The Battle of the Greasy Grass/Little Bighorn

Custer's Last Stand in Memory, History, and Popular Culture

Debra Buchholtz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136300486
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

In June of 1876, the U.S. government's plan to pressure the Lakota and Cheyenne people onto reservations came to a dramatic and violent end with a battle that would become enshrined in American memory. In the eyes of many Americans at the time, the Battle of Little Bighorn represented a symbolic struggle between the civilized and the savage. Known as the Battle of the Greasy Grass to the Lakota, the Battle of Little Bighorn to the people who suppressed them, and as Custer's Last Stand in the annals of popular culture, the event continues to captivate students of American history.

In The Battle of Little Bighorn, Debra Buchholtz narrates the history of the battle and critically examines the legacy it has left. Through government documents, newspaper articles, and eyewitness accounts, Buchholtz situates the material and symbolic impact of the battle at the time. Using popular film and cultural references, she investigates the ways in which the wake of the event continues to shape the way students understand indigenous peoples, the Wild West, and the history of America.

CHAPTER 1

Road to War

INTRODUCTION

On June 25, 1876, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and the U.S. 7th Cavalry, with the help of Crow and Arikara scouts, found and attacked a Lakota (Sioux) and Cheyenne village on the west bank of the Little Bighorn River in Montana Territory. With its tribal circles swelled by Lakota and Cheyenne Indians who had left their reservations that spring to socialize and hunt with friends and relatives still roaming the northern Plains, the village was much larger than anyone expected. Historians estimate it contained seven thousand people, including as many as two thousand men of fighting age. At the first sign of attack, warriors from the village scrambled to defend their families and homes. By the end of the day Custer and everyone under his immediate command lay dead on the bluffs above the north end of the sprawling village. Meanwhile, the remnants of the 7th Cavalry—troops commanded by Major Marcus Reno and Captain Frederick Benteen and those escorting the slow-moving pack train—reunited on a hilltop just over four miles upstream. Warriors held them under siege there for the rest of that day and most of the next. In all, 263 soldiers and attached civilians died in the battle, 210 of them under Custer’s immediate command. Another sixty were wounded but more than four hundred survived. Estimates of Lakota and Cheyenne fatalities run from thirty to three hundred with most credible sources putting their death toll at the lower end of the range.

Late in the afternoon on June 26 Lakota and Cheyenne lookouts detected more troops approaching from the north and the village hastily decamped southward, leaving behind a scattering of household goods and other possessions. Although the Lakota and Cheyenne had won a major victory, any celebration was muted by grief for the loved ones killed or wounded in the battle. Besides, as modern interpreters are keen to note, they may have won the battle but they had already lost the war to preserve their traditional ways of life, something many people in the village already realized. Within just a few weeks the army fielded the largest troop deployment since the Civil War to track them down. Within a year most of the Cheyennes and Lakotas involved in the battle, including Crazy Horse and his followers, had returned to the agencies. Once there, they were forced to relinquish their nomadic lifestyles forever and accept settled life on reservations. Sitting Bull and his followers crossed over the border to Grandmother’s Land (Canada) in the spring of 1877. Over the next few years they trickled back south in small groups and surrendered. Sitting Bull finally capitulated in 1881.

Dubbed Custer’s Last Stand by the press of the day and celebrated as such by American popular culture ever since, most non-Indians now remember the fight as the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Many Native Americans, however, adopt the nomenclature of their ancestors who were in the village at the time. They call it the Battle of the Greasy Grass, a label derived from the Lakota name for the river. These contrasting designators—Custer’s Last Stand, Battle of the Little Bighorn, Battle of the Greasy Grass—signal remarkably different ways of telling the story and understanding the events that led up to the battle and what happened afterwards. They also reflect differences in how people experienced the battle and suffered its consequences. Even now the battle means different things to different people. An appreciation of that is key to understanding what happened, the consequences for those involved, and the battle’s changing image in popular culture. But more than just mark dissimilarities in how differently situated people experienced and now remember the battle, these distinct labels offer a route to understanding why this relatively minor series of events became a critical moment in American history.

How the battle story is told has continually changed in response to new evidence and the fluctuating needs of diverse segments of a society undergoing rapid change. Ambiguities, contradictions, and unknowns riddle the story. Different eyewitnesses saw different parts of the action or the same parts from different vantage points. Many participants reported their observations years later, which allowed time for memories to fade or be swayed by other accounts. Fearing reprisals, most Lakotas and Cheyennes hesitated to tell their story at all. To protect themselves or curry favor, some told their white interrogators only what they thought they wanted to hear. Moreover, the questions the interviewers posed inevitably derived from their own preconceived notions of what had happened and thereby shaped the responses they got. Many Native American eyewitnesses shared their accounts through translators, some of whom intentionally or inadvertently mistranslated their words. Certain 7th Cavalry survivors recounted their experiences in ways that advanced a particular interpretation or cast a more positive light on some of their comrades than others. A few even told their stories in different ways at different times. Some scholars have speculated that the survivors “closed ranks” to protect the reputation of the regiment or held back information that reflected poorly on Custer out of respect for his wife. Over the years, scores of people falsely claimed to be “sole survivors” and offered their own fabricated battle accounts. It is for these reasons that eyewitness accounts and other sources often contradict one another.

Despite the huge and still growing body of literature on the battle, including dozens of eyewitness accounts by Native Americans and soldiers and excellent contributions by archaeologists, many unknowns remain and always will. Historians constantly grapple with such issues. But, in this particular case, the discrepancies fuel ongoing and sometimes acrimonious popular debate and controversy and give rise to a seemingly endless parade of new analyses and fictionalized accounts. And because so many of the battle details remain open to interpretation and dispute, different stakeholders—and that is exactly what they are, individuals and groups with “shares” or “vested interests” in the battle story—enjoy wide latitude in how they tell the story and often do so in ways that advance their own interests.

The timing of the battle is also noteworthy. While the Lakota and Cheyenne were fighting Custer’s 7th Cavalry out on the northern Plains, elsewhere in the country people were gearing up to celebrate the nation’s one-hundredth birthday. Back from recession and with the post-Civil War period of Reconstruction (1865–1877) officially over, the newly reunited nation was brimming with optimism, at least in theory. High-ranking officials such as General William Tecumseh Sherman (Commanding General of the Army) and General Philip Sheridan (head of the Department of the Missouri) were gathered in Philadelphia, where the celebration centered on the blockbuster Centennial Exhibition. From there Sherman, Sheridan, and other officials quickly dismissed as implausible rumors of the 7th Cavalry’s defeat and Custer’s death that began circulating just after the festivities climaxed on the Fourth of July. When more credible sources confirmed those rumors two days later, the American people were stunned. But should they have been?

The clouds of war had been massing for years—even decades—and anyone paying attention could easily see that peoples like the Lakota and Cheyenne not only stood in the way of America’s putative manifest destiny to “overspread the continent” but had been paying a heavy price for the country’s westward expansion. Some of them had long responded to threats to their lands, livelihoods, and ways of life with armed resistance and they had fought hard, for they had everything to lose. All spring Indian agents had been reporting that disgruntled Lakotas and Cheyennes were leaving their reservations in greater numbers than ever to join bands of roamers led by such stalwart traditionalists as Sitting Bull (Hunkpapa Lakota), Crazy Horse (Oglala Lakota), and Two Moon (Northern Cheyenne). By early summer even casual readers of the national press should have had an inkling of at least some of the links in the chain of events that culminated on the banks of the river with two names, the Little Bighorn and Greasy Grass.

The specific context in which the battle occurred and how it was initially reported and later re-presented are key to making sense of the continually evolving story and the ways diversely situated stakeholders have understood it at particular junctures. The Greasy Grass/Little Bighorn battle has long captured the attention of a growing cohort of amateur historians. Representing all fifty states and many foreign countries, these individuals pour over the massive body of literature on it. They scour eyewitness accounts, oral history, and primary documents in search of new insights into exactly what happened, how, where, when, and why. Many of them belong to organizations dedicated to the study of this and related battles. Some publish narrowly focused analyses of aspects of the battle. Others critically, almost gleefully, analyze everything their colleagues write. Hundreds congregate in the battlefield vicinity each year over the late June battle anniversary to rehash what happened. A few dress in Cavalry uniforms and take part in one of two battle reenactments staged at that time. The minutiae that so fascinates them is readily available elsewhere, contributes little to our understanding of the context in which the battle occurred and its subsequent ramifications, and, consequently, falls outside the scope of this volume. Nonetheless, readers interested in such fine-grained detail will find the references cited and appended documents a useful starting point. The intense and enduring interest in the battle manifested by these so-called Custer buffs indicates the prominence the battle has attained in American history and popular culture and will be explored in later chapters.

There are many organizations devoted to study of the Greasy Grass/Little Bighorn battle. Foremost amongst them is Friends of the Little Bighorn Battlefield, a group established in 1996 to support the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. Others include the Custer Battlefield Museum & Historical Association, Little Big Horn Associates, the Custer Battlefield Preservation Committee, and the Custer Association of Great Britain. Members of the Order of the Indian Wars also take a strong interest in this particular battle.

From the outset, the Greasy Grass/Little Bighorn battle meant different things to different people. What exactly those things are has changed in step with prevailing social, political, and economic conditions, a thread that runs through this book. In 1876, for example, most (but not all) Americans of European descent understood the battle as the tragic outcome of a clash between civilization and savagery. They glorified Custer and his men as heroes who valiantly sacrificed themselves for the good of the nation. On the eve of World War II many Americans embraced Errol Flynn’s Custer in the film They Died with their Boots On as a model for how American soldiers should face death fighting for American ideals. But then in the Vietnam era many younger Americans and civil rights activists came to see the battle as the archetype of what, in their eyes, were racist and genocidal wars fought by the United States in pursuit of global dominance. Little Big Man, the 1970 film starring Dustin Hoffman in the title role, popularized that view. More recently the battle has been reduced to an almost inevitable outcome of a “clash of cultures.”¹ That view is perhaps most evident in the story told by the National Park Service (NPS) at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. Yet, despite important patterns like these, no consensus view of the battle has ever developed. Furthermore, one must remember that abstract concepts like “civilization,” “savagery,” and “cultures” don’t clash, people do.

At any given point, differently situated groups and individuals have understood and used the battle in profoundly different ways. By incorporating and contextualizing the competing voices and discordant memories suggested by the distinct ways of labeling the battle already noted, this book aims to convey the contingency of history. As will become evident, how such events are remembered is influenced by conditions in the present as well as those at the time. Because of its ironic timing and the mystery that shrouds it to this day, the Greasy Grass/Little Bighorn battle gives itself readily to diverse interpretations, thus making it an ideal vehicle for illustrating how past events are continually reconstituted to reflect current sensibilities and to serve present ends and future objectives. That historical facts can be assembled and reassembled in many different ways in support of different and sometimes conflicting analyses, interpretations, and agendas is an important yet often difficult point for history readers to grasp.

The Battle of the Greasy Grass/Little Bighorn has long fascinated the American public. This book goes beyond the usual battle narrative to ask why and to explore the battle’s far-flung implications and ramifications. It begins in the present chapter by locating the battle within the complex social, cultural, political, and economic milieu in which it occurred. This establishes the historical background and contextualizes the political and strategic calculations behind the army’s campaign to force the Lakota and Cheyenne roamers onto reservations as well as the logic and motivations that underpinned Lakota and Cheyenne resistance. Chapter 2 narrates the battle as it unfolded, starting with the War Department orders that paved the way for a military campaign against the off-reservation Lakota and Cheyenne. Chapter 3 describes what happened to parties from both sides after the battle, how they responded, and the battle’s longer-term consequences for them. How the American public, including so-called Friends of the Indian groups, understood and reacted to those events is noted at relevant points throughout this and the next chapter. Chapter 4 periodizes remembrance of the event. It not only traces the continuing reverberations and ramifications of the battle but links specific iterations of the story to social, political, and economic conditions at particular points in time. By describing the contexts in which it has been remembered and memorialized in this way, the volume begins to unravel how and why the Greasy Grass/Little Bighorn battle, which was relatively minor by then recent Civil War standards, attained such prominence in American history and culture. The final chapter critically evaluates scholarly and other treatments of the battle, considering both the end products and the primary sources that went into their creation. It also looks at battlefield interpretation at the national monument in relation to a pair of battle reenactments staged nearby and briefly explores the meanings they asserted and politics they enacted. This clearly illustrates how even today the battle story is used to advance competing agendas.

U.S. WESTWARD EXPANSION

In 1803 the United States acquired the vast swath of territory known as the Louisiana Purchase from France and thus doubled its land base. The 828,200 square mile expanse stretched from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from the Gulf of Mexico to the present-day Canadian border. Soon thereafter President Thomas Jefferson commissioned Merriwether Lewis and William Clark to lead an expedition up the Missouri River. The Corps of Discovery, as it was called, had several objectives, all of them in aid of the new nation’s westward expansion. Besides attempting to locate the Northwest Passage, a non-existent waterway then believed to connect the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean, Lewis and Clark were tasked with describing the flora, fauna, and geography of the region, surveying its exploitable resources and potential for economic development, and asserting American dominion over its indigenous peoples. Between 1804 and 1806 the Lewis and Clark expedition crossed and re-crossed the northern Plains. During that time, it encountered many Native groups, including the Lakota, Cheyenne, Crow, and Arikara, peoples destined to feature in the Greasy Grass/Little Bighorn story.

But Spanish, French, and British soldiers, explorers, traders, and missionaries preceded Lewis and Clark and their influences had already altered the balance of power on the Great Plains and effected significant cultural change. Contrary to popular imagery, the Plains Indians did not always have horses. Horses did not exist in the Americas prior to their introduction by Spanish conquistadors. Plains groups acquired them in the 1700s through trade with and theft from indigenous peoples to the south and west who had acquired them directly or indirectly from the Spanish herds. By the middle of the eighteenth century most Plains tribes were mounted. That led to changes in their residence patterns and subsistence strategies, altered their involvement in the fur trade, and influenced intertribal warfare. With the acquisition of horses they became even more reliant on the American bison, or what is commonly but less accurately called the buffalo. Not only did the buffalo provide them with food to eat and hides to trade for European goods, they fashioned clothes, tipi covers, and household implements from the skins, bones, horns, and other parts of the animal.

Around that time they also began to obtain guns through French and British traders situated to their north and east. Indigenous peoples furthest east acquired guns first, which gave them a temporary advantage in warfare and hunting for the fur trade. The French and British traders had other enticing goods on offer, which created new wants and needs that drew the tribes deeper into French, British, and (later) American controlled trading networks and thereby disrupted the traditional networks. Most tribes hunted or trapped for furs to trade but some traded finished goods and foodstuffs. For a time, tribes like the Arikara and Crow were strategically positioned and powerful enough to control and profit from the flow of goods by acting as middlemen. They vigorously defended that role while tribes like the Lakota strategically disrupted trade to their rivals.

Smallpox, scarlet fever, measles, and other European diseases to which Native American peoples lacked immunity followed the same routes as horses, guns, and trade goods. Wave after wave of disease—what historians call “virgin soil epidemics”—affected some groups more than others. In 1780 a smallpox epidemic swept across the Plains killing over half the members of those tribes it struck. Other epidemics followed and each further weakened the tribes affected. In the summer of 1837 the St. Peter steamed up the Missouri River loaded with goods for the fur trade. The boat also inadvertently carried smallpox. People at stops along the way were infected and from there the disease spread rapidly from tribe to tribe. Because they lived in close proximity to one another, the village Indians were the most seriously affected; nomadic peoples, who lived in more open spaces and could disperse quickly, suffered fewer deaths. The sedentary Mandan, Arikara, and Hidatsa were hardest hit. Demographic sociologist Russell Thornton estimates that only about half the Arikara and Hidatsa survived.² The Mandan numbered 1,600–2,0...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents 
• Series Introduction
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Timeline
• 1 Road to War
• 2 Battle of the Greasy Grass/Little Bighorn
• 3 Aftermath
• 4 Reverberations
• 5 The Battle in Memory and History
• Documents
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index