| Title | : | Killing Custer: The Battle of Little Big Horn and the Fate of the Plains Indians |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0140251766 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780140251760 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 320 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1994 |
Killing Custer: The Battle of Little Big Horn and the Fate of the Plains Indians Reviews
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When I was a mere lad, my family didn't dine out very often, but occasionally on Fridays, to give my mother a break, we would go to a place just out of town called The Duncan Villa. There, I would always get a fried fish sandwich slathered with my own mixture of ketchup and tartar sauce and thought no greater meal could be imagined. Such are the joys of a happy childhood.
On one wall of the dining room was a huge painting, a painting of Custer's Last Stand. Custer was portrayed as heroic, the Indians as savages. And so the six-year old me was informed. However slanted, however wrong, that painting started a lifelong fascination with the Battle of Little Bighorn.
Much later, I read Dee Brown's
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and switched sides. But, if anything, my fascination with Custer and Little Bighorn only grew. Of course, I read a bunch a books on the subject but eventually tired out. So when a friend gave me this book almost twenty years ago, I set it aside. Till now.
It's really an illuminating story, and well told here, though what advertises this as different are: 1) the fact that the author is a Native American writer; and 2) that this is kind of a companion piece to a film documentary that was being made, with the author's help. If anything, continued references within to the film being made weakened the overall effort.
This had none of the poetic writing of Evan S. Connell's
Son of the Morning Star. And it did not explain the battle itself in a military sense as Stephen Ambrose did in the superlative
Crazy Horse and Custer. But that is a very high bar indeed.
Nevertheless, this was worthwhile, a good debunking of white mythmaking. -
The myth of the heroism and sacrifice of General George Custer was accepted in this country for years until scholars started looking at what really happened at the Little Big Horn. Custer, the ultimate egotist, was in the pursuit of glory for himself and the 7th Cavalry and often threw aside simple military basics. He did this at the Little Big Horn where he chose not to reconnoiter before ordering a charge against an "enemy" seven times greater in number than his own troops. We all know the outcome.
What makes this book so interesting is that it is told from the viewpoint of the Indian tribes rather than that of the white man and takes the story beyond the Little Big Horn to describe the "punishment" visited on the Plains Indians.......taking their land and forcing them onto reservations to live their lives like the white man thought they should. Of course, the reservations are still extant and various Indian activists groups are still trying to reclaim their land; i.e. the Black Hills.
The author, whose father was a Blackfoot, had access to excellent sources including interviewing the aged grandchildren of warriors who fought at the infamous battle. (The book was written in 1994). In my opinion, this book tells the real story of the events and the aftermath of the Little Big Horn. -
I was looking for a perspective on the battle and was generally disappointed. The author came across as biased, perhaps understandably as he is at least marginally native American. Sentences were fragmented, text was frequently repetitive and focus of the book shifted maddeningly. On the plus side, Mr Welch provides information describing the people interviewed while doing his research and it is obvious that he has dedicated a lot of legwork to running down statistics and anecdotal information pertinent to his work.
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Full disclosure: I had a hand in reissuing this book for W. W. Norton in 2006. That said... This book is brilliant. It's a personal and historical account of the battle of little bighorn. Instead of tellig custer's story, however, Welch, who is one of the great Native American novelists of the 20th century, casts the plains indians as the protagonists of this epic battle. Their unprecendented cooperation with one another signalled a final effort to stem the tide of American imperialism and genocide. Indeed it was these tribes' last stand, not custer's, and the leadership of chief sitting bull would become the defining characteristic. The book originally began as an American Experience documentary on PBS but now it is so much more. Please read this book. It is heartbreaking and important.
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The late Paul Welch, along with video documentarian Paul Steckler, have written a very factual and immersive book about one of the most famous, as well as misunderstood, historical military & cultural clashes in American history. In addition, they do an excellent job of depicting life for the Plains Indians in the 1800's as the never-ending stream of the White Man gobbled up their land, their resources, their food supply, and their millennia-old entire way of life.
What makes the book of even stronger interest to the reviewer, is the fact that Mr. Welch was a member of the Blackfeet Tribe and was born in Browning, Montana. This detail obviously provided the author with a cultural, social, and historical perspective that resulted in a very balanced and knowledgeable portrayal of the Native American perspective that has been missing in American historical writing about this period for years. Unfortunately, the author passed away in 2003.
In less than a century; in just the beginning movement of a blink of an eye in the timeline of world history, the proud and multi-faceted tribal and migratory cultures and societies of the Plains Indians and other indigenous tribes were effectively all but wiped from the face of the earth. From the first meeting of the Sioux with the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1804, to the sad and pathetic massacre at Wounded Knee, SD in 1890 in which Big Foot and his band of Minneconjous were slaughtered by Custer's old outfit, the 7th Cavalry; stamping out the Ghost Dance religious fervor that had briefly swept the Sioux reservations. In addition, Sitting Bull was killed on the reservation on December 15, 1890 by Indian policemen, acting on behalf of the U.S. government. All Native American active resistance and attempts to preserve and save their culture and free prairie way of life was effectively destroyed for all time.
But, within that roughly 100-year span, two great cultures and opposing societal powers were to clash and bitterly fight to achieve their goals, which each believed fell within the providence of a higher power. The Indians to preserve their centuries-old traditions and tribal cultures and the migrating White Man to achieve Manifest Destiny and the dream of land ownership and the attainment of capital wealth.
General George Armstrong Custer was born on December 5, 1839 in New Rumley, Ohio and he was named after George Armstrong, a minister, in his devout mother's hope that her son might join the clergy. It didn't quite turn out that way.
He graduated from the West Point Military Academy dead last in his class of 1861. But talk about great timing. As the great conflagration known as the American Civil War broke out that year, training officers were in immediate demand and he worked closely with the highly regarded General George B. McClellan.
He may have been a washout at West Point, but his natural leadership skills and horsemanship were immediately noticed, and he was quickly brevetted a cavalry brigadier general of volunteers at the tender age of only 23. Just a handful of days after his promotion, he fought in the momentous Battle of Gettysburg and, with inferior numbers, defeated the attack by the legendary Confederate cavalry general J.E.B. Stuart at what is now known as the East Cavalry Field.
He went on to perform gallantly in the Overland campaign and with General Phil Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley, defeating Jubal Early at Cedar Creek. He was also present at Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse that ended the conflict.
From the beginning, Custer was a striking figure on the battlefield with his long blond hair flowing over his collar and an inspiring leader to his men, as he seemed to have no fear. He led many a charge at the front with his sword drawn and his inspired men trying to keep up with him.
Even though he had impressive success and was a popular hero in the press and at the home front, he did have traits that were troubling to his superiors, as well as to the experienced soldiers who served under him that didn't get too caught up in his histrionics.
He was notorious for not doing thorough and strategic reconnaissance in the field and almost always acted on impulse and instinct exclusively. But, he was certainly a credible officer who was born for the battlefield and active combat.
However, his concerning traits would lead to his eventual demise. After the war, he was appointed a lieutenant colonel in the Regular Army and was sent West to fight in the Indian Wars. This would lead to his clash with two equally valorous and brave, but not egocentric and flashy warriors, Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull and the fierce and proud Sioux Plains tribes which included the feared Lakota of the upper Plains.
There are no extant pictures of Crazy Horse, as he never allowed his picture to be taken and surprisingly, according to the author, ".....he was not particularly noticeable - he was slight and light-skinned, and he did not adorn himself with finery." He was the chief of the Oglala Sioux.
Sitting Bull was a renowned warrior and chief of the Hunkpapa Sioux. Both he and Crazy Horse wanted nothing to do with the white man and just wanted to be left alone to live their nomadic hunting life as they had done for eons. They mistrusted, correctly, all white man hand-outs, especially the firewater that had ruined so many Indians.
In the spring of 1875, when the grass grew long and green enough to nourish the horses, many tribes and reservation Indians began traveling to the last Great Gathering for the spring hunt. Both the Southern and Northern Cheyennes moved northward to find Sitting Bull. They were also joined by the Minniconjous and Sans Arcs in force, some Yanktonais, Two Kettles, and Blackfeet Sioux, and a few Arapahos.
When this disparate force of Plains Indians decided to come together as one village, Sitting Bull became the de facto big chief because his band, the Hunkpapas, was the largest and he was the most forceful leader.
At its peak, the Great Gathering camp contained an estimated 8,000 Indians and more than 3,000 warriors. The village was three miles long and a half mile wide! Custer would eventually under-estimate the village's population at less than 1,500.
General Custer had previously had some success in the Plains. In 1873, he led the 7th Cavalry against Chief Black Kettle and the Cheyenne at the "battle" of the Washita River. It was basically a dawn raid of an encampment that surprised the sleeping inhabitants and resulted in the wanton killing of, according to Custer's account, 103 warriors and some women and children; 53 women and children were taken as prisoners. Estimates by the Cheyenne of their casualties were substantially lower (11 warriors plus 19 women and children). Custer had his men shoot most of the 875 Indian ponies they had captured. But it was heralded as the first substantial U.S. victory in the Southern Plains War.
A year later, Custer and the 7th led an expedition into the Black Hills and proclaimed the discovery of gold. This announcement triggered the Black Hills Gold Rush. Among the towns that immediately grew up was the infamous Deadwood, South Dakota, notorious for lawlessness. The encroachment of whites into the sacred Black Hills territory, disgustedly breaking another in a long line of treaties, added to increased tensions in the entire Plains region.
Custer was strangely ambivalent and dismissive of the Plains Indians, as recounted in his only book, My Life on the Plains published in 1874. It is an account of the 7th's activities between 1867 - 1869 in which they spent an inordinate amount of time chasing Indians, occasionally catching a glimpse of them, and once massacring them.
"Taking him as we find him, at peace or at war, at home or abroad, waiving all prejudices, and laying aside all partiality, we will discover in the Indian a subject for thoughtful study and investigation. In him we will find the representative of a race whose origin is, and promises to be, a subject forever wrapped in mystery, a race incapable of being judged by the rules or laws applicable to any other race of men: one between which and civilization there seems to have existed from time immemorial a determined and unceasing warfare - a hostility so deep-seated and inbred with the Indian character that in the exceptional instances where the modes and habits of civilization have been reluctantly adopted, it has been at the sacrifice of power and influence as a tribe and the more serious loss of health, vigor, and courage as individuals."
Not only did he not know his history, he did not seem to respect their fierceness and skill as brave warriors and intelligent fighters. He was to learn his lesson the hard way and the lethal way.
On the hot and sunny day of Sunday June 25, 1876 (145 years to the day of my son Matt's 27th birthday this June), the 7th Cavalry set off under the leadership of General George Armstrong Custer. Initially, Custer had 208 officers and men under his direct command, with an additional 142 under Major Reno, just over 100 under Captain Benteen, and 50 soldiers in his rearguard, accompanying 84 additional soldiers with the pack train.
His reliable Crow scouts, led by the famous Curley, had repeatedly warned of a huge Indian encampment in the immediate area but, as he was known to do, Custer dismissed their advice as overblown and ignored their warning of the possible size of the village and, as in the past, he had done no other reconnaissance of where they were headed. The legendary "Custer Luck" was about to run out.
Custer had first intended to attack the Indian village the next day, but since his presence was already known and it was too late, he decided to attack immediately and divided his forces into three battalions: one led by Major Reno, one by Captain Benteen, and one by himself.
Curley survived the attack and witnessed the battle from a distance. Apparently the clash started about 2:30 or 3:00 PM and lasted until sunset.
Below is the re-counting of his first-hand account:
"Custer, with his five companies, after separating from Reno and his seven companies, moved to the right around the base of a hill overlooking the valley of the Little Horn, through a ravine just wide enough to admit his column of fours. There was no sign of the presence of Indians in the hills on that side (the right) of the Little Horn, and the column moved steadily on until it rounded the hill and came in sight of the village lying in the valley below them.
Custer appeared very much elated and ordered the bugle to sound a charge, and moved on at the head of his column, waving his hat to encourage his men. When they neared the river the Indians, concealed in the underbrush on the opposite side of the river, opened fire on the troops, which checked the advance. Here a portion of the command were dismounted and thrown forward to the river and returned the fire of the Indians.
During this time the warriors were seen riding out of the village by the hundreds, deploying across his front to his left, as if with the intention of crossing the stream on his right, while the women and children were seen hastening out of the village in large numbers in the opposite direction.
During the fight at this point Curley saw two of Custer's men killed, who fell into the stream. After fighting a few moments here, Custer seemed to be convinced that it was impracticable to cross, as it only could be done in column of fours exposed during the movement to a heavy fire from the front and both flanks. He therefore ordered the head of the column to the right, and bore diagonally into the hills, downstream, his men on foot leading their horses. In the meantime the Indians had crossed the river (below) in immense numbers, and began to appear on his right flank and in his rear; and he had proceeded but a few hundred yards in the direction the column had taken, when it became necessary to renew the fight with the Indians who had crossed the stream.
At first the command remained together, but after some minutes' fighting, it was divided, a portion deployed circularly to the left, and the remainder similarly to the right, so that when the line was formed, it bore a rude resemblance to a circle, advantage being taken as far as possible of the protection afforded by the ground. The horses were in the rear, the men on the line being dismounted, fighting on foot. Of the incidents of the fight in other parts of the field than his own, Curley is not well informed, as he was himself concealed in a ravine, from which but a small portion of the field was visible.
The fight appears to have begun, from Curley's description of the situation of the sun, about 2:30 or 3:00 o'clock p.m., and continued without intermission until nearly sunset. The Indians had completely surrounded the command, leaving their horses in ravines well to the rear, themselves pressing forward to attack on foot. Confident in the superiority of their numbers, they made several charges on all points of Custer's line, but the troops held their position firmly, and delivered a heavy fire, and every time drove them back. Curley said the firing was more rapid than anything he had ever conceived of, being a continuous roll, as he expressed it, 'the snapping of the threads in the tearing of a blanket.' The troops expended all the ammunition in their belts, and then sought their horses for the reserve ammunition carried in their saddle pockets.
As long as their ammunition held out, the troops, though losing considerable in the fight, maintained their position in spite of the efforts of the Sioux. From the weakening of their fire toward the close of the afternoon, the Indians appeared to believe their ammunition was about exhausted, and they made a grand final charge, in the course of which the last of the command was destroyed, the men being shot where they lay in their position in the line, at such close quarters that many were killed with arrows. Curley says that Custer remained alive through the greater part of the engagement, animating his men to determined resistance; but about an hour before the close of the fight, he received a mortal wound.
He says the field was thickly strewn with dead bodies of the Sioux who fell in the attack, in number considerably more than the force of soldiers engaged. He is satisfied that their loss will exceed six hundred killed, beside an immense number wounded.
Curley accomplished his escape by drawing his blanket around him in the manner of the Sioux and passing through an interval which had been made in their lines as they scattered over the field in their final charge. He says they must have seen him, for he was in plain view, but was probably mistaken by the Sioux for one of their number, or one of their allied Arapahos or Cheyennes." -
The area of Little Big Horn and the story about Sitting Bull defeating Custer are the foundation of this book by James Welch. Told from the perspective of America Indians, James Welch is writing a script for a documentary film which he turns into this book. As a Native American born in Eastern Montana and raised in Western Montana, his insights and experiences smooth the way for the non Indian producers.
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Second Look Books: Killing Custer by James Welch with Paul Stekler (Alfred A. Knopf, $25)
James Welch is the author of two splendidly bleak novels of American Indian experience. “The Death of Jim Loney” and “Winter in the Blood” together constitute a considerably eloquent body of work directed at reservation life and acculturation. In addition, Welch has authored a modern novel of life away from the reservation titled “The Indian Lawyer,” as well as a book of poems
With “Killing Custer,” he now enters the non-fiction field with a work that is intended to describe the Battle of the Little Big Horn from the viewpoint of the tribes who fought there. In this effort, Welch displays a wealth of ambition and not a small amount of daring, but on the whole he fails to provide either focus or drama, and in the end, winds up frittering away what depth of feeling he might have attained from his own special status as a Blackfoot, born on the agency near Browning, Montana.
“Killing Custer” was initiated by a phone call made form documentary filmmaker Paul Stakler, who wished Welch to write a screen treatment for use in filming aspects of the Custer massacre. The general story is, by now, well known: In 1868 most of the Sioux Nation had been granted by treaty a huge reservation taking up what is now most of North and South Dakota, including the Black Hills, and granting the Nation the right to hunt and kill buffalo in the Powder River country, off reservation, in perpetuity. By 1875, George Custer had led an expedition into the Hills, ostensibly found gold, and willfully caused a rush which destroyed the Sioux hopes for peace and freedom
Thus it was in the summer of 1876 that thousands of Sioux and their Cheyenne allies found themselves off reservation, camped along the Little Big Horn in Montana, and considered “hostile” by the United States Army. Generals Crook and Terry, along with Colonels Gibbon and Custer (a brevet major general), marched from north, east and south, in an effort to pincer the Indians and force them back east, onto the reservation. No doubt about it, they were out to kill Indians, and were elated about the fact. When Custer arrived first at the Little Big Horn, he split his command, the Seventh Cavalry, and either charged, or was attached, by several thousand armed warriors. Custer, along with 216 of his troop, disappeared from existence.
Almost from the outset, “Killing Custer” goes slightly wrong. In the first chapter, Welch describes his contacts with Stekler and his feelings about the Little Big Horn, and then clumsily segues into a relatively inept investigation into an independent massacre which took place on the Marias River in northern Montana some six years prior to the battle on the Little Big Horn, and which involved the United States Army and the Blackfeet, not the Sioux. The connection between the events, and the massacre-of-the-Marias connection to the documentary film, are tenuous at best, mostly being emotional for the writer.
Thereafter, Welch seems to waver in his authorial purpose, describing alternately the making of the documentary film, its problems and preoccupations, in an almost leisurely and personal style, and various histories of the Sioux and Cheyenne participants, most culled form already available sources. Indeed, there are brilliant and sensitive pieces, particularly the descriptions of Crazy Horse, who almost certainly was involved in killing Seventh Cavalry soldiers, and of Sitting Bull, who perhaps was not. It is the “vision” of Crazy Horse that has always been most arresting—this slight warrior adorned with white daubs of paint representing hailstones, brilliant red bolt of lightning seared across his right cheek, and a pebble representing hail, tied by a leather thong behind one ear.
Welch dutifully follows the careers of both Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse to their logical conclusions in death at the hands of white men and their Indian policemen. Sprinkled throughout this narrative are the eyewitnesses’ or folk accounts offered b y Sioux and Cheyenne peoples like Wooden Leg and Kate Bighead, not to mention Rain in the Face, who claims to have killed Custer, but who almost certainly did not.
But “Killing Custer” is beset by numerous technical problems. The general historical account of the summer of 1876 and its lengthy aftermath have been told often, and told better, as by Dee Brown in “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,” or in the justly famous “The Long Death,” and painstakingly researched by historians like Robert Utley. At times, Welch offers up tidbits of commonsense philosophy that jar, to wit: “It seems that war has become a political game in this country. Presidents have wars—Reagan had Grenada and Panama, Bush had Desert Storm, and now Clinton has his Somalia.” Needless to say, Clinton inherited Somalia from his friend Bush, and it was not a war. A book that wavers from documentary film account, to folk history, to personal reflection, and back to historiography, requires a great measure of discipline and focus. “Killing Custer” does not have it.
It is a fact that the “viewpoint” of the Indians at Little Big Horn is well represented in the literature. Indeed, the past three decades have provided a virtual blizzard of new information and sources, in addition to those that were available in the years after the battle. Richard Hardorff in “Lakota Recollections of the Custer Fight” and James Howard in “The Personal Narrative of Chief Joseph White Bull” are but two of many. A complete bibliography of Indian sources is available in Utley’s masterful biography of Sitting Bull titled “The Lance and the Shield.” “Black Elk Speaks,” published in the early 1930s, is a classic. The acknowledged masterpiece that probably will never be surpassed in beauty and completeness, is Evan Connell’s “Son of the Morning Star.”
Having said all of this, “Killing Custer” is a worthwhile piece of work. The arrival of Anglo-Americans on the North American continent provoked a dark and bloody history of warfare that neither side quite understood. The Indian wars involved forces that could not be analyzed by the whites with their ethical equipment, wars in which the Indian had not the slightest chance. There was inevitability to this course that is reminiscent of high tragedy, and which shall remain part of the deepest ground of our American experience. “Killing Custer” is part of that experience, an experiment Welch conducted out of deep personal need. It can therefore be seen as part and parcel of the history of the Little Big Horn itself.
As Custer rode away at the head of his troops, General Gibbon called out to him, “Now Custer, don’t be greedy, but wait for us.” Custer waved and called back, “No, I will not.” Some days later, under the blazing hot Montana sun of late June, Sitting Bull is said have called to his warriors. “Hanta-hey! It is a good day to die!” It was then that Custer’s ambiguous bravado and Sitting Bull’s spiritual pride met never to be parted. -
Sort of an empty book. It's easy to read, but not much substance. A few months after I read it, I met one of the people mentioned in the book and talked to her about it.
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This non-fiction piece of Native American history was several books in one. It was James Welch’s memoir and explanation of how he came to write novels like *Fools Crow* a book I am now teaching. In summary, his grandmother limped away a survivor of the massacre on the Marias, and he created the novel around the stories she told. Truly inspirational stuff. THe book is also, mostly, a history book concerning the rise and fall of Custer and the Indians who fought and defeated the 7th US Cavalry at Little Big Horn. It debunks the myth of a long-haired impeachable hero in Custer and tells the truth about the flawed man and his pride. The last thread of the book is a journal of the author Welch’s making of *Last Stand at Little Bighorn* a documentary. My favorite part of the book was the Custer stuff.
Welch brings a clarity to his non-fiction, the same clarity that make him one of my favorite novelists. Read this and you will never think of Custer the same way, I assure you. But the book gives you more than that. It also gives you the Little Big Horn from the side of the indigenous American, a people betrayed over and over again by an advancing white civilization.
In *Killing Custer* the reader gets a clearer picture of great warriors like Crazy Horse, who lived his entire life according to a vision he received. A true Indian mystic who never allowed to have his photo taken, Crazy Horse is a far more interesting warrior than Custer, although we needed a martyr in Congress to eradicate the last of the savages and push the agenda of manifest destiny to the opposite shining sea.
I don’t feel any less patriotic knowing the truth about America’s encounters with Native Americans. I’ve long ago abandoned the obvious failings and impossibilities of a more perfect union. Reading *Killing Custer* makes me a more informed human, which is way more important than where I stand politically. -
James Welch, a Native American, historian, and writer, and Paul Stekler worked together on a documentary film, Last Stand at Little Bighorn in 1990 and 1991. From the research for that film grew the book, Killing Custer.
James Welch tells the story, not only of Custer and his men but also of the Indians who were involved in the battle and of several attacks on the Indians in the years before big battle in which Custer or his superiors were involved that led more or less directly to the battle on the Little Bighorn. He also tells the story of the making of the film, and some of his own story. He includes what happened after the battle, and how things have worked out for the Indians of Montana and the Dakotas since then.
Very clear, understandable writing that covers the points of view of both sides, including the good, the bad, and the ugly of each. Also, there are a lot of high-quality photographs, both historical photographs of some of the main participants and contemporary images of the battlefield and the participants in the film. -
We just visited Crazy Horse monument and the Bad Lands so I was really looking forward to this as a history of the events for the Native American side. It is that, but it is also a bit of a biography of the documentary film making the author participated in and at times a side tracked rambling into historic events that influenced the time, but were not directly tied to the events at hand. In its own way, it reads like an oral history telling of the times where the story teller may get derailed every now and again. With all of that, it is still very enlightening on how poorly the Native Americans were treated and how the treaties they were given were constantly broken by the government and military. You get to see the battle for what it was, a defense of a nation being attacked and oppressed, and Custer for who he was not his myth.
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A well-written book by the author of Indian Lawyer (James Welch), who tackles not just the Battle of Little Big Horn, the preceding years, and the immediate aftermath, but also describes the modern-day politics of putting together a documentary (Last Stand at Little Big Horn) to tell a more accurate version than Erroll Flynn's "They Died with Their Boots On" from 1941. Question: which came first - the Lost Cause movement to white-wash the South's stated reasoning for secession, or Elizabeth Custer's media campaign to portray her husband as a swashbuckling hero?
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A very compelling and sad read of the Indian side of the story. So much of what we were taught in school did not begin to penetrate the actual history of what happened to the Plains Indians, or for that matter all Indians. It's a very blight to our country that all of history was taught from the white man's view.
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This is a very fascinating book with lots of authentic information told by actual firsthand accounts of people who were actually at the battlefield or are descendants of those who were there. The book, as I'm sure the documentary that it is about, gives a true depiction of the days leading to the Battle of the Little Bighorn, what occurred on that battlefield, and events that happened later.
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I enjoyed this book very much. It read like a history book, if you like that, take a read. The author had a very unbiased opinion of the battle, despite being Native American, Welch would write the truth.
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from a native Americans point of view. Custer was careless, the government was untrustworthy and the native Americans were given a raw deal. Good book of history written by a descendant of American Indians.
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Novelist Welch retails a much-told tale from a different perspective: that of the indigenous peoples.
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The author is a Blackfeet Indian who interviewed many descendants of the Battle at Little Bighorn, and wrote the battles sequence of events from the Native American point of view.
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I didn't read the whole book, and I can't give it any stars (unless required, in which case I'll give it the 5 I suspect the rest will deserve, based on what I've read so far), because I just read chapter one, but if I don't list it as read,I can't write this and the book will get zapped off my shelf. This is probably a five star book; it's just that the first chapter was so searing, so painful, that I read it four or five pages at a time. I saw the title and thought, "All right! Let's go kill Custer!"
So I checked this book out so we could all go kill Custer, and instead, I found that most of the book very, very clearly identifies the atrocities against Native peoples (the Blackfeet in particular). He discusses the deliberate genocide (which I knew about, but the guy has a way with words, and this is bad enough already) against Natives by the US government via the introduction of smallpox-infested blankets. Whole tribes were completely wiped out. I knew this. I used to teach history. But it is the way that his writing grabbed at my heartstrings and then braided, twisted, pulled them and all but set them on fire that made me put it down. Call me a wuss. I couldn't take it.
The writer is (or was? He died in 2003, but his work lives on) renowned for his writings about the American west, and Paul Stenkler, who is also credited, is a documentary maker in the same realm.
Sooner or later, I will have to pick this book up again and face the music. The writing is too good to be ignored. Here's a particularly nice quote that I noted before I decided to put the book on a shelf for awhile. When talking about how Indians were sometimes shot simply for straying off of their reservations, he says, "It is always astonishing when the invading culture feels it has the divine right (call it Manifest Destiny or whatever) to take...something in this case, land--from the other." (p. 45)
He's a great writer. I'll be back to finish this, sooner or later. -
This was not a book of my choosing, I read it for my book club. I opened the cover with an open mind. I very much enjoy nonfiction and am interested in the Plains Indians and really had no clear idea of what exactly Custer’s Last Stand was all about. The beginning of the book was terrible. I’ve read real historians (Stephen Ambrose) and this was not right. It was very disjointed and skipped around way too much. Not only was he skipping around in time around the battle but going as far into the 20th century as the 1980s. This was very frustrating. I would start to get interested in the story he was telling about a group of Indians or about Custer or one of the other troops but then he would quit and start talking about a trip he and his wife took in their Volkswagen van. It made it very difficult to read and get into.
Once he got into describing the Battle of Little Bighorn, things began to come together. He stayed on topic while telling the reader of the battle and the aftermath. I actually got interested and wanted to read the book. However, there was both an Epilogue and an Afterword. Which I thought was redundant and unnecessary. They were both about the filming of a documentary the author was involved in. This was mildly interesting but didn’t really fill out the book at all. It just added pages. I wanted more about Custer and the Indians involved in the battle. I wanted more of the history than I was given. -
Welch is one of my favorite authors (his "Fools Crow" is probably my favorite book of all time), so I might carry a slight bias in the bookbag here. Also, this is the second in my recent run of late 1800s Plains Indians books, and I have a few more to go, so opinions may shift in the coming months. So...this book is more than just Little Bighorn and Custer. It tells the story of the making of the documentary that accompanied this book, and it also stretches back to Sand Creek and Washita and forward to Sitting Bull's death in 1890. Really, it is the story of the end of the ways of the absolute last band of Plains Indians, and it is told from a mostly Indian perspective. However, Welch doesn't paint Custer as a foolhardy moron the way some have done; he's even-handed and mostly calm throughout the telling, breaking stereotypes on both sides of the battles. Even the highly comprehensive book "Last Stand" by Nathanael Philbrick didn't go so in-depth about what happened between Crazy Horse's band and Custer atop Custer Hill. Welch also gives some great perspective on the so-called "savagery" associated with post-mortem mutilation of white corpses in 1876, saying that grief-stricken and mourning women were mostly to blame. ~ In all, a fair and sobering read about one of our country's most important historical events.
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While the insights into the conflict between Indians and whites in this book are interesting, especially from the Indian perspective, this book feels incredibly scatterbrained. I appreciate the asides the author makes about his experiences with his heritage a hundred years later, but the pacing of this non-fiction book is all over the place, one second it's about the plains Indians, another paragraph is modern day Indian protests, another is a small chunk of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, another is the author's anecdotes. While I enjoy the occasional non-linear story in my fiction, I prefer my history to be able to stay on one time period for more than a page at a time. No matter how into the subject matter you may be, this book will test your patience.
