A Companion to Custer and the Little Bighorn Campaign

Brad D. Lookingbill, Brad D. Lookingbill

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781119071884
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

• An accessible and authoritative overview of the scholarship that has shaped our understanding of one of the most iconic battles in the history of the American West
• Combines contributions from an array of respected scholars, historians, and battlefield scientists
• Outlines the political and cultural conditions that laid the foundation for the Centennial Campaign and examines how George Armstrong Custer became its figurehead
• Provides a detailed analysis of the battle maneuverings at Little Bighorn, paying special attention to Indian testimony from the battlefield
• Concludes with a section examining how the Battle of Little Bighorn has been mythologized and its pervading influence on American culture

Part I
The Indians of the Northern Plains

Chapter One
The Lakota Sioux

Rani-Henrik Andersson

According to Lakota mythology, long before humans were born, different powers and creatures struggled to exercise control or influence over the cosmos. As a result they created the Sun, the Moon, and Mother Earth. Once the four winds, each with its own task, were born, the directions and most important powers of the world were set. Eventually the godlike creatures grew tired of each other and sent Iktomi (trickster) to find people. At that time people lived underground together with the buffalo in a state of chaos. That is why the people were also called Pte oyate, the Buffalo People. According to some versions of the story, the people and the buffalo emerged from beneath the earth together.

After emerging from the earth, the people and the buffalo did not get along. The buffalo were dreadful creatures, and people were afraid of them. The people had no food, and the buffalo did not agree to be eaten. According to Lakota myths, a strange contest took place in those early times: Animals raced around the sacred Black Hills (Hesapa) to decide who was the most important. The bison seemed to be in clear lead. Just as the end of the race was near, it turned out that a small bird had sat on the bison’s shoulders and flew across the finish line. Because the bird, like the human being, is one of the two-legged creatures (hununpa) of the earth, it meant that human beings also got credit for the victory. As a result, humans received the right to use animals as sustenance. Hence, the human beings were wakan akantula, “things on top” (Walker 1991, 68–74).

Thus, in the beginning, there was disharmony between humans, animals, and superhuman elements. Then the mythical White Buffalo Woman (Wohpe/Ptesawin) came to resolve the conflict. The story is central to the Lakota belief system and encompasses abundant symbolism. There are multiple versions of the story, but the main idea remains: When the woman turns into a buffalo, she creates a connection between the buffalo and the human, and the human and the Wakan Tanka. The White Buffalo Woman is a link between Wakan Tanka and humans. In the myth, the woman calls the Lakotas her relatives, saying that she was their sister and at the same time was one with them. When the woman brought the Lakotas the sacred pipe, she gave them the foundation of their religious ceremonies. The pipe symbolizes the universe, and the fire in the bowl is the symbolic center of the universe, serving as a direct link, prayer, to Wakan Tanka. In addition to the pipe, the buffalo, or symbolism related to it, is an integral part of religious rituals and rites. In her great generosity, the woman gave the Lakotas seven sacred ceremonies that were to ensure that the buffalo would fill the earth and the Lakota nation would thrive.

This is how the Lakotas placed human beings and animals as part of the Creation. In the Lakota view, the world was an entity, and human beings were part of it. They did not make a distinction between the supernatural and the natural world. Although some things were beyond human understanding, they were a natural part of the world; they were wakan. Wakan can be understood as a mystic power that consists of everything that cannot be comprehended. Everything in the world originated from this power that was everywhere. Animals, rivers, lakes, plants, even people, were wakan, or they had a wakan power. Together, the world’s wakan powers formed Wakan Tanka, the mystic power of the universe, which can also be described with the words sacred or sacredness. Western conception might characterize Wakan Tanka as a godlike being, but the Lakotas do not view Wakan Tanka as a single being but as a power that encompasses everything living and inanimate, visible and invisible.

The most comprehensive sources for understanding Lakota beliefs, myths, and stories are materials collected by James Walker in the early twentieth century and published in Lakota Myth (1983) and Lakota Belief and Ritual (1991). Another important source is Dakota Texts (2006) by Ella Deloria. The latest publications on Lakota myths are Lakota Legends and Myths: Native American Oral Traditions Recorded by Marie L. McLaughlin and Zitkala-Sa (2009) and The Sons of the Wind: The Sacred Stories of the Lakota (Dooling 2000). Excellent studies on Lakota religious thought are Sioux Indian Religion: Tradition and Innovation (DeMallie & Parks 1987), Oglala Religion (Powers 1977), and a summary by Raymond J. DeMallie (2001b). Black Elk, a famed Oglala medicine man, provides us with the most comprehensive insider view on Lakota religion in John G. Neihardt’s Black Elk Speaks (1961) and The Sixth Grandfather (DeMallie 1985). Joseph Epes Brown’s The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk’s Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux (1989) gives additional information on Lakota religious ceremonies.

Lakota mythology explains Lakota origins and their relationship with the universe. Understanding Lakota views is instrumental in seeking an interpretation of Lakota behavior. For example, in 1890 a religion known as the Ghost Dance promised the return of the buffalo by dancing a certain dance. By then the buffalo was almost hunted to extinction by the whites. For the Lakotas the buffalo had symbolically returned to the earth from where they had once originated. When the new religion, which the Lakotas called wanagi wachipi kin, the Spirit Dance, told that the buffalo would again emerge from the earth, this was natural for the Lakotas. And so was meeting with the spirits of the departed during the dance ceremonies. For the whites both ideas were ridiculous and even dangerous. The new religious ceremonies had to be stopped, which eventually led to the Wounded Knee massacre in December 1890 (see DeMallie 1993; Andersson 2008).

The Lakotas

Until the eighteenth century, the Lakotas and other Siouan groups lived in present-day Minnesota and Wisconsin. In the mid-eighteenth century, the first groups of Sioux crossed the Missouri River and settled permanently on the western plains. Gradually, more Sioux moved to the plains, and by the early nineteenth century they had become a typical hunting tribe of the plains.

The first white accounts of Sioux Indians are from the 1640s, when fur trappers and explorers Jean Nicollet and Paul LeJeune met some Sioux on the upper Missouri. Most early explorers described the Sioux as proud, honest, and noble-looking people, who took great honor in war. Early missionaries, mostly Jesuits, compared the Sioux with the Iroquois, who were the strongest and most warlike of the eastern Indians. Many travelers described the Sioux with respect mixed with fear, while they used words that are rarely seen in their depictions of other Indians. The early white reports are fragmented and mostly deal with the Eastern Sioux. By the late eighteenth century more trappers, traders, explorers, and artists ventured beyond the Missouri River, providing us with a fuller description of the Western Sioux, the Lakota. Perhaps the most detailed accounts come from Jean Baptiste Truteau and Pierre-Antoine Tabeau. Artists like George Catlin have preserved information on clothing and other ethnographic data from the early nineteenth century. The most comprehensive ethnographic account of the Sioux from the earlier part of the century is Edwin Denig’s Five Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri (1961). Denig gathered material for his book for more than 20 years starting in the 1830s. His work is still considered to be one of the classics in Native American studies (see DeMallie 1975; DeMallie & Parks 2003; DeMallie 2001a, 718–722). An interesting early nineteenth-century description comes from the explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, who described the Sioux as “the vilest miscreants of the savage race.” The Lakotas were the only tribe with whom they nearly had a serious engagement during their two-year trek across the continent. Still, they too describe them as “stout and bold looking people” (Bergon 1989, 40; Ostler 2004, 13–21).

Neighboring tribes of the Sioux called them nadowessiwak, “little snakes.” Sometimes the word has also been translated as “enemy.” In any case, the French turned this Ojibwa word into Sioux, which is still the collective term used for these tribes.

The Sioux, however, were and are not a unified nation but a loose group known as the Seven Council Fires, Ochethi šakowin. The Seven Council Fires is the mythological origin of all the Sioux people. According to the Sioux, seven tribes formed a fire of seven councils in ancient times. The tribes drifted apart so that each tribe selected its own leaders and living areas, but they maintained relations with each other.

This relationship is most clearly seen in the Sioux language, which has three dialects, Dakhóta, Nakhóta and Lakhóta. People speaking different dialects can understand each other. The Dakhóta-speaking Santees, Yanktons, and Yanktonais form the eastern branch of the Sioux. Traditionally, it has been assumed that the Yanktons and the Yanktonai speak Nakhóta, but the latest linguistic and anthropological studies show that Nakhóta is rather spoken by distinct relatives of the Sioux, the Assiniboine Indians of Montana, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Lakhóta is spoken by the western branch of the Sioux, the Lakotas (lakhota). The Lakotas are also known by the name Teton, coming from the Lakota word thithunwan (“dwellers on the plains”). The Lakotas are divided into seven tribes (oyate), the Oglalas, Hunkpapas, Minneconjous, Brulés, Two Kettles, Sans Arcs, and Black Feet (DeMallie 2001a, 718–722).

By 1825, the Lakotas had occupied an area ranging from the Missouri River west to the Black Hills, and from the southern parts of North Dakota to south of the Platte River in Nebraska. They pushed away the Kiowa, Arikara, and Crow tribes, establishing their status as the strongest tribe of the northern plains during the first decades of the nineteenth century. This was due to the overpowering numbers of the Lakotas as well as to illnesses that devastated other tribes in the region.

Sedentary tribes like the Pawnees and Mandans suffered severely from new illnesses brought by the whites. The Lakotas, who were constantly moving in small bands, were not as affected. Lakota wintercounts, nevertheless, record winters when illnesses struck the Lakotas (Walker 1982). Still, their population grew from approximately 4,000–8,000 at the end of the eighteenth century to 25,000 by the 1820s. The figures are, however, slightly misleading, as early nineteenth-century white observers were unable to recognize all the Lakotas, while the largest figures probably include individuals from other Sioux tribes.

Much of the information on the earliest period and early migration comes from these relatively sparse notes, making it difficult to conclusively determine early Lakota migration patterns. The most thorough analysis can be found in DeMallie (2001a, 718–722, 727–734). Other recent works include Jeffrey Ostler’s The Plains Sioux and US Colonialism from Lewis and Clark to Wounded Knee (2004, 21–28) and The Lakotas and the Black Hills (2010, 5–27). Older, still valuable studies include George E. Hyde’s Red Cloud’s Folk (1975) and Spotted Tail’s Folk (1961), and Richard White’s insightful article “The Winning of the West: The Expansion of the Western Sioux in the 18th and 19th Centuries” (1978).

“Where do they all come from?”

Lakota–white relations were relatively peaceful until the 1840s. In the early 1850s, the annual report of the Secretary of War stated that Lakota attacks on the whites were “rare occasions.” Their relations with the United States mostly involved trade, and the network of trading posts expanded to the Lakota territory in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Groups of Lakotas signed a treaty with US representatives to regulate trade in 1815. The Lakotas brought the whites buffalo hides and fur, and the whites paid with their own products, such as knives, kettles, and whisky (DeMallie 2001a, 719–722; DeMallie 2001b 794–795; Ostler 2010, 28–38).

The Lakotas quickly became dependent on white supplies. Already in the 1820s, witnesses reported whiskey-induced disagreements and even bloody fights amongst the Lakotas. The most famous one took place in 1841, when the young aspiring Red Cloud (Mahpiya Luta) killed Bull Bear (Mato Tatanka), the most famous Oglala chief of the time. One wintercount recorded it as the year “they killed each other while drinking.” This event led to the division of the Oglalas and the creation of fric...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: The Indians of the Northern Plains
• Part II: The US Army in the Western Territories
• Part III: The Making of George Armstrong Custer
• Part IV: Into the Valley
• Part V: The Last Stand of Myth and Memory
• Index
• End User License Agreement