The Big Horn Treasure

In 1876 Captain Grant Marsh was piloting the riverboat “Far West” up the Bighorn River, to bring Colonel George Armstrong Custer supplies and ammunition. But when he heard of the massacre that occurred at the Little Bighorn, his mission became one of rescue. In order to take on wounded soldiers as passengers, Marsh had to bury $375,000 in gold bars that he was carrying for miners somewhere along the shorelines of the Bighorn River. A friend of Clint Adams’ decides to search for that treasure and asks for his help. Of course, there are others searching for it as well, and Clint has to keep himself and his friend alive long enough to hopefully find the gold.

Since the shocking news first broke in 1876 of the Seventh Cavalry’s disastrous defeat at the Little Big Horn, fascination with the battle—and with Lieutenant George Armstrong Custer—has never ceased. Widespread interest in the subject has spawned a vast outpouring of literature, which only increases with time. This two-volume bibliography of Custer literature is the first to be published in some twenty-five years and the most complete ever assembled. Drawing on years of research, Michael O’Keefe has compiled entries for roughly 3,000 books and 7,000 articles and pamphlets. Covering both nonfiction and fiction (but not juvenile literature), the bibliography focuses on events beginning with Custer’s tenure at West Point during the 1850s and ending with the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890. Included within this span are Custer’s experiences in the Civil War and in Texas, the 1873 Yellowstone and 1874 Black Hills expeditions, the Great Sioux War of 1876–77, and the Seventh Cavalry’s pursuit of the Nez Perces in 1877. The literature on Custer, the Battle of the Little Big Horn, and the Seventh Cavalry touches the entire American saga of exploration, conflict, and settlement in the West, including virtually all Plains Indian tribes, the frontier army, railroading, mining, and trading. Hence this bibliography will be a valuable resource for a broad audience of historians, librarians, collectors, and Custer enthusiasts.

Volume 8 of this prize-winning new edition continues the return of the expeditionary party, from their base at Camp Chopunnish on the Clearwater River in present Idaho back to St. Louis. At the outset, they are hindered by deep snow; but after returning to obtain help from Nez Perce guides they make rapid progress, so much so that at their Travelers’ Rest Camp near the site of today’s Missoula, Montana, the captains divide the party for separate explorations. Lewis heads east to the Missouri River, then north along the Marias to examine the northern extent of the Louisiana Purchase; Clark goes southeast toward the Yellowstone to explore that river and to make contact with local Indians. Lewis’s party suffers various forms of ill luck—grizzlies, horse thieves, and a violent encounter with a party of Piegan Blackfeet (the only trouble of this kind on the expedition)—and Lewis is wounded by one of his own men in a hunting accident. Clark’s group has its own troubles, although not as severe as those of Lewis and his men. The two parties eventually reunite on August 12 in present North Dakota and continue downriver. They revisit Indian tribes—Mandans, Hidatsas, Arikaras, and Yankton Sioux—they had met on the way out, and encounter traders and trappers going upriver. They arrive back in St. Louis to a triumphal welcome on September 23.

Since the time of Columbus, explorers dreamed of a water passage across the North American continent. President Thomas Jefferson shared this dream. He conceived the Corps of Discovery to travel up the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains and westward along possible river routes to the Pacific Ocean. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led this expedition of 1804?6. Along the way they filled hundreds of notebook pages with observations of the geography, Indian tribes, and natural history of the trans-Mississippi West. This last volume recounts the expedition's experiences as they continued their journey homeward from present-day Idaho and the party divided for separate exploration. Lewis probed the northern extent of the Louisiana Purchase on the Marias River, while Clark traveled southeast toward the Yellowstone to explore the river and make contact with local Indians. Lewis's party suffered from bad luck: they encountered grizzlies, horse thieves, and the expedition's only violent encounter with Native inhabitants, the Piegan Blackfeet. Lewis was also wounded in a hunting accident. The two parties eventually reunited below the mouth of the Yellowstone and arrived back in St. Louis to a triumphal welcome in September 1806.