Greasy Grass
Page 21
Custer’s Last Stand was supposed to be a biography. It didn’t take long before I understood that 1951 juvenile book was more novel than history.
After Reynolds’ book came two memorable novels—Will Henry’s No Survivors, and down the road Thomas Berger’s Little Big Man—and I’ve lost count of the biographies and books pertaining to the participants and the battle. Not to mention the movies—They Died with Their Boots On, Little Big Man, Tonka, The Great Sioux Massacre, and the dreadful Custer of the West—and that episode from TV’s Cheyenne that I just barely remember, not to mention The Twilight Zone’s “The Seventh Is Made Up of Phantoms,” which I’ve never forgotten.
Anyway, I always wanted to write about the Little Bighorn, but never could figure out how to approach it. Until, that is, I attended a panel discussion in Bismarck, North Dakota, on the anniversary of the battle, and historian Brian W. Dippie, author of Custer’s Last Stand: The Anatomy of an American Myth, gave me the idea that became Libbie Custer’s prologue. Other helpers include Tracy Potter, executive director of the Fort Abraham Lincoln Foundation; historians/Custer scholars/friends Paul Andrew Hutton (editor of The Custer Reader) and James Donovan (author of A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Bighorn: The Last Great Battle of the American West); and collector Forrest Fenn, who showed me photos of the fiftieth anniversary festivities taken at the battlefield in 1926, as well as the event’s program. He even let me hold a letter written by Custer to Captain Yates!
The park rangers at Little Bighorn Nation Battlefield (it was Custer National Battlefield when I first visited in 1987) have been helpful on numerous excursions to southern Montana. Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Tom Powers, author of The Killing of Crazy Horse, even let me tag along with him and some of his family members when they walked the battlefield on a warm summer morning in 2011; and my Lakota friend Joseph M. Marshall III and his wife Connie West helped provide the Indian perspective on the battle. Joe’s books include The Day the World Ended at Little Bighorn and The Journey of Crazy Horse: A Lakota History (for my money, the definitive biography of the Oglala leader).
In addition to those aforementioned titles, other sources for the overall battle include: War-Path and Bivouac: The Bighorn and Yellowstone Expedition by John F. Finerty; Lakota Recollections of the Custer Fight: New Sources of Indian-Military History, compiled and edited by Richard G. Hardorff; The Custer Companion: A Comprehensive Guide to the Life of George Armstrong Custer and the Plains Indian Wars by Thom Hatch; The Story of the Little Bighorn by Colonel W. A. Graham; The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn by Nathaniel Philbrick; Custer on the Little Bighorn by Thomas B. Marquis; To Hell with Honor: Custer and the Little Bighorn by Larry Sklenar; and Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn by Evan S. Connell. One of my biggest thrills came when I met Evan S. Connell at a party at Forrest Fenn’s house. I told Mr. Connell not to stand, but he did anyway, and shook my hand.
I love that book, though I found the miniseries based on it about as exciting as watching paint dry.
Other references: Sioux War Dispatches: Reports from the Field, 1876–1877 by Marc H. Abrams; Fort Phil Kearny: An American Saga by Dee Brown; They Rode with Custer: A Biographical Directory of the Men that Rode with General George A. Custer, edited by John M. Carroll; The Fighting Cheyennes by George Bird Grinnell; Custer and the Cheyenne: George Armstrong Custer’s Winter Campaign on the Southern Plains by Louis Kraft; Where the Custer Fight Began: Undermanned and Overwhelmed: The Reno Valley Fight by Donald W. Moore; The Little Bighorn Campaign: March–September 1876 by Wayne Michael Sarf; Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian, 1866–1891 and Custer Battlefield National Monument, both by Robert M. Utley; and Participants in the Battle of the Little Bighorn by Frederic C. Wagner III.
Biographies/memoirs include Brandy Station to Manila Bay: A Biography of General Wesley Merritt by Don E. Alberts; Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors by Stephen E. Ambrose; I Go with Custer: The Life and Death of Reporter Mark Kellogg by Sandy Barnard; Crazy Horse: A Lakota Life by Kingsley Bray; Tom Custer: Ride to Glory by Carl F. Day; Red Cloud: Warrior-Statesman of the Lakota Sioux and Gall: Lakota War Chief, both by Robert W. Larson; Elizabeth Bacon Custer and the Making of a Myth by Shirley A. Leckie; I Buried Custer: The Diary of Pvt. Thomas W. Coleman, Seventh US Cavalry, edited by Bruce R. Liddic; Custer: The Life of General George Armstrong Custer by Jay Monaghan; Harvest of Barren Regrets: The Army Career of Frederick William Benteen, 1834–1898 by Charles K. Mills; Black Elk Speaks by John G. Neihardt; In Custer’s Shadow: Major Marcus Reno by Ronald H. Nichols; Autobiography of Red Cloud: War Leader of the Oglalas, edited by R. Eli Paul; Deliverance from the Little Bighorn: Doctor Henry Porter and Custer’s Seventh Cavalry by Joan Nabseth Stevenson; Cavalier in Buckskin: George Armstrong Custer and the Western Military Frontier and The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull, both by Robert M. Utley; Old Neutriment: Memories of the Custers by Glendolin Damon Wagner; Custer: The Controversial Life of George Armstrong Custer by Jeffry D. Wert; and I Fought with Custer: The Story of Sergeant Windolph, Last Survivor of the Battle of the Little Bighorn as Told to Frazier and Robert Hunt by Charles Windolph.
And, of course, the books by Elizabeth Bacon Custer—Boots and Saddles; or, Life in Dakota with General Custer; Following the Guidon; and Tenting on the Plains; or, General Custer in Kansas and Texas—and her husband’s My Life on the Plains; or, Personal Experiences with Indians.
Those sources are worth checking out to understand—if anyone can ever truly understand—what happened at Greasy Grass River in the summer of 1876, and why it happened.
Johnny D. Boggs
Santa Fe, New Mexico
About the Author
Johnny D. Boggs has worked cattle, shot rapids in a canoe, hiked across mountains and deserts, traipsed around ghost towns, and spent hours poring over microfilm in library archives—all in the name of finding a good story. He’s also one of the few Western writers to have won six Spur Awards from Western Writers of America (for his novels, Camp Ford, in 2006, Doubtful Cañon, in 2008, and Hard Winter in 2010, Legacy of a Lawman, West Texas Kill, both in 2012, and his short story, “A Piano at Dead Man’s Crossing,” in 2002 and the Western Heritage Wrangler Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum for his novel, Spark on the Prairie: The Trial of the Kiowa Chiefs, in 2004). A native of South Carolina, Boggs spent almost fifteen years in Texas as a journalist at the Dallas Times Herald and Fort Worth Star-Telegram before moving to New Mexico in 1998 to concentrate full time on his novels. Author of dozens of published short stories, he has also written for more than fifty newspapers and magazines, and is a frequent contributor to Boys’ Life and True West. His Western novels cover a wide range. The Lonesome Chisholm Trail (Five Star Westerns, 2000) is an authentic cattle-drive story, while Lonely Trumpet (Five Star Westerns, 2002) is an historical novel about the first black graduate of West Point. The Despoilers (Five Star Westerns, 2002) and Ghost Legion (Five Star Westerns, 2005) are set in the Carolina backcountry during the Revolutionary War. The Big Fifty (Five Star Westerns, 2003) chronicles the slaughter of buffalo on the southern plains in the 1870s, while East of the Border (Five Star Westerns, 2004) is a comedy about the theatrical offerings of Buffalo Bill Cody, Wild Bill Hickok, and Texas Jack Omohundro, and Camp Ford (Five Star Westerns, 2005) tells about a Civil War baseball game between Union prisoners of war and Confederate guards. “Boggs’ narrative voice captures the old-fashioned style of the past,” Publishers Weekly said, and Booklist called him “among the best Western writers at work today.” Boggs lives with his wife Lisa and son Jack in Santa Fe. His website is www.JohnnyDBoggs.com.
hare this book with friends