovan, having come a long ways since the '30s, when Marquis couldn't find a publisher.



View all my reviews

Archaeology, History, and Custer’s Last Battle: The Little Big Horn Reexamined by Richard A. Fox

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



( In archaeology, it is equally important to know where things are not. (p. 65) )

Custer's Last Campaign: Mitch Boyer and the Little Bighorn Reconstructed by John Stephens Gray

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



( Anything that actually happened had to be possible. (p. 222) )