On June 25, 1876, one of America's most iconic historical events took place when General George A. Custer, with five companies of the 7th Calvary, was wiped out on a rise above the Little Big Horn River. The news was received with shock by a nation ready to celebrate the centennial of its independence. How could this have happened--since no white man survived the battle--to perhaps the most celebrated and daring Union general of the Civil War?
While the mystery of the "Last Stand" has become an iconic part of the American experience, it is even more perplexing given the ironies that surround it.
What we know is that the 7th was hardly the crack regiment its commander seemed to assume. It was riddled with young recruits, many of whom were new immigrants to the young nation. The 7th's mission also lacked integrity. It was to locate Indians thought to be in the Powder/Yellowstone River country of eastern Montana and by forcible persuasion return them to their reservations. The country was expanding and the Black Hills and other lands in the Dakota and Montana territories were far too valuable in natural resources for the U.S. government and the powerful economic interests that influenced it to remain in the hands of Indians, even though rights had been granted by treaty.
Three columns under expedition commander Alfred Terry were organized for the job. A strong force led by Gen. George Crook would come from the South; Col. John Gibbon from the west. Custer initially rode from Fort Abraham Lincoln, Bismarck, N.D., instructed by Terry to wait for the other units to converge on June 26, but to use his discretion to move independently if circumstances dictated. Responding to the entreaty as he moved out to "not be greedy, wait for us," Custer sarcastically shouted back, "No, I won't."
Custer's reputation as a superb Indian fighter ironically was built on one single surprise winter attack on an Indian village in Oklahoma in 1868 where he captured over 100 women and children. The tactics used that day would play out with disastrous results at Little Big Horn.
Custer divided his force for the attack. He underestimated the number of Indians upriver, which threatened his withdrawal. He also managed to get killed Capt. Louis Hamilton, one of the grandsons of Alexander Hamilton. Most relevant, Custer never learned from these decisions.
On his march, Custer encountered a large trail rutted with lodge poles, signaling an enormous village on the move. At a rise in the Wolf Mountains known as the Crows Nest on June 24, scouts directed Custer in the morning haze to focus on a tiny black spot in the valley which resembled writhing worms, but was actually 20,000 Indian ponies, indicative of a huge Indian encampment.
Custer did not know that just a few days earlier, Crook's column just 40 miles from the village had been "defeated." Crook was apparently so shook by the ferocity of the attack that, despite relatively few causalities, he halted his march and fell back to his base camp with no attempt to communicate with Custer.
Gibbon's westerly column out of Fort Ellis had been encamped for several weeks on the Yellowstone and had key information on the size and whereabouts of the Indians. Why this intelligence was understated in communications to Terry is further confounding.
Believing the regiment had been discovered (it hadn't), Custer divided his command, sending Capt. Frederick Benteen on a flank to the left and Maj. Marcus Reno to threaten the village from the south. Had Custer supported Reno as he said he would with both battalions, the Sioux --under the authority of Sitting Bill and Crazy Horse, with no knowledge an attack was coming that stifling hot June afternoon--might have surrendered to protect their families.
Custer's defeat had several other twists, each one, it seems, more ironic than the other. Killed with Custer was Mark Kellogg, a reporter from the Bismarck Tribune who also strung stories for major eastern newspapers. Kellogg accompanied Custer when his editor, Clement Lounsberry, could not go because of family illness.
In his final dispatch to the Tribune, he wrote, "I go with Custer and will be at the death." Had Kellogg somehow lived (some have said he was the first Associated Press reporter killed in battle), he would have had the scoop of a lifetime. Instead his editor, upon learning the news, stayed up all night relaying the story by telegraph to The New York Times.
Also killed was Lt. James Sturgis,the son of the actual commanding officer of the 7th, Col. Samuel Sturgis. Custer, a lieutenant colonel in the post-Civil War Army, was not even the commander of the 7th.
Yet the most ironic part of the "the stand," as I believe, is its framing as an inevitable part of Manifest Destiny and progress encapsulated in the cocoon of American exceptionalism. Maybe. But exceptional for whom? It resulted in the displacement of an entire culture, the later cowardly assassinations of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, and the enduring stain of Wounded Knee.
In retrospect, this iconic moment in history should give pause and reflection on who we were then and who we have become. Last stands should not have to end in tragedy.
Art English is professor emeritus in American government, Arkansas politics and constitutional law at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.