Custer’s Last Stand Still Stands Up

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June 25, 1876, is a date that shall live in controversy. Even if Lieutenant Colonel (?General? to his men) George Armstrong Custer came back from the grave to tell his side of the story, the controversy would still not die. The Battle of the Little Bighorn is like a 10,000-piece jigsaw puzzle on the south-central Montana landscape?the stuff of legend and historical gamesmanship. Custer and more than a third of the elite 7th Cavalry Regiment lost their lives in an epic struggle with the Plains Indians. Although the deadly conflict at the Little Bighorn is a multifaceted tale that rivals the Alamo as the most famous military clash in the American West, the main focus has always been the man in command of the losing side?thus, the battle’s popular alternative name, Custer’s Last Stand.

Countless historians, authors and amateur scholars?more often than not after coming down with a bad case of the Custer bug and finding it impossible to shake?have analyzed the battle. The analyses have sometimes been in direct conflict, since the so-called experts have taken different routes in trying to explain the sequence of events, why things happened and who was to blame (Custer, his supporting cast or his bosses?) for the 129-year-old U.S. military defeat at the hands of Sitting Bull’s people. The controversy has not lost its intensity through the years. Recent archeological discoveries on the battlefield have cast new light on the engagement and opened the door to new interpretations?and, yes, new controversies?concerning Custer’s Last Stand.

A previously unidentified cavalry combat position has been discovered near Last Stand Hill (also known as Custer Hill), the knoll north of the Little Bighorn River where Custer and about 40 troopers are said to have made a final stand while surrounded. ?It is my understanding that artifacts have been discovered on private property near the river,? says Darrell Cook, superintendent of the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Park. ?The National Park is not involved in this; private individuals have done the research.? The exact whereabouts of these newly discovered artifacts remains confidential to protect them from looters, but the general location is close to the Little Bighorn River west and slightly north of Last Stand Hill (see map, P. 45). Artifacts recovered from this site indicate that a portion of Custer’s command fought at this location. What is particularly intriguing about this combat position is that, at the very least, it demonstrates that Custer’s Last Stand was far more complex than most authorities have believed. Unlike Errol Flynn (see the 1941 movie They Died With Their Boots On), Custer did not simply ride over the hill to be suddenly surrounded and massacred by thousands of Indians in a few short minutes.

There is no record of dead cavalrymen being found at this location when burial details were conducted a few days after the battle. This lack of bodies suggests that the cavalry detachment that fought at this position was not overwhelmed by the Indian warriors and was able to withdraw from it in good order, taking any dead and wounded with them. The fighting that occurred at this newly discovered site, as well as the movement to and from this location, would also seem to indicate that Custer’s Last Stand was a lengthy battle and one of maneuver, at least part of the time. That’s not something that the Custer critics and haters want to hear.

As many students of the Battle of the Little Bighorn have concluded, Custer’s Last Stand is one of the most overly intellectualized and politicized events in American history. Some of the most basic facts have escaped the public’s attention, while yarns such as ?Custer running for president of the United States? have been invented. As a result, the public perception of Custer today probably falls somewhere near or below Attila the Hun. This misinterpretation of Custer has in turn led to many misperceptions about Custer’s Last Stand. Because of what happened on June 25, 1876, the Custer name has become synonymous with defeat in the minds of many, but those individuals are not seeing the larger picture, particularly Custer’s extraordinary Civil War career as a Union cavalry officer.

Tags: Historical Figures, The Wild West, Wild West

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