They Died With Custer

Dead men tell no tales, and the soldiers who rode and died with George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn have been silent statistics for more than a hundred years. By blending historical sources, archaeological evidence, and painstaking analysis of the skeletal remains, Douglas D. Scott, P. Willey, and Melissa A. Connor reconstruct biographies of many of the individual soldiers, identifying age, height, possible race, state of health, and the specific way each died. They also link reactions to the battle over the years to shifts in American views regarding the appropriate treatment of the dead.

Dead men tell no tales, and the soldiers who rode and died with George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn have been silent statistics for more than a hundred years. By blending historical sources, archaeological evidence, and painstaking analysis of the skeletal remains, Douglas D. Scott, P. Willey, and Melissa A. Connor reconstruct biographies of many of the individual soldiers, identifying age, height, possible race, state of health, and the specific way each died. They also link reactions to the battle over the years to shifts in American views regarding the appropriate treatment of the dead.

With the Great Sioux War as background and context, and drawing on many new materials, Thomas Powers establishes what really happened in the dramatic final months and days of Crazy Horse’s life. He was the greatest Indian warrior of the nineteenth century, whose victory over General Custer at the battle of Little Bighorn in 1876 was the worst defeat ever inflicted on the frontier army. But after surrendering to federal troops, Crazy Horse was killed in custody for reasons which have been fiercely debated for more than a century. The Killing of Crazy Horse pieces together the story behind this official killing.

A comprehensive and balanced biography of the controversial George Armstrong Custer.

Not one, not two, but three Custer brothers died at the Little Bighorn—and so did their only sister's husband. Most do not realize that not one, not two, but three Custer brothers died with the 7th Cavalry at the hands of the Sioux and Cheyenne at Little Bighorn in 1876. So too did their nephew and the husband of their only sister. Less than half the immediate Custer family would survive the massacre. This is their story. This book is a must for all those interested in the enduring Custer legend. Where other Custer literature focuses solely on George Armstrong, The Other Custers is the only volume to explore the lives of the Custer siblings in depth. War hero Tom Custer earned two Medals of Honor during the Civil War before riding into the West with his brother. There was the bashful and enigmatic Nevin Custer, and the young Boston Custer, whose one desire in life was to share the adventures of his idolized older brothers. Margaret Custer married into the 7th Cavalry and was widowed at twenty-four when her husband, James Calhoun, was among the dead at the Little Bighorn. The Other Custers traces the upbringing of the family and follows Nevin and Margaret as they carried the Custer name beyond Little Bighorn. The book also uncovers much more detail about the ancestors and descendants of the Custer siblings than is to be found in other Custer biographies.

Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for History From the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes and a National Book Award, a brilliant biography of Gen. George Armstrong Custer that radically changes our view of the man and his turbulent times. In this magisterial biography, T. J. Stiles paints a portrait of Custer both deeply personal and sweeping in scope, proving how much of Custer’s legacy has been ignored. He demolishes Custer’s historical caricature, revealing a volatile, contradictory, intense person—capable yet insecure, intelligent yet bigoted, passionate yet self-destructive, a romantic individualist at odds with the institution of the military (he was court-martialed twice in six years). The key to understanding Custer, Stiles writes, is keeping in mind that he lived on a frontier in time. In the Civil War, the West, and many areas overlooked in previous biographies, Custer helped to create modern America, but he could never adapt to it. He freed countless slaves yet rejected new civil rights laws. He proved his heroism but missed the dark reality of war for so many others. A talented combat leader, he struggled as a manager in the West. He tried to make a fortune on Wall Street yet never connected with the new corporate economy. Native Americans fascinated him, but he could not see them as fully human. A popular writer, he remained apart from Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain, and other rising intellectuals. During Custer’s lifetime, Americans saw their world remade. His admirers saw him as the embodiment of the nation’s gallant youth, of all that they were losing; his detractors despised him for resisting a more complex and promising future. Intimate, dramatic, and provocative, this biography captures the larger story of the changing nation in Custer’s tumultuous marriage to his highly educated wife, Libbie; their complicated relationship with Eliza Brown, the forceful black woman who ran their household; as well as his battles and expeditions. It casts surprising new light on a near-mythic American figure, a man both widely known and little understood.

On the afternoon of June 25, 1867, an overwhelming force of Sioux and Cheyenne Indians quickly mounted a savage onslaught against General George Armstrong Custer’s battalion, driving the doomed troopers of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry to a small hill overlooking the Little Bighorn River, where Custer and his men bravely erected their heroic last stand. So goes the myth of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, a myth perpetuated and reinforced for over 100 years. In truth, however, "Custer’s Last Stand" was neither the last of the fighting nor a stand. Using innovative and standard archaeological techniques, combined with historical documents and Indian eyewitness accounts, Richard Allan Fox, Jr. vividly replays this battle in astonishing detail. Through bullets, spent cartridges, and other material data, Fox identifies combat positions and tracks soldiers and Indians across the Battlefield. Guided by the history beneath our feet, and listening to the previously ignored Indian testimonies, Fox reveals scenes of panic and collapse and, ultimately, a story of the Custer battle quite different from the fatalistic versions of history. According to the author, the five companies of the Seventh Cavalry entered the fray in good order, following planned strategies and displaying tactical stability. It was the sudden disintegration of this cohesion that caused the troopers’ defeat. The end came quickly, unexpectedly, and largely amid terror and disarray. Archaeological evidences show that there was no determined fighting and little firearm resistance. The last soldiers to be killed had rushed from Custer Hill.

With his own words and images, Joseph White Bull tells of his memorable life and exploits as a Lakota warrior in the late nineteenth century. The son of a Miniconjou chief and nephew of Sitting Bull of the Hunkpapas, White Bull was an accomplished warrior. He participated in the Fetterman and Wagon-Box fights, and fought at the Little Big Horn, contending that he was the warrior who killed Custer. Many years later, White Bull was persuaded to recount the outstanding events of his life. The result is this remarkable autobiography, consisting of text and drawings. In addition to relating White Bull's accomplishments in war, the narrative includes events from his youth, details of Lakota culture, and an extended Lakota winter count. This bilingual edition, originally published as The Warrior Who Killed Custer (Nebraska 1968), features White Bull's story in its original Lakota, his drawings, and an English translation. The manuscript was translated and edited by James H. Howard, author of The Canadian Sioux (Nebraska 1984) and The Ponca Tribe (Nebraska 1995). Introducer Raymond Bucko is an associate professor of anthropology at Le Moyne College and the author of The Lakota Ritual of the Sweat Lodge: History and Contemporary Practice (Nebraska 1998).