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REVIEW ESSAY Bloodshed at Little Bighorn: Sitting Bull, Custer, and the Destinies of Nations. By Tim Lehman. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010. 219 pp. Maps, illustrations, notes, bibliogra- phy, index. $19.95 paper. The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn. By Nathaniel Philbrick. New York: Viking, 2010. xxii + 466 pp. Maps, photographs, appendices, notes, bibliography, index. $30.00 cloth, $18.00 paper. Custer: Lessons in Leadership. By Duane Schultz. Foreword by General Wesley K. Clark. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. x + 206 pp. Photographs, notes, bibliography, index. $14.00 paper. The Killing of Crazy Horse. By Thomas Powers. New York: Knopf, 2010. xx + 568 pp. Maps, illustra- tions, photographs, notes, bibliography, index. $30.00 cloth, $17.00 paper. CUSTER, CRAZY HORSE, SITTING BULL, AND THE LITTLE BIGHORN In the summer of 1876, the United States some Cheyennes, and a handful of Arapahos. government launched the Great Sioux War, The resulting Battle of the Little Bighorn left a sharp instrument intended to force the last Custer and 267 soldiers, Crow scouts, and civil- nonagency Lakotas onto reservations. In doing ians dead, scattered in small groups and lonely so, it precipitated a series of events that proved singletons across the countryside—all but disastrous for its forces in the short run and fifty-eight of them in his immediate command, calamitous for the Lakotas in the much longer which was annihilated. With half the regiment scheme of things. killed or wounded, the Battle of the Little On June 17, Lakotas and Cheyennes crippled Bighorn ranked as the worst defeat inflicted General George Crook’s 1,300-man force at the on the army during the Plains Indian Wars. Battle of the Rosebud in southern Montana. In retrospect, it served as the high-water mark Eight days later and thirty miles to the west, of Plains Indian resistance to the tumultuous, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, transformative forces unleashed by the ideol- the “Boy General” of Civil War fame, led the ogy of Manifest Destiny. 7th U.S. Cavalry into the valley of the Little In the contours and details associated with Bighorn, a river Lakotas called the Greasy the Battle of the Little Bighorn may be dis- Grass. Along its banks sprawled the largest cerned in microcosm all of the violence, cour- tipi village ever seen in the Great Plains, with age, and horror attending a monumental clash camp circles housing thousands of people who of cultures. Also observable is the creation of responded to Lakota visionary Sitting Bull’s national myth, a military disaster transformed freedom dream of retaining their way of life. into an example of noble sacrifice that came to As he approached the camps, Custer divided be known as “Custer’s Last Stand.” Add to that his force into three commands. When the the presence of the famed Sitting Bull and such bluecoats set about the business of attack- warrior-leaders as Crazy Horse, Crow King, ing the village they ran into a dust storm of Gall, and Lame White Man, along with gener- determined warriors, most of them Lakotas, ous portions of courage and arrogance, hubris 63 © 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln 64 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, WINTER 2012 and nemesis, and you behold a historical array the debilitating practice of either ignoring or that never seems to lose its power to entice. denigrating accounts provided by warriors who When I was a youngster in the early 1950s, fought that day and lived to tell about it, scour William A. Graham often visited my parents’ their words for clues as they attempt to piece home in Los Angeles. A U.S. Army colonel together what happened at the Greasy Grass. who served in the Judge Advocate General’s The observation that fascination with the Corps, Graham retired in 1939 and spent much Battle of the Little Bighorn and its actors of the rest of his life researching the Battle of remains strong is supported by the recent pub- the Little Bighorn. The Custer Myth: A Source lication of the four books under review. These Book of Custeriana, his magnum opus, appeared range from a fairly cursory examination of in 1953, the year before he died, and remains Custer’s military career to a synthesizing over- in print. (An odd point of interest: Fearful it view of the Plains Indian Wars insofar as they might prejudice his judgment, Graham ada- involved and affected the Lakotas; an attempt mantly refused to visit the battlefield, a posi- to provide the battle with a decent narrative tion on which he and my father, an old-time framework; and a retelling of events leading to horse cavalryman, disagreed.) Graham’s preoc- the death of Lakota war leader Crazy Horse. cupation with the subject included an interest In Custer: Lessons in Leadership, Duane in the broad sweep of events, but more so, I Schultz, a psychologist with books about the suspect, fascination for those telling details Civil War, the Plains Indian Wars, and the which, pieced together, often lead to a better Second World War to his credit, contributes a understanding of the truth, or as close to it as volume to his publisher’s Great Generals series. investigators are ever likely to get. For anyone who knows even a little about Graham’s wife did not share her husband’s Custer and the Battle of the Little Bighorn—it consuming passion, as became clear one day merits a mere ten pages and a bit here—the as he and my father, who supplied him with book is too brief and too tied to Custer’s Arapaho participants’ hitherto unpublished extraordinary Civil War service to be of much accounts, closeted themselves upstairs, refight- interest. (That service deserves attention: ing the Battle of the Little Bighorn for the whatever else Custer may have been, he was umpteenth time. personally brave and far from the addled crea- “What is it that so fascinates them?” a for- ture that Richard Mulligan limned in his por- lorn Mrs. Graham, sitting downstairs sipping a trayal of the man in the film Little Big Man back martini, asked my mother. in 1970.) But discerning exactly what “lessons” “Oh, I don’t know,” my mother replied. of Custer’s leadership the subtitle heralds is “Perhaps it’s because no one in Custer’s imme- difficult, unless, as former NATO Commander diate command survived.” Wesley Clark suggests in his foreword, they may Mrs. Graham shrugged her shoulders and be summed up as training soldiers to do their answered wistfully, “What a pity there couldn’t best while avoiding impetuosity. have been just one.” In Bloodshed at Little Bighorn: Sitting Bull, In those days there reigned a widely held Custer, and the Destinies of Nations, Rocky bias, fueled by cultural chauvinism, against the Mountain College history professor Tom eyewitness testimony—and there was plenty Lehman offers an excellent summary of the of it—offered up by Indians who fought in general deterioration of U.S.-Lakota relations the Battle of the Little Bighorn. (Not until that characterized the period from the so- 1991 did the federally owned, 765-acre Custer called Grattan Massacre of 1854—when an Battlefield National Monument site receive argument about a white migrant’s stray cow its present name of Little Bighorn Battlefield (or ox) led to a fight between Lakotas and National Monument.) More recently research- soldiers in which the headman Conquering ers and writers, shaking themselves loose from Bear, twenty-eight soldiers, and an interpreter © 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln REVIEW ESSAY 65 were killed near Fort Laramie—to the climax my account purports to be an ‘insider’s’ view at the Battle of the Little Bighorn twenty- of the Battle of the Little Bighorn,” he wisely two years later. Ultimately, he brings us up notes (325). Nevertheless, the author succeeds to the dedication of the Indian Memorial in realizing his “firm belief that the spiritual at the Little Bighorn Battlefield, with Lee and visionary aspects of experience are essen- Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” blaring tial to understanding not only Sitting Bull but over the loudspeaker. also Custer and his wife, Libbie” (325), who Lehman’s is a well-researched, eloquently played a pivotal role in enshrining her hus- presented, attractive narrative that embraces band’s memory. historical matters of great depth and breadth. Philbrick disposes of Sitting Bull’s career This is not a book about tactics; it is, rather, after 1876—he led his followers into Canadian a volume that deals with the larger forces of exile before returning to the U.S.; served time history. Yet Lehman retains a sensitivity to the as a prisoner of war before ending up on a res- telling details throughout. ervation; traveled with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West By the time the Plains Indian Wars drew to Show; and died at the hands of Indian Police a close, those on the losing side faced daunt- in 1890, serving as a catalyst for the Wounded ing prospects. But the picture is more nuanced Knee tragedy—a bit too quickly for my taste. than often assumed. “Although they had lost That said, his book provides a welcome intro- control of their own destiny,” writes Lehman, duction for newcomers to the battle and its “they had not lost all hope of shaping their major and minor actors, with plenty of fodder future” (139). For Lehman, “the Little Bighorn provided in the notes for further exploration. Battlefield stands as a reminder of our deeply More experienced hands will also benefit from conflicted understanding of American history” Philbrick’s service as a literary guide while (190), a place where the “stories that walk the enjoying the ride through familiar territory.

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