‘The only good Indian is a dead Indian.’ – Gen. Philip Sheridan
June 25th, 1876. Lt. Col. George A. Custer and his 7th Calvary were wiped out by Sioux and Cheyenne Indians in the Battle of Little Bighorn in Montana. Custer’s Last Stand is one of those tales of American history that gets embellished and revised with every telling and every Western movie in the 145 years since it occurred. There is an awesome amount of testimony, much of it conflicting.
The quote by Sheridan is often attributed erroneously to the ironically named General William Tecumseh Sherman. Sherman claimed his middle name came from his father having “caught a fancy for the great chief of the Shawnees, ‘Tecumseh.’
Tecumseh (1768 – October 5, 1813) was a Shawnee chief and warrior who promoted resistance to the expansion of the United States onto Native American lands. A persuasive orator, Tecumseh traveled widely, forming a Native American confederacy and promoting inter-tribal unity. He was killed by American forces, as he fought on the side of the British during the War of 1812. His death caused his confederacy to collapse; the lands he had fought to defend were eventually ceded to the U.S. government. “Ceded” is a nice way to put it.
And Sheridan didn’t actually say what he is not famous for saying.
In January, 1869, General Sheridan held a conference with fifty Indian chiefs at Fort Cobb in the so-called Indian Territory (later part of Oklahoma). At that time, Sheridan, who had gained recognition as a Union officer in the Civil War, was in charge of the Dept. of the Missouri. One of his duties was to oversee the Indian Territory, making sure that the Indians remained on their reservations and did not harass the white settlers. When Comanche chief Toch-a-way was introduced to Sheridan at the conference, the Indian said, “Me Toch-a-way, me good Indian.” Sheridan reportedly smirked and replied, “The only good Indians I ever saw were dead.” Later on, the remark became “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.”
What happened that afternoon of June 25, 1876 goes down in history as not only a tragedy for Custer and his men, but native North Americans as well. The mystery of the event lies in it being the total destruction of those with Custer that day. The location of the rest of the 7th Cavalry being too far from the battle, and again an unwillingness to listen to the Sioux and Cheyenne, partly because there were no white survivors, and partly, not giving any credibility to the native American testimony of the event.
Custer’s Last Stand should be studied against the backdrop of the sentiments and events the day it occurred. It was not just one event that resulted in the tragedy at the Little Big Horn, but a whole series of calamities. It is important to examine these events to establish the dynamic that was Custer’s Last Stand. In fairness to the Sioux and Cheyenne who also died there it should be called the Battle of the Little Big Horn.
The military career of George Armstrong Custer is colorful. Black, red and white. In 1861, Custer graduated from West Point just in time to participate in the first battle of Manassas. He later served on the staffs of Generals McClellan, Pleasanton and Sherman. He had a distinguished military career in the Civil War, including earning a battlefield rank of Brigadier General. After the war he was brevetted to Colonel, but he still received all the rights and privileges of a General.
After the Civil War, Custer was offered command of one of the “Negro” cavalry units, which just happened to be among some of the most unsung heroes of the southwest “Indian wars.” The long-haired blonde demurred.
Gen. George Armstrong Custer didn’t think too much of black cavalry soldiers.
“He said they wouldn’t fight, that they were afraid and that they’d run,” said John Smith, a black whose grandfather served in Utah and other areas of the West in the latter part of the 19th century with the all-black Buffalo Soldiers. Like most white officers of the last century, Smith said Custer felt it was below his dignity to ride with the Buffalo Soldiers, who at times made up as much as twenty percent of the cavalry and whose ranks included eighteen Medal of Honor winners.
It is difficult to imagine what may have happened if he had not made that ill fated decision. The Buffalo soldiers had a reputation of being some of the best soldiers on the frontier, but received no credit for their work from white soldiers.
For the Buffalo Soldiers never lost a battle, had the lowest desertion rate on the frontier, and had an exceptional level of discipline and esprit de corps. Yet, they had the toughest assignments in the most desolate regions of the southwest, but were never accepted as part of the local communities which they protected. They rescued the Beecher Island expedition, helped the 7th Cavalry restore order at Wounded Knee, and later saved the day on San Juan Hill for a besieged Theodore Roosevelt.
The total picture of what happened at the Little Big Horn, on the afternoon of June 25, 1876, makes it imperative to look into some of the previous “Indian battles.” These events many years before shaped attitudes on both sides of the Little Big Horn, as well as the conditions that existed between the “blue coats,” and the native Americans.
On November 29, 1864 Col. John M Chivington, a former Methodist preacher with political ambitions, attacked and destroyed the Cheyenne camp of Chief Black Kettle and Chief White Antelope on the plains of eastern Colorado. Chivington’s men without any warning shot and killed White Antelope, then proceeded to attack the village of friendly southern Cheyenne. Black Kettle and his band had already declared themselves at peace with the whites. This made little difference to Chivington and his men.
The previous year Black Kettle had visited Washington, D.C. and had been given a thirty-four-star U.S. flag that he attached to his tipi to show he was at peace with the whites. He had been told no soldier would fire on them when they held the American flag. He took a white flag and the American flag and held them up for Chivington to see.
Then Custer himself had attacked a band of the same Cheyennes, plus some Arapahoe, Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache camped along the Washita River, almost a hundred and forty miles from Oklahoma City. Black Kettle was also in that village that Custer attacked on the Washita.
Native Americans were deprived of their homeland, killed mercilessly or placed on reservations, where many continue their marginalized existence to the present day. The early concepts of “‘good Indian’” or “‘noble savage’” quickly were replaced by reducing the native inhabitants to “‘wild savages’” who were standing in the way of expansionism under the motto of “‘Manifest destiny.’”
Further, the “only good Indian was a dead Indian” philosophy was so well ingrained among the American political environment, common citizens, and the military it had become the driving force behind all their actions against the Plains Indians. At times it amounted to just plain hatred for all native Americans, giving no respect whatsoever to their culture and language.
General Custer was immediately responsible to General Philip Sheridan (1831-1888). Sheridan was known to be a bigot and hated the native Americans. Meanwhile, the ruling authorities had decreed that if the “Indians” were in the way then they must be taken out of the way.
In addition to the Buffalo Soldiers, Custer should have brought more bullets.
Each trooper was supplied with 100 rounds of Carbine ammunition for the standard issue Spring field rifle and 24 rounds of ammunition for the standard issue Colt .45 revolver. This ammunition was to be carried on his person and in his saddle bags. In fact the government was concerned at the time with using too much ammunition, which was laughable considering what was about to happen, so they had issued the following order: “War Department General Order 103 on August 5, 1874…45 caliber ammunition held to 10 per month. amended September 23, 1875 General Order 104 15 rounds per month this only applied to cavalry service.”
The Springfield Carbine, model 1873 was a breach loading, trapdoor carbine, the main draw back of this weapon is that it could easily jam, because the cartridges were very thin, and the expanding gas would wedge the shell in the chamber. Practically speaking since this was a single shot weapon they would have to reload after each shot, then if the shell was jammed after firing they were only provided with one wooden rod for every ten soldiers that was issued to ram the spent shell out of the carbine.
There was another issue that had an effect on the outcome of any engagement that these troopers were involved. They would dismount, kneel then place a handful of shells in front of them, however, if they had to move they would not pick up the unused shells, this would diminish their overall fire power.
General Terry had ordered that Major Reno “scout to the forks of the Powder and then cross Mizpah creek, follow it down to near its confluence with the Powder; down to the Tongue. While Custer was waiting at the mouth of the Tongue River. Custer had camped at a spot that the Sioux had camped the previous winter.” This is a point at which an incident occurred that seems to give an idea of the callousness of Custer’s men and some idea of the mind frame of a good deal of the military of that day.
A number of the Indian dead, placed upon scaffolds, or tied to the branches of trees, were disturbed and robbed of their trinkets. Several soldiers rode about exhibiting their trinkets with as much gusto as if they were trophies of their valor and showed no concern for their desecration than if they had won them at a raffle.
The native American plains people were divided into two classes, those that were agency and those that only came to the agency to visit family and friends. Some of the plains peoples had never visited the agencies nor had they ever been on a reservation. They would also come sometimes to the agency to barter for goods. They camped in and roamed about the buffalo country. Their camp was frequently the rendezvous point for the agency Indians. For this reason the exact numbers of Sioux and Cheyenne are not easily identified.
Major James McLaughlin United States Indian Agent, estimated the number of Indians as between twelve and fifteen thousand; at one out of four a warrior…2,500 to 3,000 warriors.
Sitting Bull, Huncepapa Sioux chief of the camp was not the warrior chief. However, his views did hold great weight because he was known as a great medicine man. A short time previous to the battle, Sitting Bull had predicted the soldiers would attack them and that the soldiers would all be killed. He took no active part in the battle.
The size of the village is both a critical and pivotal issue mostly because it indicates whether Custer faced an overwhelming force, or as is more likely a much closer to even force. The size of the village can’t be discounted from either the view point of native Americans or U.S. Army debates. The testimony of Benteen and Reno is questionable, because they were too far away from Custer’s Hill to know what happened. And they were already under stress from their own situation.
There is also the testimony of the Sioux and Cheyenne present at the battle. Their concept of time and space needs to be understood before you try and interpret what they are saying. The picture of this ‘enormous village’ that has been presented to us for more than a century was a product of the factors discussed above: an inability to see the entire camp; spatial distortion induced by combat stress; reluctance to admit defeat by a ‘savage’ foe without the advantage of overwhelming numbers; and being deceived by the camp’s secondary extension. The camp ran one and one-half miles along the river and tree hundred yards back from it. The area covered by the main bulk of the village on June 25 amounted to only one-quarter square mile.
If an overwhelming-size village was not what Custer saw that day, then the only question is what was different that day from other battles Custer had engaged in with the Plains people. The answer seems to be that he caught these Sioux at home with their families and they fought to protect them. Expecting anything would be an unfair expectation. That and he was also relying on an anvil and hammer tactic that went seriously wrong. The apparent reason it failed was that Reno who was the “anvil,” had to retreat not just once but twice because the resistance in the village was too much for his troops to handle.
A more realistic size of the village also accounts for Chief Crazy Horse’s having been seen at more then one place at one time. The more realistic size of the village also makes Custer not crazy for attacking an extremely large village, but a village that could be well within his experience as an Indian fighter.
On the morning of the attack the Sioux and Cheyenne had been at that location for about three days. The location was not chosen for strategically reasons, but because someone had said, “this looks like a good place to camp.” Some think they were aware that the troops were in the field, but not exactly how close. On the morning of June 26th some of the agency group left the encampment to return to the agency, but on the way they saw the dust being stirred up by the troopers.
The Critical Racial Truth of Custer’s Last Stand boils down to who, what, and why?
Custer was not out-gunned, nor was he really out-numbered. Seven hundred troopers and 28 officers vs. 1000 warriors is a lot closer than 728 vs. 2,500. Custer was not a brash egotistical maniac anymore than the rest of the military was at that time vis a vis the “savages.”
The reason why Custer’s Last Stand became the Battle of the Little Big Horn is because the U.S. military divided its forces. Reno and Benteen were separated from Custer by noble men defending their families.
Reno had the balance with Reno a slight edge over Benteen but they were separated from Custer by not only distance, but some very angry warriors. In order for his tactic to work the hammer and the anvil needed to be significantly closer to each other.
Personnel under his command for the most part thought Custer could walk on water perhaps, but there was no water.
Custer and Capt. Frederick W. Benteen discussed the wisdom of dividing the regiment before the 7th Cavalry marched to destiny at Little Big Horn. That is, if you believed the encounter re-created in 1991’s Son of the Morning Star.
The ABC miniseries’ dialogue quoted, almost verbatim, what battle survivor Charles Windolph told Frazier and Robert Hunt in the 1940s:
“I heard Benteen say to Custer: ‘Hadn’t we better keep the regiment together, General? If this is as big a camp as they [the scouts] say, we’re going to need every man we have.’ Custer’s only answer was: ‘You have your orders.’”
Yet the closest Benteen came to any such caution was an 1890s remark to Theodore Golden: “That is all I blame Custer for—the scattering, as it were, (two portions of his command, anyway) before he knew anything about the exact or approximate position of the Indian village or the Indians.”
If Benteen had advised Custer to “keep the regiment together,” he would have so testified at the 1879 Reno Court of Inquiry or reported the encounter to Custer’s superior, Brig. Gen. Alfred Terry, or mentioned it when responding to criticism of his own actions at the Little Big Horn battle.
Earlier, in 1909, Windolph did not mention this Custer-Benteen encounter to Walter Camp. A Medal of Honor recipient for his actions as a private at Little Big Horn, Windolph may be excused for his fuzzy memory some 60 years after the battle.
Windolph told the Hunts he had approached Benteen for permission to exchange horses with First Sgt. Joseph McCurry, when he overheard the alleged conversation with Custer. The social structure of the post-Civil War frontier Army casts doubt on Windolph’s story. The stratified military system separated enlisted men from their social and intellectual “superiors,” Kevin Adams documented in Class and Race in the Frontier Army. Company commanders delegated day-to-day management to their first sergeant (for example, McCurry) and other non-commissioned officers.
Sometimes Westerns are not entirely at fault for failing to portray an incident accurately.
It’s just the American way.
“I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every 10 are,” Teddy Roosevelt said during a January 1886 speech in New York.
“And I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.”
The Great White Father, he actually said that.