Crazy Horse and Custer by Stephen E. Ambrose

Crazy Horse and Custer Reviews

• 
  Sue

  Chief Crazy Horse gave native Americans one of its few moments of triumph in its struggle with the white settlers, who in the mid-19th century moved across the country, shot the buffalo, and built a railroad which would make the Western tide ever more inexorable. “Custer’s last stand” achieved mythic proportions, and it firmed up US resolve to finish the Indian problem once and for all. Within a few years, the reservation system was firmly in place.
  
  I personally don’t usually like reading descriptions of battles. The question of which troop is approaching from the South, or which troop is separated from its base, make my eyes glaze over. These were not my favorite parts of this book, either, but they are necessary. And the chapters about politics (e.g., the broken treaty in the Black Hills) and about the people (e.g., Crazy Horse resisting confinement) – these were really good stuff.
  
  Custer made several mistakes in the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Notably, he failed to account for his troops’ fatigue. I was intrigued by the fact that he may have rushed the assault because he wanted a victory before the Democratic Convention in the summer of 1876. A victory could have given him the nomination, for this was a country which had often elected military heroes to its highest office.
  
  Stephen Ambrose found much in common between Crazy Horse and Custer. They were both people of extraordinary energy and of special standing in their respective cultures. Ambrose finds much to admire in both. Crazy Horse, so successful in battle, was to die only a year later in tragic circumstances. Ambrose understood how profoundly sad was Crazy Horse’s ultimate capitulation.
  
  It turns out that my knowledge of the Indian politics of the mid- and late-19th centuries was woefully thin, and I learned a lot from “Crazy Horse and Custer.”
  
  Here are three of the concepts Ambrose taught me more firmly:
  
  • The Sioux could not simultaneously be free and be effective soldiers. They chose to remain free. To have mounted a sustained campaign (which stood a very good chance of being successful), they would have had to delegate real authority and to organize themselves. They stuck stubbornly to their hunting life, even as some of their number began to want the things that white men offered to “agency” Indians, things such as coffee and sugar.
  
  • Whites destroyed the good hunting essential to the Plains Indians. Grass was trampled by emigrant stock and the great buffalo herds were eliminated. The loss of food source was a powerful persuader to drive the Indians to ultimately give in to the white man.
  
  • At one time there were serious U.S. peace policies and, certainly, members of Congress who wished not to fight the Indians. But peace efforts were seriously underfunded. Another misconception: the government did not understand that Indians did not want to be part of the great American melting pot.
  
• 
  B.T. Clifford

  Stephen Ambrose is one of the most readable historians I've ever come across, and Crazy Horse and Custer is a prime example of why. He gives these men life on the page. Rather than focusing on their battle at Little Big Horn and propagating the prevalent misconceptions of the men, he reaches back into their childhoods and beyond, into the cultures that created the men. He picks no favorites and presents the stories of both in great detail.
  I particularly appreciated the work on Custer. This was the first biography of him I'd read and I enjoyed it immensely. Far from the buffoon he is often portrayed as, Custer was intelligent, ambitious and courageous. However, he was also the product of his environment. The pressures that surrounded him, socially, economically and so forth, were a profound influence on the actions that led to the end of his life. Ambrose does an excellent job of illustrating how so many factors lead Custer to make the decisions he did.
  Stephen is also very thorough in his illustration of the life of Crazy Horse and goes to great lengths in describing the basis for the Sioux warrior mentality. He shows the complexity of social institutions among the Indians and gives examples of how the cultures of White America at the time, and that of the Plains Indians were rife with impossible expectations of each other. The general lack of perspective by both peoples made the end result inevitable.
  If you are looking for a book that tells the story of this epic event fairly and without political agenda I highly recommend you give this one a look. I've read many of Stephen Ambrose's books, this is the one that made me a fan.
• 
  Eric

  Custer and his immediate antecedents were consummate crackers. Jacksonian Democrats, American expansionists spoiling for a war, any war. Settled long enough and far enough East to entertain romantic, Fenimore Cooper-ish images of Noble Red Men, but made impatient by the independence of the tribes that still existed, on the land still to be taken by whites. Northerners, and loyal Unionists when the time for fighting came, though untroubled by slavery while it existed, and absolutely opposed to black suffrage after it was abolished; white supremacists, back when the sentiment was taken for granted and uncontroversially expressed; “Christian soldiers” (as Papa Custer called George and his younger brother Lt. Thomas Custer, who once charged ahead of his men, leapt into the midst of Confederate troops, and didn’t let being shot in the face by the rebel regiment’s color bearer daunt him from quickly dispatching that adversary and wresting away the stars-and-bars; during the Civil War Tom won the Congressional Medal of Honor twice) who had been indoctrinated to believe that the United States of America “was uniquely blessed, had the finest government ever conceived by man, was the freest the world had ever known, and had a Manifest Destiny to overspread the continent.”
  
  Ambrose has a deep sense of nineteenth century political affiliations, and of the particular career ramifications of Custer’s chosen affiliations. As an anti-black Democrat who hoped to see the broken South treated with delicacy, he was out of place, when the Civil War ended, with the “Radical Republicans” who wanted to use the full measure of federal power to safeguard the civil rights of ex-slaves and who thought it more sensible (and cheaper) to bribe Indians onto reservations rather than subdue them with force. Custer was a tempting political figurehead for the Democrats—-as a flashy Civil War hero, he was competitive in an electoral arena deafened by the Republican Party’s self-christening as the “party of Lincoln,” as savior of the Union, its waving of “the bloody shirt.” That Custer stayed in the Army year after year, subsisting on a small salary and content with unglamorous frontier postings though wealthy Democrats courted him so much, toasting him in New York City and whispering of wealth and power during covered carriage rides around Central Park, indicates the degree to which he had embraced his life on the Plains. Ambrose doesn’t stoop to the cheap gimmick of insinuating that Crazy Horse and Custer were the same man, but neither does he ignore the obvious appeal made to both men by the expansive freedom, the great gallopy distances of the Plains. George and Libbie rode together over the unfenced immensity for hours each day (the delusion of dashing cavalier romance they both inhabited may have been utter bullshit, but that doesn't mean it wasn't fun, or unsupported by reality: General Sheridan purchased the table on which Robert E. Lee signed the surrender terms and presented it to Libbie as a token of his recogniton of Custer's part in bringing the surrender about; and they were reunited in Jefferson Davis' bed at the Confederate White House, after the Union army entered Richmond). A born solider and sportsman, Custer clearly had a ball out there. It was real cavalry country that also happened to be richly stocked with exotic game. A leitmotif of the Custers’ voluminous connubial correspondence (eighty page letters were not unusual—-letters written by lantern-light, after a day in the saddle—-those Victorians!) is a promise extracted by his wife to stay with his of his men when on campaign. Custer and his staghounds would often light off in pursuit of the antelope and buffalo that encountered his line of march.
  
  Custer had a well-deserved reputation as a martinet. Still, if he imposed a cruelly swift pace on his men when in the field, it was more because of an absorbed egoism—-he himself was a dynamo of energy whose need for rest and food was drowned out by the excitement of tracking an enemy in open country—-than a perverse desire to torture his men. One of Ambrose’s nice touches is his exploration of the degree of obedience Custer and Crazy Horse were empowered by their respective societies to demand. As commanding officer of a regiment of United States Cavalry, Custer was a lord over his men, and could impose, say, any killing pace he felt was called for. The nineteenth century United States Army in peacetime was about as feudal a governmental structure as existed in the nation, if you count out the Navy...for that nightmare, see White-Jacket, or The World in a Man-of-War (1850), by a US Navy deserter named Herman Melville. Ambrose mentions the grisly fact that during the Civil War, a high causality rate among his men was often taken to mean that a commander was real fighter; Custer lost more men, proportionally, than any other Union commander, but contrary to being thought a failure, he was, Ambrose writes, perhaps the most representative (and conspicuously rewarded) instance of the generalship ethos of the US Army at the end of the Civil War. Under Lincoln, Grant and Sherman that army was a fearsomely cold-blooded machine whose stated strategy was no more sophisticated than annihilation through attrition. The South would run out of men and material sooner than the Union, so keep up the pressure, bleed them white, whatever costs the Union forces incurred in men and equipment could be replaced by the north’s manpower surplus and massive industrial base. What I’m trying to say is that for officers like Custer who cut their teeth in the Civil War, a soldier’s life was cheap, and theirs to spend as they wished. This attitude was pronounced in the wartime army, when many of the soldiers were unprofessional volunteers, so imagine what it was like in relative peacetime, on the frontier, when the enlisted men, immigrants and ex-cons and misfit unemployables, had even less civic and social capital. Custer was authorized to demand so much, but his men were still human: before the Little Big Horn, the 7th Cavalry rode all day and all night of June 24, and then went into battle on the 25th without a wink of rest or a bite to eat, and Indian warriors later reported that after defensively dismounting for that Last Stand, many of Custer’s troopers were wobbly on their feet, and stumbling with fatigue.
  
  Crazy Horse, Ambrose emphasizes, was the product of a society that awarded prestige rather than riches or authoritative command. Though a respected and much-followed war leader, Crazy Horse never had the official power to order his fellow warriors to, say, certain death, a power Custer took for granted. US Army troopers also performed an hour-and-half of drill every day when back at their forts (Custer the perfectionist probably demanded more—-it was said one always “knew the 7th by sight”); by contrast, when not actually fighting, the warriors who followed Crazy Horse often got bored and drifted away. The impetuous, individual, dueling, game-like character of Indian warfare was something Crazy Horse the innovative tactician was always butting up against. Crazy Horse did not always get young braves impatient for individual honor to perform the tactics he knew would bloody the Army, but when he did get them to fight in coordinated units—the Fetterman battle, certain incidents of the siege of Ft. Phil Kearny, the Little Bighorn—the results were devastating. The pervasive belief among whites like Custer that Indians weren’t their equals as soldiers may constitute a slur, but it becomes more understandable when one reads about Crazy Horse’s singularity as a commander. Custer acted foolishly, attacking with an exhausted and outnumbered (though not outgunned) compliment, but how was he to know a military genius was helping to direct the Sioux? I’m sure to Custer a two-pronged flanking attack on an encampment of people who weren’t likely to stand and fight seemed a sophisticated enough tactic. The elegance and patience Crazy Horse demonstrated in flanking Custer’s flanking attack were rare virtues among both Indian and white leaders. I think it right for Ambrose to maintain that the failure of Custer’s plan wasn’t a foregone conclusion; everything depended on his opponent’s reaction, and by that opponent Custer was simply out-generaled.
  
  When Ambrose and Connell tell the same story, Connell is the more captivating narrator. But Ambrose tells quite a few stories Connell doesn't, goes into more depth about some things (Ambrose's chapter "Custer at West Point" is at points as funny as Lucky Jim), and besides Custer's strange personality emerges from any style of storytelling. An eccentric, Custer is at the same time profoundly representative of nineteenth century America, a fascinating gateway into the social and cultural making of Americans. I love his paradox: though in the murderous vanguard of America's settling of the continent, he was, for many important reasons (reckless individuality; career-long, almost reflexive insubordiantion; self-fashioning as an freebooting hunter-explorer, a type of selfhood, Ambrose writes, that white Americans owe to Indians), incapable of living in the settled society he was helping to extend:
  
  Officers in the Indian-fighting Army after the Civil War were often heard to say that they much preferred the wild Indians to the tame ones, or that if they were Indians, they would most certainly be out with the hostiles, not drunk on the reservation. Custer expressed such sentiments frequently. These same officers took the lead in making certain that there were no more wild Indians.
  
  As R.P. Blackmur pointed out, being mundanely out of step with the society around him doesn't keep a man from reflecting the wholeness of its contradictions.
  
• 
  Edward Rathke

  This book was sometimes quite painful to read. Had I known at the start that this was written in the 70s, I probably would have skipped it. The thing that kept me going is that I actually did want to know more about Custer and maybe read something similar to what SC Gwynne did with the Comanches, warts and all. What I mean by that, I suppose, is that I wanted a wider look at who these men were. Something Gwynne did very well in his book is recreate the contexts of conquest and extermination. He discusses the Texas Rangers, the Civil War, the development of repeating guns, the collapse of the Spanish and Mexican control in what's now the American Southwest.
  
  Ambrose doesn't really do that. He does give us a bit of context here and there, but I think he occludes more than he reveals, and it all comes together in a few passages that made me want to throw the book away. His main perspective on this whole saga is that the US did not attempt to do what it was so clearly actively doing to aboriginal people of the north american continent. That being genocide. To Ambrose, this was not genocide because no one tried to exterminate the native people. Rather, in his perspective, this was caused by a mix of bad and out of touch policies in Washington mixed with renegade but realistic people of the frontier who had to protect themselves.
  
  Say what you want about Gwynne's portrayal of this conflict, but he looks downright radically anti-US when compared to Amrbose, who, to me, rather clumsily argues that genocide was accidental.
  
  And part of me could buy this argument if what the US did to native peoples only happened to one tribe or maybe even a handful of tribes. The fact that every north american tribe the US came into contact with either became extinct or was brutally rounded up into concentration camps and then had their culture systematically stripped away speaks to the very real goals of the US government with regard to Native Americans.
  
  That being said, if you can read through the lines of his imperialistic mode, there is a lot of good information here. Again, I think he's not doing enough to actually reveal the time to modern readers, but we at least come to know the two subjects of this book. Though his presentation of Custer seems mostly heroic, with his massive failures somewhat rushed through or de-emphasized, or only emphasized to illustrate how they did not ruin or even impede his aspirations.
  
  But, yeah, there are certainly better books on the subjects of this book. I kept going because I wanted to know more about Custer and specifically how he died at Little Bighorn. I probably could have found something else to get this information, but so it goes. I did read a better book about Crazy Horse last year or maybe the year before, in fact, though I can't remember the name of it.
  
  But, yeah, save your time and find a better book on the subjects, or even look at the wikipedia pages.
• 
  Tom

  Wow. History has gotten so much better since I was in Junior High...
  
  Immensely readable, Ambrose has written a wonderful depiction of the times based on the conflict between two immense, American heroes. He paints a vivid picture of their up-bringing, formative years and early careers that eventually and inevitably led to their day at the Little Bighorn. This history is fair to both: elegant and moving. We come to know and perhaps love both protagonists, and the tragedy of Crazy Horse's death is laid out in full.
  
  Custer - got what he deserved.
  
  Highly recommended.
• 
  Bob Mayer

  A very good read about the parallel lives of two who would meet in an unexpected place; at least for one of them. An important part of the book is Custer's battle record in the Civil War and then his atrocious actions afterward. Custer was a narcissist and eventually, they all end up in a bad place. That he took so many with him is a tragedy.
• 
  T.E. George

  As a child of the 50s, I grew up with the romanticized Hollywood version of Cowboys and Indians. My image of both was Randolph Scott, Fess Parker and more often than not some nameless actor who was less Native American than I am. Because my great-grand mother was half Cherokee, I proudly bragged to friends about the legends that accompanied her memory while arguing fiercely for my right to be one of the cowboys instead of a “dastardly Indian”.
  
  Stephen Ambrose illustrates this dichotomy of my American heritage flawlessly in his parallel biographies of Crazy Horse and Custer. Most notably, he shows us that what made both men great spelled their ultimate demise. As individuals, they had much in common. As members of their respective cultures, they might as well have been the humans and aliens in the movie Independence Day.
  
  It’s not surprising, then to see, readers taking diametrically opposed views of Ambose’s treatment of the two cultures. Some see him as far too sympathetic to the Plains Indians while others have the opposite view.
  
  It is a shame to take sides in this account rather to read it for what it is – the story to two men. While others, far from the reality of battle, see the enemy as less than human, true warriors like these two men often have a grudging respect for each other.
  
  If for no other reason, the author has done me a favor by reminding me that these were real people rather than characters on a silver screen.
  
  Crazy Horse and Custer reminds us that neither was angel nor demon. Rather, both were driven yet flawed men.
  
• 
  Brad

  At times there is too much speculation in
  Stephen E. Ambrose's Crazy Horse and Custer for my tastes, too many "we can't possibly know, but ..." moments, and despite the honesty of those moments, I can't help feeling that they diminish the work as an historical record.
  
  Then again ... maybe they don't. Maybe those moments are the truth about every single history book ever written, and actually naming the moments that are speculation, especially those that are educated speculation, elevates the authors of such works to a level of honesty that their more arrogant colleagues cannot achieve because the arrogant lay claims to an authenticity they cannot possibly attain.
  
  Whatever the truth of Crazy Horse and Custer's historical veracity, Ambrose has breathed life and some sort of balance (albeit a balance that comes from the position of a privileged member of the conquering people) into an already compelling story. The subtitle of this work is "The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors," and the parallel approach is the key to Ambrose's success.
  
  It isn't always successful, so I will start with its weakness. When Ambrose is drawing direct parallels, implying that these men -- Crazy Horse and George A. Custer -- shared some sort of fated affinity, the parallel seems a little silly. For instance, as a boy Crazy Horse was named Curly because of his light curly hair, and as most of us know through cultural osmosis, Custer was famous for his curly blonde locks. It feels ham-fisted and inconsequential, and it is both, but it is also an important fertilizing of the field that Ambrose is sowing.
  
  When the coincidences are set aside and the parallelling becomes all about Ambrose's approach to his subjects, when their careers are put side by side, their attitudes, the attitudes of their peoples, their ethics, their strengths and weaknesses, their passions, their love for the Great Plains, their love for the women in their lives, their love for their families and friends, their poor choices and skill at making enemies, everything about each man illuminates something about his counterpart. They were very much the same, these two men, despite how far apart their worlds were.
  
  Who they were, how they moved through the world of their time, and how their deaths came about is still pregnant with lessons for today. Lessons too few of us can be bothered to learn, it seems.
  
  If you are interested in the lessons, though, this book is out there waiting to kick you down a path that can be long and rewarding -- so long as you don't stop with this one take delivered by a man of the conquering people, no matter how unbiased and balanced he strove to be.
• 
  Tom

  I found this book to be excellent. Ambrose goes into good detail on how the Sioux Indians lived their organizational structure and their customs. I highly recommend this book if you have any interest in the American Indian. Other reviewers thought Ambrose was biased towards the U.S. Army I really didn't feel that way. The book does discuss the treatment of the Sioux by the Indian Agents and the Army. It seemed each had a different idea of what was the correct approach controlling Indian population.
• 
  Potomacwill

  I low-rated this book for its careless use of such highly charged words as "savages" and "civilized" and such statements as this: "The United States did not follow a policy of genocide; it did try to find a just solution to the Indian problem."
  
  Whether from policy or from the unanticipated sum of myriad government-aided and -abetted acts of soldiers and settlers, the result was genocide. Nor was "a just solution to the Indian problem" ever a major concern of U.S. Indian policy. After all, the "Indian problem" was settler usurpation.
• 
  Clay Davis

  A great book about those two men with in depth details about their lives and times.
• 
  Tom

  I love Ambrose, what a shame that he's gone. After a slow start (read a bit like a PhD dissertation but I wouldn't want anyone comparing mine) this was really fun. Like a lot of folks I had the impression that Custer was a buffoon. To the contrary he was a leader, motivator and while flamboyant at times not at all like what you've casually been exposed to. Much has been said of his last place finish in his West Point class. This was by design, he just did what he had to, but was surprisingly capable when he put his mind to it. Some random things that struck a chord with me 1] "The American is a new man who acts on new principles." Individual expectations of betterment makes Americans into the hardest working people in the world. Nothing is different today. 2] Attacks on friendly Indians only turned more friendlies into hostiles. Have we learned nothing, the same thing is going on today around the world. 3] I had no idea Custer had the career in the Civil War that he did, amazing leader. Custer personally received the white flag of surrender from Lee. 4] I thought it before Ambrose said it but Custer and Patton were remarkably similar. Patton was probably a better general though. 5] Has nothing changed? . . . "The peace loving advocates were the victims of a government determination to cut taxes, lower expenditures and balance the budget." 6] He and his wife, Libbie, were terrifically in love. She remained a widow for more than 50 years after his death. 7] A recurring theme in many of the histories I read, you must make people feel the horrors of war before they will lose their will to fight. It's true, there are too many examples to deny it. 8] I guess we'll never know, but could the outcome have been different if only Reno and Benteen . . . . Great read, what fun, and how much I learned!!
• 
  Jane

  So dry. So wordy. So soporific. (Don't forget, I was a history major. I've read A LOT of history.) As soon as I got to 51% I called myself finished. (It has been a couple of years since I invoked my personal 51%-and-I-can-call-it-read rule. )
  
• 
  Sangria

  This writer/researcher is an American treasure.......
  
  Recommend.
• 
  Lisa Phillips

  In order to encourage a good friend to read more, I proposed we read a book together and he could choose. Crazy Horse and Custer was the book he selected, and it was a great choice. He enjoys history and I enjoyed learning all about the two men who met at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The subtitle of the book is The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors and it is an apt title. Stephen Ambrose did an amazing job of writing and documenting his sources and footnotes. It is at times very hard to read because of the common disregard for both human and animal life. The United States was just past the Civil War, during which Custer was given his General rank, and there was little time wasted in seeking the near genocide of the native American peoples. Legalized slavery had barely ended before the white population in control sought to control and destroy the lives of another minority population. What is obvious is that the reason for coming up with justifications for horrendous acts is always a cover for the true reason: greed. The westward movement of settlers, gold rush participants, and railroad builders brought to mind a quote from the movie, Blazing Saddles, when Hedley Lamarr says, "The only thing standing between us and that land is the rightful owners!" I remember when I became interested in non-fiction historical writings, and it didn't happen until I was in college and was introduced to narrative history. It's an entirely better way of teaching and learning about the past, because we see plainly that so-called "heroes" of our grade school days were quite human, too, for better or worse. This is a great read and kept interesting throughout the long, detailed pages.
• 
  Koit

  I had heard the name of Mr Ambrose before but I hadn’t really picked up any of his books. Mostly, this had to do with his preferred subject period — mostly the Second World War — which has not entered my reading interests at any point. However, this look into the mid-19th century proved to be a good starting point for me, and I was immediately captivated by the style employed.
  
  The author demonstrates very good understanding of the subject but also of human psychology. Some of the ideas that he puts forward, especially on morality and understanding the past, were groundbreaking — not for their novelty, but for the simplicity of expression that Mr Ambrose managed to use.
  
  Crazy Horse and Custer themselves, the subjects of this book, proved to be interesting and challenging people. Very similar and yet very different, the look into their lives also allowed to look into the character of the century and to highlight the faults in society which made Custer into a brave though reckless leader. The points about loss of life and whether it should have been avoided to a higher degree, especially where Custer was concerned, make for interesting thought experiments when we contrast these to the modern day.
  
  I wholly recommend this! Either an interest in George Armstrong Custer, Crazy Horse, the Sioux, or the American 19th century society will be amply rewarded!
  
  
  This review was originally posted on my blog.
• 
  Andrea Jacka

  I found Crazy Horse and Custer an extraordinary read. A layperson in regard military jargon, explanations of battle plans and minute reiteration of those plans, at no point did I get lost or feel the need to skip explanations of battle scenes in this book. Full of detail about the lives of each man, their culture, what shaped their personalities and attitude, there is no doubt Crazy Horse and Custer were both remarkable men. I was caught up in this fascinating period of American history, the informative passages about each ‘great warrior’ insightful and at times, blisteringly sad.
• 
  Stuart Sullivan

  In depth biographies of the parallels and divergence in the lives of two of the most influential leaders of post Civil War America. Stephen Ambrose is a meticulous researcher and presents many interesting details of both Crazy Horse and Custer, and the societies they lived in. Some details may seem a bit tedious to the casual reader, but I found it fascinating. I have read several of Ambrose's books and intend to read several more.
  
• 
  Rob

  Ambrose masterfully parallels the lives of these two men and the worlds they both fought for until that day they both collided on the Little Big Horn. You will gain insight into not only these two fascinating warriors but better understand the two cultures that collided on the plains of the 19th Century America. This was a very enjoyable read.
• 
  Jared

  “I could whip all the Indians in the northwest with the Seventh Cavalry.” - George A. Custer
  
  COMMUNAL LIVING VS INDIVIDUALISM
  - The Indians had a communal ideal and practice, while the whites had an individual ideal and practice.
  
  - After looking over much of the eastern United States, Sitting Bull declared that in his opinion “the white man knows how to make everything, but he does not know how to distribute it.”
  
  AMBITION
  - What was new in America was individual expectation of personal betterment. It made Americans into the hardest working people in the world, and the most ambitious. Ambition was the key to the American character. It was the motive power that got the work done, and the one sentiment shared by all white Americans, who were otherwise so diverse.
  
  - For a boy like Custer, without a distinguished family background, wealth, or political position to push him ahead, West Point was an ideal place for social climbing and general advancement.
  
  - The ultimate difference between the two men was their mood. Custer was never satisfied with where he was. He always aimed to go on to the next higher station in his society. He was always in a state of becoming. Crazy Horse accepted the situations he found himself in and aimed only to be a brave and respected Sioux warrior...He was in a state of being. Custer believed that things could be better than they were. Crazy Horse did not.
  
  LIMITS TO A NATION’S POWER, INFLUENCE
  - The United States was discovering that for all its industrial might, it was exceedingly difficult to bring its power to bear on its frontier or, once having gotten the power there, to use it effectively.
  
  SOLDIERS LACKED AN EFFECTIVE STRATEGY
  - By making small raids the Indians would keep the whites stirred up, with troops marching hither and yon in vain attempts to catch them, wearing out their horses and themselves in the process...These pinpricks accomplished exactly what the Indians wanted;
  
  - An able commander might have seen these Loafers [Natives who lived near forts] as potentially valuable allies. They would have made excellent scouts and many of them would have jumped at the chance to get a uniform, an American horse, regular pay, and a repeating rifle. But Dodge decided that they were an intolerable burden.
  
  UNDERESTIMATED THE ENEMY
  - Having conquered the Confederacy, the United States Army officers were full of optimism. They had, in short, made the classic military blunder of underestimating their enemy.
  
  PLAGUED BY CONFLICTING GUIDANCE
  - But the Army was badly served by its political masters, given conflicting orders, hardly ever knowing from one month to the next what the policy of the government might be; it was poorly equipped and inadequately supplied.
  
  SUNK COST (IN FORTS)
  - First, Sherman wanted to launch an extensive search-and-destroy campaign in Kansas in the coming summer and he badly needed the contribution of the regiment of infantry stationed on the Bozeman Trail...Army officers generally were opposed to abandoning the forts. They had paid a terrible price in blood to establish them and abject surrender hurt their pride.
  
  HAD TROUBLE FINDING THE ENEMY
  - For Custer, the important thing about the small skirmish was the lesson it taught. Indians, he reasoned, could not stand up to the fire power of cavalry. The problem of Indian fighting seemed to be as easy as it was frustrating—find the Indians...(One hundred years later the United States Army in Vietnam operated on the same principle, i.e., it deliberately walked into Viet Cong ambushes as a way of forcing the enemy to fight, relying upon its superior fire power to win the ensuing battle.)
  
  POOR TREATMENT OF ENLISTED PERSONNEL
  - The more general cause of desertion, however, was the Army’s wretched treatment of enlisted men, which contrasted so sharply with the relatively decent food and housing available to Custer and the other officers.
  
  DESTRUCTION OF RESOURCES (BUFFALO) VIA RAILROADS IS ULTIMATELY WHAT DEFEATED THE NATIVES
  - What Sherman realized was that the coming of the railroad to the Plains would eventually mean an end to the Indian’s way of life. The advancing railroad brought settlement with it, and the settlers would crowd the Indians out. More immediately important, the railroad opened the country to the buffalo hunters...the herds could be eliminated in a decade or less, and without the herds the Indians would have to go to reservations or starve. It would be, in short, a campaign with the enemies’ resources, not the enemy himself, as the target.
  
  - The program worked. In slightly more than ten years, a continental herd of buffalo numbering fifty million was reduced to a few thousand stragglers. By 1888 there were less than one thousand buffalo in the United States. So many buffalo robes were shipped east that the price quickly fell to $1.00 per hide. The buffalo hunters, not the Army, cleared the Indians off the Plains.
  
  RUN YOUR OWN RACE AND DON’T WORRY ABOUT OTHER’S ACHIEVEMENTS
  - It was a trying time for the northern cadets. Day after day their southern comrades resigned and returned home, there to pick up prized commissions in the Confederate or state volunteer forces.
  
  DIVISIONS AMONG NATIVES LED TO THEIR DOWNFALL
  - the Sioux were divided against themselves, incapable of rallying around a cause or a leader, and thus in the end unable to defend their way of life.
  
  - Thus the first battle between the Sioux and the whites revealed the fatal weakness of the Indians. Without leadership, the Sioux were unable to turn a battle into a campaign.
  
  CRAZY HORSE STRATEGY
  - He didn’t like to start a battle unless he had it all planned out in his head and knew he was going to win. He always used judgment and played safe.
  
  CUSTER OFTEN GOT LUCKY
  - So often was he in the right place at the right time that “Custer’s luck” became a byword in the Army.
  
  CUSTER TRIED HIS BEST TO GET ATTENTION
  - He dressed and acted in such a way as to make certain that he stood out from the crowd, that he would always be the center of attention.
  
  CUSTER’S POSITIVE ATTRIBUTES
  - Another factor in Custer’s success was his amazingly good health and endurance.
  
  - Over and above all his other qualities, Custer was firm in his principles and physically courageous.
  
  - That the soldiers could keep going under such conditions was a tribute to Custer’s ability as a trainer and leader of men.
  
  CUSTER ONLY KNEW HOW TO CHARGE
  - Custer rode to the top of his profession over the backs of his fallen soldiers. As a general, Custer had one basic instinct, to charge the enemy wherever he might be, no matter how strong his position or numbers. Throughout his military career he indulged that instinct whenever he faced opposition. Neither a thinker nor a planner, Custer scorned maneuvering, reconnaissance, and all other subtleties of warfare. He was a good, if often reckless, small-unit combat commander, no more and no less.
  
  - but the real price for his reputation was the lives of the hundreds of men who fell following his flag.
  
  CUSTER FAILED TO GAIN NEW SKILLS FOR NEW CHALLENGES
  - Impetuosity and courage had stood him in good stead during the Civil War, but the first was precisely the wrong quality for Indian fighting, while courage was not of much use if he couldn’t catch any Indians. To make matters worse, his real job was to assist the Indian agents in maintaining the peace, which required skill and patience, qualities he lacked altogether.
  
  THE NATIVES HAD LEARNED TO FIGHT IN NEW WAYS
  - The Sioux and Cheyennes had abandoned the old, safe method of hovering, circling at a distance. A new spirit was in them that day, and they came on with their ponies at the dead run, often breaking in among the troops and whipping them in hand-to-hand encounters.
  
  CUSTER HAD MOMENTS OF INCREDIBLE STUPIDITY
  - Suddenly, about a mile distant, he saw a buffalo bull...At that instant the bull whirled on horse and rider. Custer’s horse reared, Custer accidentally pulled the trigger, and he shot his thoroughbred through the head...It was a desperate situation, but Custer’s luck held. Within a couple of hours the column found him, alone
  
  - Court-martial charges were being drawn up, accusing him of leaving Fort Wallace without permission. Captain West of the 7th Cavalry was preferring additional charges, accusing Custer of excessive cruelty and illegal conduct when he ordered his officers to shoot the deserters, of abandoning the two soldiers who had been killed on the march from Fort Wallace to Fort Harker, and of pushing the men beyond human endurance.
  
  CIVILIZATION VS SAVAGERY
  - White soldiers followed their leaders into near-certain death, something Indian warriors would never do. Indeed, it might almost be said that a major distinction between civilization and savagery is that the civilized give far more power (and fame) to their leaders than the savage would even dream possible.
  
  FIGHTING ON THE PLAINS SIMILAR TO NAVAL WARFARE
  - The truth was that fighting Indians on the Plains was more like naval warfare on the high seas than anything else. In effect, Sherman was lumbering around with battleships and cruisers, chasing pirates in sleek, much faster vessels. Worse, his ships had no staying power; they had to put into port (the forts) every other week or so to replenish their supplies. The pirates could live off the ocean. To continue the image, the wagons were merchant vessels. When they traveled alone, as did the stagecoaches, the pirates gobbled up every one they saw. When the wagons traveled in convoy, protected by fighting men, they got through.
  
  CUSTER WAS TO HELP GET GOLD TO GET U.S. OUT OF 1873 FINANCIAL CRISIS
  - That is where Custer came in. Once again he became the cutting edge of the nation’s expansion. By conquering Sioux territory and discovering vast gold deposits, he helped end the depression, and the nation was able to get back to normal without having to examine itself,
  
  - Sheridan decided in the spring of 1874 to send a column of troops into the Black Hills in order to establish a fort there, and, although this reason was unacknowledged, to find gold. This was a direct, open, unilateral violation of the treaty of 1868. Sheridan said it had to be done because the Sioux were not living up to their agreements in the treaty.
  
  CUSTER IGNORED THE SIGNS OF DANGER (LITERALLY) AND EXPERT ADVICE
  - The Sioux had left drawings in the sand that told the story of Sitting Bull’s vision, which greatly excited the Indian scouts, but when they fearfully told Custer what it meant, he shrugged.
  
  - Mitch Bouyer told him that it was the largest encampment ever collected on the northwest Plains and reminded Custer that he, Bouyer, had been in these parts for thirty years. Custer shrugged.
  
  THE LAST BATTLE FOR CUSTER WAS EVENLY MATCHED
  - And away Custer and the 611 men of the 7th Cavalry marched toward the Little Bighorn, where Crazy Horse and 3,000 warriors were waiting. With the difference in weaponry and discipline, the odds were even. This battle would be decided by generalship, not numbers.
  
  BATTLE OF LITTLE BIGHORN
  - In twenty minutes, perhaps less, it was over. Custer and his 225 soldiers were dead.
  
  - [Sitting Bull later speaking with a report about Custer’s final moments] REPORTER: When did he fall? SITTING BULL: He killed a man when he fell. He laughed. REPORTER: You mean he cried out. SITTING BULL: No, he laughed. He had fired his last shot.
  
  CUSTER’S MISTAKES IN HIS FINAL BATTLE
  - Custer’s mistakes, in order of importance, were as follows: First, he refused to accept Terry’s offer of four troops of the 2nd Cavalry.
  
  - Second, Custer badly underestimated his enemy, not so much in terms of numbers (where his guess of 1,500 was not a fatal underestimate) as in terms of fighting capability, where he was disastrously wrong. Splitting his force four ways was thus a major error.
  
  - Custer’s third mistake was assuming that his men could do what he could do; to put it another way, he attacked too soon. He should have spent June 25 resting, then attacked the next day,
  
  - A fourth mistake was to commit his command when he did not know his enemies’ position, strength, or location.
  
  - A fourth mistake was to commit his command when he did not know his enemies’ position, strength, or location.
  
  - Finally, when Custer lost the initiative, he failed to gain the high ground and dig in,
  
  STARVATION AS A TACTIC TO DEFEAT THE NATIVES
  - On August 15, 1876, Congress passed the Sioux appropriation bill...the government was now demanding unconditional surrender of the Sioux and threatened starvation if the demand was not met!
  
  ATTITUDE MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE
  - When they came within sight of Camp Robinson, the chiefs began to sing, the warriors and then the women and children taking it up, filling the White River Valley with their song. Thousands of agency Indians lined their route, and they too began to sing and to cheer for Crazy Horse. One of the watching Army officers put down his binoculars and complained to those around him, “By God, this is a triumphal march, not a surrender.”
  
  DEATH OF CRAZY HORSE
  - Crazy Horse knew then that he was being penned up in solitary confinement...began a rush toward the door, slashing at anyone in his way.
  
  - Soldiers standing guard began thrusting toward Crazy Horse with their bayonets. Crazy Horse could not fight back because, just as it had been foretold in his vision twenty-three years before, his arms were held by one of his own people. He gave a desperate lunge and broke free. At that instant, a bayonet cut through his side and into his guts. Another thrust entered his back and went through his kidney.
  
  DEATH OF SITTING BULL
  - He became something of a leader in the Ghost Dance, which terrified the whites, and in December 1890 the Army ordered him arrested. Indian police tried to do the dirty work at dawn on December 15. Sitting Bull resisted, was shot in the back by an Indian policeman, and died immediately.
  
  *** *** *** *** ***
  
  FACTOIDS
  - Custer’s brother, Tom, was the first to be awarded the MoH 2x. He died at Little Big Horn with his two Custer brothers:
  https://youtu.be/9cFcBgowiFc
  
  - Custer was present at the surrender of Lee and kept the surrender flag (towel actually):
  https://americanhistory.si.edu/collec...
  
  - By the time he [Custer] graduated, he had acquired Crazy Horse’s childhood name, “Curly.”
  
  - Custer was by no means the only “boy general” of the war, although at age twenty-three he was the youngest man in the history of United States Armed Forces to ever wear stars on his shoulders.
  
  - And she [Custer’s wife] was a marvelously effective writer. She has left us some of the best descriptive material available on the Great Plains in the nineteenth century. But she devoted the twelve years of her married life and the fifty-seven years of her widowhood to her husband.
  
  - Custer surrounded himself with dogs, goats, a pet squirrel, and a raccoon that slept with him at night, the animal’s head on the pillow next to Custer.
  
  - Crazy Horse’s photograph was never taken. He refused to pose because he held the Indian belief that to steal his shadow would shorten his life.
  
  - In January 1872 Custer received a most welcome order from Sheridan. The Grand Duke Alexis of Russia was touring the world, was currently in the United States, and wanted to try his hand at buffalo hunting. The son of Czar Alexander II, only twenty-two years old, was an avid sportsman and the United States Government wanted to show him every courtesy and consideration.
  
  - Indians tried to stretch what powder they had and consistently cheated on the powder load. Many a white soldier who was hit by gunfire in a vital spot nevertheless lived through these wars because of that Indian practice.)
  
  - He [Custer] would read aloud to her as he put words down on paper. Overhead he had hung portraits of his two favorite generals, McClellan—and Custer.
  
  - Civil War cavalry officers have often been compared to the hotshot Air Force pilots of the twentieth century—each service attracted the boastful, swaggering, devil-may-care, courageous young heroes.
  
  - [Crazy Horse took a bullet to the face for a woman, but she ended up leaving him] No Water fired. The bullet hit Crazy Horse just below the left nostril, followed the line of the teeth and fractured his upper jaw. Crazy Horse fell forward into the fire...Black Buffalo Woman returned to No Water.
  
  HAHA
  - On one occasion a truant rival stood outside the schoolhouse window as Autie [Custer] was struggling with a difficult word. The rival made faces and ornery gestures at Autie. Angry beyond endurance, Autie sprang to the window, smashed his fist through the glass, and bloodied his tormentor’s nose.
  
  - “My career as a cadet,” he wrote, “had but little to recommend it to the study of those who came after me, unless as an example to be carefully avoided.”
  
  - Divorce, which was easily accomplished, resulted more often than not from adultery (the laziness of a husband or the sharp tongue of a wife were also frequent causes of divorce). A wife could divorce a husband simply by throwing all his belongings out of the tipi, which was her private property.
  
  - The enlisted men hated all staff officers, especially young squirts like Custer fresh out of West Point and full of airs, and they bitterly resented the privileges the staffers enjoyed...An Irish soldier, when ordered by a headquarters aide to keep quiet while serving a term in a guardhouse, replied, “I will not keep quiet for you, you God damned low-lived son of a bitch, you shit-house adjutant.”
  
  FOR FURTHER READING ON THE SUBJECT
  - Custer’s biography has been written, accurately and wisely, by Jay Monaghan. Indeed, Monaghan’s Custer is a model biography—scholarly, detailed, and lively.
  
  - used as a general guide the works of Colonel W. A. Graham, especially The Custer Myth (which reprints Godfrey’s and Benteen’s long accounts, along with those of many other eyewitnesses, red and white), and Edgar I. Stewart’s Custer’s Luck.
  
  BONUS
  - Good summary of Custer’s life:
  https://youtu.be/1Ch-7rQ8X0c
  
  - Brief summary of the battle:
  https://youtu.be/UM4eQBpfGIg
  
  - Black Hills (South Dakota) considered sacred by Lakota:
  https://youtu.be/DG_2yT3FaEs
  
  - Sand Creek Massacre:
  https://youtu.be/U0UF71_-HZY
  
  - The Fetterman Massacre:
  https://youtu.be/2Xy4NX5RgV8
  
  - What is a travois?:
  https://youtu.be/hq3TN5tbJAA
  
  - Economic panic of 1837 (caused railroad construction to slow):
  https://youtu.be/6q16bcUwG5A
  
  - Death of Crazy Horse:
  https://youtu.be/0ILZcHjdqKM
  
• 
  Terry McIntire

  Started to read in preparation for trip to S. Dakota. The historical events are probably quite accurate. The conjecture about what the individuals were thinking or why they took certain action seems to be included just to make this a good read. I did not finish the book, after a about 1/3 of the book, I moved on to another book to learn about this time in history.
• 
  Gregg Bell

  Crazy Horse and Custer is a story of opposites and similarities. Two men from wildly different worlds collide as history forces them together. The book is fascinating as it explores the men's lives individually, and then, as they clash, collectively. The differences in the men's lives are apparent.
  
  Crazy Horse is a man living free and easy, close to the earth, nature-smart, and satisfied with the ordinary life of a young brave. Custer, on the other hand, a West Point grad, is a man of military discipline, and also a a man of society and a man who "could never stand to be second at anything..."
  
  Even in their similarities they are vastly different. Yes, both men were fearless (it might well be argued that they were reckless), but Crazy Horse was forced into fearless mode as his people were encroached upon, and often mercilessly attacked, by the U.S. government, while Custer was hell-bent on achieving personal glory, no matter the cost.
  
  Crazy Horse and Custer is also a tale of the bigger picture. Of an America groaning for expansion and "manifest destiny," and of the Indians, whose way of life was rocked, and who were forced into either capitulation or war.
  
  It is a tale of atrocities. Of the Indians regularly and repeatedly being lied to about various treaties offered by the government. And of massacres and brutality by both sides. (Government soldiers sensing eventual defeat would shoot and kill their own wounded, rather than have them face the inevitable torture that awaited them had they been captured alive.) It is a familiar story of endless, senseless retaliation. It is the story of war.
  
  And yet the story is broader than that. The Indian nation was living from day to day, depending on nature and their wits and courage to survive. While the white man, always seeking more, obsessed with expansion and the commercialism of the fur trade, envisioned the America of the future, stretching boundless from the Atlantic to the Pacific. And the only way the white man saw this happening was if the Indians embraced the white man's way of life—and that simply was not going to happen.
  
  Crazy Horse and Custer is the story as well of two women. Of Custer's beloved Libbie, who Custer idolized and broke rules for to be with in the wilderness. Crazy Horse, meanwhile, desperately in love with another man's wife, broke the rules as well and stole her away from the man.
  
  The carnage and folly of all that transpires in the book is hard to take. The stupidity and vanity. Custer comes to mind here—he would often initiate charges that he knew would result in unnecessary deaths to his own men, yet brought him glory. And the Indians, at a distinct disadvantage in terms of weaponry, were not short of displays of out and out savagery.
  
  Ultimately, though, it is the courage of the two men that cements their historical connection, and indeed this book.
  
  "He (Custer) was at the head of every charge, never faltered, and always kept his head no matter how deadly the hail of bullets. Like Crazy Horse, Custer lived his life to the full; again like Crazy Horse, he was so involved with living that he did not have time to fear death."
  
  The end, while tragic, seemed inevitable. "Custer's Last Stand" for Custer.
  
  "Yellow Horse said that 'Custer fought and Reno did not; Custer went in to die, and his fighting was superb; I never saw a man fight as Custer did.'"
  
  Two hundred and twenty-five government soldiers died along with Custer on that bluff. There are many versions of Custer's last moments, but the author is convinced that the most reliable was delivered by Sitting Bull to a newspaper reporter.
  
  Reporter: When did he (Custer) fall?"
  Sitting Bull: He killed a man when he fell. He laughed.
  Reporter: You mean he cried out.
  Sitting Bull: No, he laughed. He had fired his last shot.
  
  The book winds down with Crazy Horse resisting till the very end. Trapped, his arms pinioned by government soldiers, he is thrust through twice with bayonets.
  
  "Crazy Horse fell to the ground. Little Big Man and some soldiers reached for him, grabbed his arms again, but he said, 'Let me go, my friends. You have got me hurt enough.' And suddenly it was deathly silent again, down there on the parade ground, beside the White River, as the sun set over the surrounding buttes. A passing hawk, on his way to his roost, screamed."
  
  
  
  
  Have a little spare time? I've free flash fiction (all stories under 1K) at my website greggbell.net
• 
  William

  An excellent introduction to both Crazy Horse and Custer...as well as the epic battle that made them both famous/infamous. As usual, Ambrose does a good job in trying to be objective--especially in dealing with polarizing individuals and topics like US/Native American relations and the myths and reputation surrounding Custer & Crazy Horse. Robert Utley and Allan Eckert are two other historians which to my mind give good and accurate historical descriptions of subject matter which has become highly PC.
  Interesting to consider that had the battle of little Bighorn gone the other way, Custer might well have ended up in the White House. And that Crazy Horse was very much a character straight from a Greek Tragedy--with a life filled with great honor and full of personal tragedy--none more so than the circumstances surrounding his death.
  In only a few places does Ambrose reveal a slight bias in favor of Crazy Horse and Native Americans. Ambrose rarely fails to ascribe Manifest Destiny and financial interests as motivating factors to expand into the west, especially after the Civil War. But he also fails to accurately reflect that Native Americans also invaded each other's territory (the Lakota originally came from the Wisconsin/Minnesota area, and perhaps prior to that the Ohio Valley). While Crazy Horse was very protective of his people and their newly acquired territory in the present Dakota/Wyoming territories, he loved nothing better than attacking other Native American tribes, specifically the Crow and Pawnee.
  I think the value that authors like Ambrose bring is this: People are people. While there were clearly differences in lifestyle/philosophy between White America and Native Americans, there is also much more that unites them. Both societies exhibited honorable traditions, courageous behaviors and admirable goals. And both societies engaged in warfare, barbarism and had internal rifts and personal faults of which to be justifiably embarrassed.
  If by reading these histories, we begin to understand more about universal human conditions and characteristics, perhaps we can begin to also breakdown the wall of difference which divides us, and leads to so much strife.
• 
  Richard Klueg

  This is a dual biography of two fascinating men who were representative leaders in the conflict of American and Indian cultures in the Nineteenth Century Great Plains. Both men are admirable for their personal courage and commitment to their way of life, and both died tragically as a direct result of that commitment.
  
  This is not a "white man evil, Indian good" treatment. The author attempts to fairly explain what drove both cultures, and what was inefficient, foolish, or immoral in each. It seems to me that a virtue on each side was taken to an extreme to great detriment. The Indians (admirably) placed a high value on individuality, and that resulted in great inefficiency and an inability to work together to defend themselves against a determined adversary. Crazy Horse's ability to lead the Indians in uncharacteristically united and efficient tactical moves at Little Bighorn spelled the doom of Custer and his men. Nineteenth Century America was possessed of a drive for progress and the development of the land, attracting European immigrants for the chance of a better life in a new land. That so many settlers braved the dangers involved justifies our admiration. What is not justified is the prevailing lack of concern for the Indians and the self-serving violation of basic human rights and breaking of promises.
  
  Crazy Horse is to be admired not only for his courage, but also his undying commitment to his people and their way of life. Along with his personal courage there was a striking personal humility. The greatest tragedy of his death is the large involvement of his fellow Indians in his demise. He was an honorable human being.
  
  Since Custer has become an "easy target" for criticism, I was glad to learn more about him. His personal ambition is often criticized, as is they way his commitment to his wife at times affected his decisions adversely. However, ambition is not in itself a bad thing, and I think his great love for his wife is something to be praised. That these virtues at times ran out of balance does not take away from their overall positive place in Custer's life. He was a man who clearly loved life and lived it to the full. If I met him in real life, I think I would have liked him.