Custerology: The Enduring Legacy of the Indian Wars and George Armstrong Custer

346 Pages·2007·1.64 MB·English

by  Michael A. Elliott

CUSTEROLOGY

CUSTEROLOGY
THE ENDURING LEGACY OF THE INDIAN WARS
AND GEORGE ARMSTRONG CUSTER
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MICHAEL A. ELLIOTT
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO AND LONDON
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2007 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2007
Paperback edition 2008
Printed in the United States of America
17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 3 4 5 6 7
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-20146-7 (cloth)
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-20147-4 (paper)
ISBN-10: 0-226-20146-5 (cloth)
ISBN-10: 0-226-20147-3 (paper)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Elliott, Michael A.
Custerology : the enduring legacy of the Indian wars and George Armstrong
Custer / Michael A. Elliott.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-20146-7 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-226-20146-5 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Little Bighorn, Battle of the, Mont., 1876. 2. Custer, George
Armstrong, 1839–1876. I. Title.
E83.876.C983E55 2007
973.8'2092—dc22
2007010880
(cid:2)(cid:2) The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements
of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—
Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
ANSI Z39.48-1992.
CONTENTS
list of illustrations vii
Introduction 1
one Ghost Dancing on Last Stand Hill 19
Crow Agency, Montana
two Being Custer 59
Monroe, Michigan
three Lives on the Plains 102
Cheyenne, Oklahoma
four Into the Black Hills 147
Rapid City, South Dakota
five Testimony in Translation 191
The Library
six Little Bighorn Forever 224
Hardin, Montana • Garryowen, Montana
Epilogue 273
Indian Country
acknowledgments 283
notes 285
works cited 313
index 329

ILLUSTRATIONS
Figure 1. Custer’s Last Fight by Otto Becker 34
Figure 2. The “burial of the hatchet,” 1926 38
Figure 3. Granite obelisk, Last Stand Hill 45
Figure 4. The Little Bighorn Indian Memorial, outside view 46
Figure 5. The Little Bighorn Indian Memorial, inside view 46
Figure 6. Custer in Harper’s Weekly, 1864 70
Figure 7. Romance of Monroe by Ralf Henricksen 89
Figure 8. The fi rst Washita monument, 1891 106
Figure 9. Cheyenne prisoners captured in Custer’s Washita attack 118
Figure 10. The frontier Custer, 1869 123
Figure 11. The Crazy Horse Memorial under construction in the Black
Hills 167
Figure 12. Custer’s War by One Bull 198
Figure 13. “Here Fell Custer,” showing Crow scouts in 1909 212
Figure 14. Tony Austin as Custer in the Hardin reenactment 248
Figure 15. Steve Alexander as Custer in the Real Bird reenactment 255
Figure 16. Indian warriors crossing the Little Bighorn River on horseback
in the Real Bird reenactment 268

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INTRODUCTION
WES ANDERSON’S 2001 FILM THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS BEGINS WITH ELI CASH
describing the novel that has made him a literary celebrity, Old Custer.
“Everyone knows Custer died at Little Bighorn,” Owen Wilson, who plays
Cash, deadpans. “What this book presupposes is, maybe he didn’t.”1 It is a
throwaway line to introduce the shallow intelligence of Cash, who parades
for the literati in a fringed buckskin jacket and cowboy hat. We get the
point: Cash is a one-trick pony who has been able to captivate the read-
ing public by taking a simple fact of history and turning it on its head. He
is right, after all, about one thing. Everyone does know Custer, and what
everyone knows about Custer is that he died—famously, or maybe infa-
mously, overwhelmed by a massive force of Indians at the Battle of the Lit-
tle Bighorn. For most Americans, as for Eli Cash, Custer’s death has come
to be regarded as something less than a historical event and something
more like the punch line of a joke, and not even a very funny joke at that.
This book tells a different story about Custer—a story that takes note
of humorous allusions such as Eli Cash’s but that also tries to make sense
of the locations in the contemporary life of the United States where Custer
continues to be taken quite seriously. Indeed, Eli Cash may come closer to
the truth than he thinks, for in a sense, Custer continues to live. Each year,
on the anniversary of the June Sunday on which Custer led more than
two hundred cavalrymen to their demise at the hands of Lakota Sioux,
Cheyenne, and Arapaho Indians, enthusiasts converge on the land where
the battle occurred to commemorate, debate, and reenact what took place.
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