NOTES
CHAPTER 1
Walter P. Webb, The Great Plains (Boston, 1931), 10–47. Readers who know this classic will realize how dependent I am on Webb’s great work.
Wayne Gard, The Great Buffalo Hunt (Lincoln, Neb., 1959), 4–7.
Clark Wissler, Indians of the United States (rev. ed., New York, 1966), 8. Folsom points were chipped dart points, named after the New Mexico town where they were first found in 1926.
Robert H. Lowie, Indians of the Plains (reissue, Garden City, N.Y., 1963), 15–16; Ruth M. Underhill, Red Man’s America (rev. ed., Chicago, 1971), 144–48.
Frank Gilbert Roe, The Indian and the Horse (Norman, Okla., 1955), 78.
Ibid., 135–55; Thomas E. Mails, The Mystic Warriors of the Plains (Garden City, N.Y., 1972), 218.
Walker D. Wyman, The Wild Horse of the West (Lincoln, Neb., 1945), 90.
Doane Robinson, A History of the Dakota or Sioux Indians (Minneapolis, 1904), chaps. 2 and 3; Underhill, Red Man’s America, 144–53.
George E. Hyde, Spotted Tail’s Folk: A History of the Brulé Sioux (Norman, Okla., 1961), 3.
Lewis O. Saum, The Fur Trader and the Indian (Seattle, 1965), 38.
Francis Parkman, The Oregon Trail (Washington Square Press, 1967), 215.
See the James D. Hart introduction to Parkman, The Oregon Trail.
George E. Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk: A History of the Oglala Sioux Indians (Norman, Okla., 1937), 60.
CHAPTER 2
J. D. B. DeBow, ed., Statistical View of the United States … Being a Compendium of the Seventh Census to Which Are Added the Results of Every Previous Census, Beginning With 1790 … , in the Demographic Monographs series (New York, 1970), 61, 117.
R. Carlyle Buley, The Old Northwest: Pioneer Period, 1815–1840, I (Bloomington, Ind., 1950), 385.
Henry Steele Commager, The American Mind: An Interpretation of American Thought and Character Since the 1880’s (New Haven, 1950), 5.
R. E. Banta, The Ohio, in Rivers of America (New York, 1949), 10.
D. S. Stanley, Personal Memoirs (Cambridge, Mass., 1917), 1–2.
Arthur K. Moore, The Frontier Mind: A Cultural Analysis of the Kentucky Frontiersman (Lexington, Ky., 1950), 56.
See Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (Cambridge, Mass., 1950), 61–63 for a discussion.
The text for such beliefs was Vattel’s classic Law of Nations, the standard authority for Americans on international law. E. de Vattel, Le Droit des Gens, trans. Charles G. Fenwick (Washington, 1916), III, 37–38, as quoted in Roy Harvey Pearce, The Savages of America: A Study of the Indian and the Idea of Civilization (rev. ed., Baltimore, 1965), 70.
Merle Curti, The Growth of American Thought (2d ed., New York, 1951), 403–7, has a good discussion on this point.
Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed., Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, VI (New York, 1959), 98.
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (Mentor Books ed., New York, 1956), 26.
Quoted in D. A. Kinsley, Favor the Bold: Custer: The Indian Fighter (New York, 1968), 34.
CHAPTER 3
John Stands-in-Timber and Margot Liberty, Cheyenne Memories (New Haven, 1967), 27–41.
The date of Crazy Horse’s birth is disputed. Mari Sandoz puts it circa 1842–45; see her Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas (Lincoln, Neb., 1942), xiii. Chips, however, an Oglala who grew up with Crazy Horse, said in an interview in 1930 that Crazy Horse was born “in the year in which the band to which he belonged, the Oglalas, stole one hundred horses, and in the fall of the year”; see Chips interview, in the Eleanor Hinman interviews, Nebraska State Historical Society. A Sioux winter-count—a pictographic history—kept by Iron Shell puts 1841 as the year of the Big Horse Steal, when the Sioux captured many horses from the Shoshonis; see Royal B. Hassrick, The Sioux: Life and Customs of a Warrior Society (Norman, Okla., 1964), 348. This is not, of course, conclusive, for He Dog told Hinman that both he and Crazy Horse were born in 1838.
Hassrick, The Sioux, 310; Erik H. Erikson, “Observations on Sioux Education,” The Journal of Psychology, Vol. VII (1937), 134–36.
Hinman interview with He Dog; Ricker interview with Chips, in Ricker tablets, Nebraska State Historical Society.
Erikson, “Observations on Sioux Education,” 136–37; Hassrick, The Sioux, 313–14.
Erikson points out that under the Sioux system “the tension from the ambivalent fixations on the parents most probably cannot accumulate to the dangerous point which is often reached in our narcissistic use of the one-family system as a system of self-chosen prisons.” See Erikson, “Observations on Sioux Education,” 146.
“In their bewilderment,” Erikson writes, the Sioux “could only explain such behavior [the physical chastisement of white children] as part of an over-all missionary scheme—an explanation also supported by the white people’s method of letting their babies cry themselves blue in the face. It all must mean, so they thought, a well-calculated wish to impress white children with the idea that this world is not a good place to linger in and they had better look to the other world where perfect happiness is to be had as the price of having sacrificed this world.” Erik Erikson, Young Man Luther (New York, 1958), 69.
Ibid., 134. It is Erikson’s opinion that “the Sioux system of child training tended toward that pole of education where the child in most respects … is allowed to be an individualist while quite young …”
Hassrick, The Sioux, 317–19; Luther Standing Bear, My People the Sioux (Boston and New York, 1911), 28–48; Mails, The Mystic Warriors of the Plains, 516; Robert H. Lowie, Indians of the Plains (Garden City, N.Y, 1954), 131–36.
Mails, The Mystic Warriors, 519, 544; Hassrick, The Sioux, 319.
There is a good discussion of Sioux myths in Stephen Return Riggs, Dakota Grammar, Texts, and Ethnography (Washington, D.C., 1893), Vol. IX of Contributions to North American Ethnology.
Sandoz, Crazy Horse, 19, makes Hump considerably older than Crazy Horse, but both He Dog and Red Feather told Hinman that these intimate friends were close in age; see Hinman interviews, Nebraska State Historical Society.
Mails, The Mystic Warriors, 531; Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (Chicago, 1966), 37.
Erikson, “Observations on Sioux Education,’’ 150–51; Hassrick, The Sioux, 134; Sandoz, Crazy Horse, 16–17.
Robert H. Lowie, The Origin of the State (New York, 1927), 76–107.
There is a vast literature on Plains Indians’ government; incredibly small details are known, recorded, analyzed. I have not gone into the subject in any depth because, first, the experts disagree with each other over the names of offices, functions, authority, and everything else. Second, I am in full agreement with Lowie, who takes a common-sense view: “So far as essentials go, it is therefore of no significance whether there was one chief, or a pair of chiefs, or, as among the Cheyenne, a council of forty-four in a population of about 4,000, nor whether a man by virtue of his lineage could or could not ever qualify for the title of chief”; Lowie, Indians of the Plains, 125. The standard authority on Sioux government is Clark Wissler, “Societies and Ceremonial Associations in the Oglala Division of the Teton-Dakota,” American Museum of Natural History Anthropological Papers, XI (1912). See also James O. Dorsey, “The Social Organization of the Siouan Tribes,” Journal of American Folk-Lore, IV (1891); Hassrick, The Sioux, Chap. 1; and the various works by George Hyde. Central to study of Plains Indians’ government is the classic work by K. N. Llewellyn and E. Adamson Hoebel, The Cheyenne Way: Conflict and Case Law in Primitive Jurisprudence (Norman, Okla., 1941); the title is formidable, but the text is absolutely fascinating and, as a bonus, beautifully written.
This sketch of Crazy Horse’s character is based on Eleanor Hinman’s interviews with his contemporaries, now in the Nebraska State Historical Society, especially the ones with He Dog, Short Bull, Red Feather, and Little Killer. All these men lived with Crazy Horse and two were closely related. All agree that he was unusually reserved, quiet, not boastful—in short, not a hail-fellow-well-met back-slapping type—and that he was that way as a youth. And, obviously, my view of Crazy Horse is much influenced by Mari Sandoz’ great work.
Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, 54–55; see also James C. Olson, Red Cloud and the Sioux Problem (Lincoln, Neb., 1965), 20–21.
Robinson, A History of the Dakota, 221. Sandoz, Crazy Horse, Chap. 1, emphasized the extreme hunger the Indians underwent before the wagons arrived with the goods; so does Hyde, Spotted Tail’s Folk, 44–45. But De Smet was there, and he wrote: “Not withstanding the scarcity of provisions felt in the camp before the wagons came, the feasts were numerous and well attended.”
Hinman interview with Short Bull, Nebraska State Historical Society.
Chips interview, Ricker tablets, Nebraska State Historical Society.
CHAPTER 4
Precisely what happened with the Mormon and his cow (or ox in some accounts) is impossible to state accurately. I base this account on an interview with Frank Salaway (Ricker tablets, Nebraska State Historical Society), because Salaway was there. For the different versions, see Sandoz, Crazy Horse, 3–12; Hyde, Spotted Tail’s Folk, 47–54; Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, 72–79; and Olson, Red Cloud, 8.
Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, 75–77; Sandoz, Crazy Horse, 30–39; Salaway interview, Ricker tablets.
The dreams “represent the culture’s demand that the individual shall conform to its ways along certain limited lines which it lays down by its specific tradition defined in its myths”; Jackson S. Lincoln, The Dream in Primitive Cultures (New York and London, 1970), 193. See also Hassrick, The Sioux, 266–95.
The following account of Curly’s dream is taken from a Ricker interview with William Garnett, a fur trader who often translated for the Army. Garnett heard it from Crazy Horse (Curly) in 1868 when he was visiting Crazy Horse’s village. John Stands-in-Timber, a Cheyenne, saw and was told about the sand rock drawing; see his Cheyenne Memories, 105.
Aside from the Garnett interview, see also Sandoz, Crazy Horse, 104–5. Sandoz knew many of Crazy Horse’s contemporaries and heard the dream second-hand from them.
Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, 77; Robinson, A History of the Dakota, 223–24.
He Dog interview with Hinman, Nebraska State Historical Society; see also Sandoz, Crazy Horse, 69–70, and Hyde, Spotted Tail’s Folk, 56–57.
Robinson, A History of the Dakota, 224; Hyde, Spotted Tail’s Folk, 60–61.
Hyde, Spotted Tail’s Folk, 62–63; Robinson, A History of the Dakoto, 225–26.
It took great courage for Spotted Tail and the others to give themselves up; they expected to be killed. The prisoners spent the next year at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, where Spotted Tail learned many of the white man’s ways and became deeply impressed with the power of the United States—from that time on he was an advocate of peace.
Robinson, A History of the Dakota, 225–26; Hyde, Spotted Tail’s Folk, 63–65.
George Bird Grinnell, The Fighting Cheyennes (Norman, Okla., 1955), 119–20.
Grinnell, The Fighting Cheyennes, 120; Sandoz, Crazy Horse, 95–98.
Ibid., 105. On the number of firearms held by the Sioux at this time, see Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, 132.
Robinson, A History of the Dakota, 227–30, reprints Warren’s report.
Details on Curly’s preparation for battle come from a Ricker interview with Chips, Ricker tablets.
Hinman interview with He Dog, Nebraska State Historical Society; Sandoz, Crazy Horse, 115–18.
CHAPTER 5
George A. Custer, My Life on the Plains, ed. by Milo Milton Quaife (Lincoln, Neb., 1952), x–xiii.
Jay Monaghan, Custer: The Life of General George Armstrong Custer (Lincoln, Neb., 1959), 4–5.
Robert Sunley, “Early Nineteenth-Century American Literature on Child Rearing,” in Margaret Mead and Martha Wolfenstein (eds.), Childhood in Contemporary Cultures (Chicago, 1955), 152–57. “Since moral virtues were associated with cleanliness, order, and regularity of all habits,” Bernard Wishy writes, “it is not surprising that doctors … stressed the earliest possible rigorous toilet training; control by the age of one month was the goal! Even bladder and bowel control represented moral victories, and regular or controlled ‘habits’ as making life easier for mother and child were usually viewed as subsidiary ideals at best. What we call infantile masturbation was classified in a familiar way; it was the first sign of moral and physical degeneration”; Wishy, The Child and the Republic: The Dawn of Modern American Child Nurture (Philadelphia, 1968), 40. See also Ronald G. Walters, ed., Primer for Prudery: Sexual Advice to Victorian America (Baltimore, 1973).
Marguerite Merington, ed., The Custer Story: The Life and Intimate Letters of General George A. Custer and His Wife Elizabeth (New York, 1950), 6.
Erich Fromm, “Individual and Social Origins of Neurosis,” in Clyde Kluckhohn and Henry A. Murray (eds.), Personality in Nature, Society, and Culture (New York, 1949), 409, as cited in David M. Potter, People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and the American Character (Chicago, 1954), 11.
Merle Curti, The Social Ideas of American Educators (Paterson, N.J., 1959), 60.
Ibid., 63. After an intensive study of nineteenth-century American educators, Curti concluded that “on the whole there prevailed an attitude of reverence and respect for what had been achieved …” See also Wishy, The Child and the Republic, 75.
Merington, The Custer Story, 5–6; Kinsley, Favor the Bold, 3; Monaghan, Custer, 8.
Merington, The Custer Story, 25; Talcott E. Wing (ed.), History of Monroe County, Michigan (New York, 1890).
Memo at Custer Battlefield National Monument, cited in Monaghan, Custer, 9.
Monaghan, Custer, 11–13; Kinsley, Favor the Bold, 5–7. Custer’s correspondence with Bingham is in the Elizabeth Custer Collection, Custer Battlefield National Monument, Crow Agency, Montana; this source is hereinafter cited as Custer Mss.
Merington, The Custer Story, 6. Wishy, in The Child and the Republic, 78, has a good description of the pre-Civil War American males: “Their characters were like rocks. They had the ability to resist temptation, the easy way, the lures of the world. They did not go ’round about but straight through. Pre-eminently, they were people with at least a genuine aspiration to principle. Many had moral dignity and some were even capable of tragedy. But inseparable from these qualities that may now seem, nostalgically, so admirable, there was, we must not forget, a persistent moral fanaticism, a crippling hunger for absolutism, for the hundred per cent return on a hundred per cent investment in life.”
CHAPTER 6
George A. Custer, “War Memoirs,” reprinted in Frederick Whittaker (ed.), A Complete Life of General George A. Custer (New York, 1876), 42; hereinafter cited as Custer, “War Memoirs.” Whittaker was a close friend of Custer’s and worked with Elizabeth Custer on the preparation of his book. Custer’s “War Memoirs” was also printed in Galaxy, XXII, September 1876. The original is in the Elizabeth Custer Collection.
Frederic F. Van de Water, Glory-Hunter: A Life of General Custer (Indianapolis, 1934), Chap. 2.
See the Quaife introduction to Custer, My Life on the Plains, xvii.
Stephen E. Ambrose, Duty, Honor, Country: A History of West Point (Baltimore, 1966), 148.
Cadet James W. Schureman to sister, October 14, 1840, James Wall Schureman Papers, Library of Congress, and Cadet Cullen Bryant to father, June 17, 1860, Bryant Family Papers, New York Public Library; both quoted in Ambrose, Duty, Honor, Country, 148–49.
Cadet Thomas Hartz to sister, December 11, 1852, Hartz Papers, Library of Congress, quoted in Ambrose, Duty, Honor, Country, 151.
Morris Schaff, The Spirit of Old West Point (Boston, 1907), 194.
K. Bruce Galloway and Robert B. Johnson, Jr., West Point (New York, 1973), 64.
Cadet Henry A. Du Pont to mother, October 16, 1856, Du Pont Papers, Wilmington, Delaware, quoted in Ambrose, Duty, Honor, Country, 149.
Cadet George W. Cushing to father, November 28, 1854, George W. Cushing Papers, USMA Library, quoted in Ambrose, Duty, Honor, Country, 133.
Cadet Thomas Hartz to sister, July 30, 1852, Hartz Papers, Library of Congress, quoted in Ambrose, Duty, Honor, Country, 131.
Lynwood M. Holland, Pierce M. B. Young (Athens, Ga., 1964), 43.
Schaff, Old West Point, 175; Custer, “War Memoirs”; Ambrose, Duty, Honor, Country, 169–70; Monaghan, Custer, 37.
Kinsley, Favor the Bold, 13; Monaghan, Custer, 39; Custer Mss.
Kinsley, Favor the Bold, 13; Merington, The Custer Story, 10; Custer Mss.
Custer, “War Memoirs”; Monaghan, Custer, 43; Kinsley, Favor the Bold, 15–16.
Schaff, Old West Point, 260; Kinsley, Favor the Bold, 17–18; Monaghan, Custer, 43.
CHAPTER 8
For general accounts of the Oglalas during this period, see Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, 101–87; Sandoz, Crazy Horse, 121–52; and Olson, Red Cloud, 27–214. On Crazy Horse, see Sandoz’ biography; and the Hinman interviews and Ricker tablets, Nebraska State Historical Society. Helen H. Blish, A Pictographic History of the Oglala Sioux, with drawings by Amos Bad Heart Bull (Lincoln, Neb., 1967), contains the Sioux “history” of the period. Bad Heart Bull, who was much younger than the participants in these events, drew or sketched scenes from various battles on the basis of information given him by the older men. Delightfully precise in detail, they are frustratingly vague about what happened when. On Plains Indian warfare, consult W. W. Newcomb, “A Re-examination of the Causes of Plains Warfare,” American Anthropologist, 1950, 317–29, and Peter Farb, Man’s Rise to Civilization as Shown by the Indians of North America from Primeval Times to the Coming of the Industrial State (New York, 1968), 112–32.
Hinman interview with Short Bull, Nebraska State Historical Society.
Hinman interview with Red Feather, Nebraska State Historical Society.
Hinman interview with He Dog, Nebraska State Historical Society.
Hinman interviews, Nebraska State Historical Society; see also Blish, A Pictographic History, 389.
Ricker tablets, Nebraska State Historical Society. This information comes from Ricker’s own work on Crazy Horse, prepared from various Indian and trader sources.
Hinman interview with Red Feather, Nebraska State Historical Society.
Billy Garnett interview, Ricker tablets, and Hinman interview with He Dog, Nebraska State Historical Society; see also Sandoz, Crazy Horse, 174–78.
Hinman interview with He Dog, Nebraska State Historical Society. On the Crow Owners Society, see Wissler, “Societies and Ceremonial Associations of the Teton-Dakota,” 23–25.
Hassrick, The Sioux, 121–24; Llewellyn and Hoebel, The Cheyenne Way, 169–71.
Llewellyn and Hoebel, The Cheyenne Way, 172–74; Hassrick, The Sioux, 129–34.
Llewellyn and Hoebel, The Cheyenne Way, 187; Hassrick, The Sioux, 136.
Ibid., 133–35; Hinman interviews with He Dog and Short Bull, Nebraska State Historical Society.
Hinman interviews with He Dog and Little Shield, Nebraska State Historical Society.
CHAPTER 9
On Lieutenant Collins, see Agnes Wright Spring, Caspar Collins: The Life and Exploits of an Indian Fighter of the Sixties (New York, 1927), and Sandoz, Crazy Horse, 136–37.
Garnett interview, Ricker tablets, Nebraska State Historical Society.
The best account of the Sand Creek massacre is Grinnell, The Fighting Cheyennes, 149–80; see also Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, 108–11.
Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, 110; Grinnell, The Fighting Cheyennes, 181–203.
Grinnell, The Fighting Cheyennes, 191; Hyde, Spotted Tail’s Folk, 96.
Eugene F. Ware, The Indian War of 1864 (Lincoln, Neb., 1960, reprint), 372.
Grinnell, The Fighting Cheyennes, 193; Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, 111.
Interview with Frank Salaway, Ricker tablets, Nebraska State Historical Society; Sandoz, Crazy Horse, 158–59.
Sandoz, Crazy Horse, 161; Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, 121; Hyde, Spotted Tail’s Folk, 103.
Ricker tablets, Nebraska State Historical Society; this information comes from Ricker’s own short biography of Crazy Horse, prepared from various Indian and white sources.
Sandoz, Crazy Horse, 164–65; Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, 124–25.
Most of these details come from Grinnell, The Fighting Cheyennes, 221–23; Grinnell got most of his information directly from the Cheyennes, shortly after the turn of the century. See also Sandoz, Crazy Horse, 164–65.
Sandoz, Crazy Horse, 166–67; Hyde, Spotted Tail’s Folk, 125.
CHAPTER 10
Custer to parents, March 17, 1862, Custer Mss.; Merington, The Custer Story, 27–28.
Bruce Catton, Mr. Lincoln’s Army (Garden City, N.Y., 1955), 155–59, is the best discussion.
James Harrison Wilson, Under the Old Flag (New York, 1912), I, 126; Whittaker, Custer, 133; Catton, Mr. Lincoln’s Army, 336–37.
George B. McClellan, Report on the Organization and Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac … (New York, 1864), 238–39; for a good discussion, see Warren W. Hassler, Jr., General George B. McClellan (Baton Rouge, 1957), 320–25.
Custer to Lydia Reed, May 5, 1862, Custer Mss.; Merington, The Custer Story, 29–30.
Custer to Lydia Reed, September 21, 1862, Custer Mss.; Whittaker, Custer, 125–29; Monaghan, Custer, 90–92.
Whittaker, Custer, 51–52; Custer, “War Memoirs”; Monaghan, Custer, 45–46.
Wilson, Under the Old Flag, I, 101–2; see also Monaghan, Custer, 77–80, for two somewhat different versions of the incident.
Monaghan, Custer, 81–83; George B. McClellan, McClellan’s Own Story (New York, 1887), 364–65.
Bell I. Wiley, The Life of Billy Yank (New York, 1951), 124.
Custer to Lydia Reed, August 8, 1862, Custer Mss.; Whittaker, Custer, 122–24.
Custer to Lydia Reed, April 20, 1862, Custer Mss.; Merington, The Custer Story, 29.
Custer to Lydia Reed, May 2, 1863, Custer Mss.; Merington, The Custer Story, 53; Monaghan, Custer, 116.
Custer to Isaac Christiancy, May 31, 1863, and to Lydia Reed, same date, both in Custer Mss.; see also Monaghan, Custer, 123.
Even when she was sixty years old, Libbie’s eyes belied the sweet gentle lady she always tried to be. In a photograph taken about 1900, when she had put on some weight, was dressed in black, and wore one of those horrendous turn-of-the-century hats, her eyes still sparkle, still tell the observer that here is an extraordinary woman. As indeed she was. The best series of Libbie Bacon photographs is in Lawrence A. Frost, The Custer Album (Seattle, 1964).
Custer to Lydia Reed, June 8, 1863, Custer Mss.; Monaghan, Custer, 124–25.
Custer to Lydia Reed, June 19, 1863, Custer Mss.; Whittaker, Custer, 159.
Merington, The Custer Story, 67; the originals of all these letters are in the Custer Mss.
CHAPTER 11
War of the Rebellion, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, D.C., 1880–1901), XXVII, Pt. 1, 991– 98, 919. Hereinafter cited as O.R.
For an excellent discussion, see Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy (New York, 1973), especially Chap. 7, “A Strategy of Annihilation: U. S. Grant and the Union.”
O.R., XLVI, Pt. 1, 475, 1111. The details of Custer’s campaigns are admirably recounted in Monaghan’s Custer.
Custer to Libbie, June 21, 1864, Custer Mss.; Merington, The Custer Story, 104.
Custer to Nettie Humphrey, October 12, 1863, Custer Mss.; Merington, The Custer Story, 65–66.
Custer to Nettie Humphrey, October 9, 1863, Custer Mss.; Merington, The Custer Story, 65.
See Custer to Daniel Bacon, November 12, 1864, Custer Mss., for a full description of his staff; see also Merington, The Custer Story, 133, and Monaghan, Custer, 159.
Libbie Custer to Richmond, November 15, 1864, Custer Mss.; Merington, The Custer Story, 133.
Elizabeth Custer, “Boots and Saddles”: or, Life in Dakota with General Custer (New York, 1904), 223.
Custer to Libbie, March 30, 1865, Custer Mss.; Merington, The Custer Story, 146.
Monaghan, Custer, 211–12; Custer to Libbie, October 10,1864, Custer Mss.
Merington, The Custer Story, 125, 137; Monaghan, Custer, 217.
Libbie Custer to parents, October 25, 1864, Custer Mss.; Merington, The Custer Story, 125–26.
Custer to Libbie, October 5, 1864, Custer Mss.; Merington, The Custer Story, 119.
Custer to Libbie, August 21, 1864, Custer Mss.; Merington, The Custer Story, 115.
S. L. A. Marshall, Men Against Fire (New York, 1947), 57, and Chap. 5 generally.
Libbie Custer to parents, December 4, 1864, Custer Mss.; Merington, The Custer Story, 134.
Libbie Custer to parents, March 28, 1864, Custer Mss.; Merington, The Custer Story, 87.
Custer to Nettie Humphrey, November 1, 1863, Custer Mss.; Merington, The Custer Story, 71.
Custer to Libbie, May 16, 1864, Custer Mss.; Merington, The Custer Story, 97.
Custer to Libbie, July 1, 1864, Custer Mss.; Merington, The Custer Story, 110–11.
Libbie Custer to parents, March 28, 1864, Custer Mss.; Merington, The Custer Story, 87.
Libbie Custer to Noble, August 18, 1864, Custer Mss.; Merington, The Custer Story, 113–14.
Libbie Custer to Custer, March 8, 1865, Custer Mss.; Merington, The Custer Story, 136.
CHAPTER 13
Robert M. Utley, Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian (New York, 1973), 2–3. This outstanding work became the standard source on the frontier Army immediately upon its publication.
Frances C. Carrington, Army Life on the Plains (Philadelphia, 1910), 46–47; Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, 138–39.
James D. Richardson, comp., Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789–1897 (Washington, D.C., 1897), VI, 454.
Cyrus T. Brady, Indian Fights and Fighters (Lincoln, Neb., 1971), 10.
Olson, Red Cloud, 43; Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, 145; Grinnell, The Fighting Cheyennes, 236; Dee Brown, Fort Phil Kearny: An American Saga (New York, 1962), 149.
Brady, Indian Fights, 19; Robinson, A History of the Dakota, 355.
Robinson, A History of the Dakota, 358–59. The information on Crazy Horse’s role at the siege of Fort Phil Kearny is based on the statements of White Bear, an associate of Red Cloud, to Doane Robinson, secretary of the South Dakota Department of History, in 1904. See Robinson, A History of the Dakota, 361.
Brady, Indian Fights, 19–23; Brown, Fort Phil Kearny, 162–67; Sandoz, Crazy Horse, 195–96.
Ibid., 159–203, is the most complete account from the white man’s point of view, while Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, 146–49, Sandoz, Crazy Horse, 198–203, Grinnell, The Fighting Cheyennes, 238–43, give the Indian side. See also Brady, Indian Fights, 24–32, and J. Cecil Alter, James Bridger (Columbus, Ohio, 1951), 458–59.
Grinnell, The Fighting Cheyennes, 233–34, and Sandoz, Crazy Horse, 202–3.
Frank Grouard, “An Indian Scout’s Recollections of Crazy Horse,” Nebraska History Magazine, XII (January-March, 1929), 72.
CHAPTER 14
See Elizabeth Custer, Tenting on the Plains (Norman, Okla., 1971), 27–92.
Libbie Custer to parents, July 20, 1865, Custer Mss.; Merington, The Custer Story, 169.
Custer to Bacons, October 5, 1865, Custer Mss.; Merington, The Custer Story, 174–75.
Custer, Tenting on the Plains, 110; Monaghan, Custer, 257–59.
Custer to Bacons, October 5, 1865, Custer Mss.; Merington, The Custer Story, 174–75.
Custer to Libbie, March 12, 1866, Custer Mss.; Merington, The Custer Story, 177–78.
Custer to Libbie, March 16, 1866, Custer Mss.; Merington, The Custer Story, 179.
Custer to Libbie, March 18, 1866, Custer Mss.; Merington, The Custer Story, 179.
Custer to Libbie, April 1, 1866, Custer Mss.; Merington, The Custer Story, 180.
Custer to President Andrew Johnson, August 13, 1866, Custer Mss.
See Howard K. Beale, The Critical Year: A Study of Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (New York, 1930), 299. Beale felt that Johnson’s failure to make economics, instead of race and the status of former Confederates, the issue of the campaign was “a fatal error in political judgment.”
For an excellent discussion, see LaWanda Cox and John Cox, Politics, Principle, and Prejudice, 1865–66 (New York, 1963), preface.
Quoted, ibid., 195–96; see also Eric L. McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (Chicago, 1960), Chap. 10.
Whittaker, Complete Life of Custer, 631–33; Monaghan, Custer, 279–80.
Charles Godfrey Leland, Memoirs (New York, 1893), 333; quoted in Monaghan, Custer, 283.
Rachel Sherman Thorndike, ed., The Sherman Letters (New York, 1894), 287.
Quoted in Lawrence A. Frost, The Court-Martid of General George A. Custer (Norman, Okla., 1968), 8. This work is much the best source on Custer’s campaign in Kansas.
Henry M. Stanley, My Early Travels and Adventures (London, 1895), I, 46.
Theodore Davis, “A Summer on the Plains,” Harper’s Weekly, XXXVI, February 1868, 298.
Jack D. Foner, The United States Soldier Between Two Wars: Army Life and Reforms, 1865–1898 (New York, 1970), 18–20.
CHAPTER 15
Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, 151–54; Robinson, A History of the Dakota, 371–73.
Frost, Court-Martial, 41; Custer, My Life on the Plains, 121.
Frost, Court-Martial, 45–46; Custer, My Life on the Plains, 124–25.
Frost, Court-Martial, 49–51; Custer, My Life on the Plains, 133–34; Monaghan, Custer, 293–94.
Frost, Court-Martial, 53–56; Custer, My Life on the Plains, 135–44.
Custer, My Life on the Plains, 156; Frost, Court-Martial, 60.
Frost, Court-Martial, 61–64; Custer, My Life on the Plains, 160–65.
Custer, My Life on the Plains, 172–77; Frost, Court-Martial, 66–67.
Gard, The Great Buffalo Hunt, is an excellent account of the slaughter of the buffalo.
Sandoz, Crazy Horse, 212–13; Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, 159; Brown, Fort Phil Kearny, 223.
Olson, Red Cloud, 67–69; Sandoz, Crazy Horse, 224; Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, 161.
From an interview with Sitting Bull, New York Herald, November 16, 1877.
CHAPTER 16
Ibid., 382–87, for a full account of the treaty; see also Olson, Red Cloud, 72–76, Utley, Frontier Regulars, 134–35, and Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, 162–65.
Monaghan, Custer, 304; Robert G. Athearn, William T. Sherman and the Settlement of the West (Norman, Okla., 1956), 213–23.
For an excellent discussion of the origins and causes of this war, see Utley, Frontier Regulars, 138–43.
Custer, My Life on the Plains, 218–60; Monaghan, Custer, 308–9.
Utley, Frontier Regulars, 149; see also General W. B. Hazen, “Some Corrections of ‘Life on the Plains,’” Chronicles of Oklahoma, III (1925), 295–318.
Custer, My Life on the Plains, 281–84; Monaghan, Custer, 310.
Custer, My Life on the Plains, 334–45; Utley, Frontier Regulars, 150–51; Monaghan, Custer, 316–18; Merington, The Custer Story, 222–23.
As George Grinnell writes, “Black Kettle was a striking example of a consistently friendly Indian, who, because he was friendly and so because his whereabouts was usually known, was punished for the acts of people whom it was supposed he could control” (The Fighting Cheyennes, 309).
Ibid., 304–5; Monaghan, Custer, 319; Custer, My Life on the Plains, 347.
Ibid., 347; Quaife’s long note on the subject is on pp. 353–55.
Custer reprinted the order in My Life on the Plains, 388–89.
See Monaghan, Custer, 327–28, for a full discussion of the myth.
Elizabeth Custer, Following the Guidon (Norman, Okla., 1967), 263–64.
CHAPTER 17
Olson, Red Cloud, 96, 112; Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, 176–78; Robinson, A History of the Dakota, 396–99.
Hinman interview with He Dog, Nebraska State Historical Society.
Hinman interview with Red Feather, Nebraska State Historical Society.
Hinman interview with He Dog, Nebraska State Historical Society; Sandoz, Crazy Horse, 237–38.
Hinman interview with He Dog, Nebraska State Historical Society.
It must be added, however, that Crazy Horse was hardly the only one responsible for the dividing of the Oglalas. That division had been building for a long time, essentially from the beginnings of the Holy Road, and its basic cause was less internal than external. The whites tempted the Oglalas to come down to the reservation or drove them there; when Red Cloud moved to his Nebraska agency he helped complete the split.
Hinman interview with He Dog, Nebraska State Historical Society. He Dog said that “many people believe this child was Crazy Horse’s daughter, but it was never known for certain.”
Monaghan, Custer, 336; Merington, The Custer Story, 246; William Tucker and Jeff C. Dykes, The Grand Duke Alexis in the United States of America During the Winter of 1871–1872 (New York, 1973). This rare book was originally published in 1872; it is a compilation of newspaper accounts of the grand duke’s tour.
Merington, The Custer Story, 246; Tucker and Dykes, The Grand Duke, 162.
CHAPTER 18
Stanley Vestal, Sitting Bull: Champion of the Sioux (Norman, Okla., 1957), 250–51, a fine biography.
Vestal, Sitting Bull, 125–30; Sandoz, Crazy Horse, 273–74; Utley, Frontier Regulars, 236, 242; Robinson, A History of the Dakota, 401.
Hinman interview with Red Feather, Nebraska State Historical Society.
Ibid.; Hinman interview with He Dog, Nebraska State Historical Society; Sandoz, Crazy Horse, 253–55.
Lloyd Lewis, Sherman, Fighting Prophet (New York, 1932), 407.
Stanley’s letters are in Stanley, Personal Memoirs, 238–39; Custer’s are in Custer Mss., Custer Battlefield National Monument, Crow Agency, Montana, and are reprinted in Merington, The Custer Story, 248–50, and Elizabeth Custer, “Boots and Saddles,” 225–30.
Elizabeth Custer, “Boots and Saddles,” 230; Monaghan, Custer, 343.
Ibid., 345–46; Custer’s battle report, reprinted in Elizabeth Custer, “Boots and Saddles,” 237; Sandoz, Crazy Horse, 275.
Custer’s battle report, in Elizabeth Custer, “Boots and Saddles,” 237–38.
Ibid., 239–40; Monaghan, Custer, 347; Utley, Frontier Regulars, 242–43.
Custer’s battle report, in Elizabeth Custer, “Boots and Saddles,” 241–47.
Custer’s battle report, in Elizabeth Custer, “Boots and Saddles,” 247–48.
CHAPTER 19
John F. Reiger, ed., The Passing of the Great West: Selected Papers of George Bird Grinnell (New York, 1972), 79.
Robert V. Bruce, 1877: Year of Violence (Indianapolis, 1959), Chap. 1.
Edgar I. Stewart, Custer’s Luck (Norman, Okla., 1955), 61; Sandoz, Crazy Horse, 287.
Max E. Gerber, “The Black Hills Expedition of 1874: A New Look,” South Dakota History, June–July, 1970, 8.
Gerber, “The Black Hills Expedition,” 10; Monaghan, Custer, 353; Reiger, ed., The Passing of the Great West, 81; Stewart, Custer’s Luck, 62–63.
Merington, The Custer Story, 272–73; Monaghan, Custer, 354–55; Gerber, “The Black Hills Expedition,” 11; Elizabeth Custer, “Boots and Saddles,” 261.
Merington, The Custer Story, 273; Gerber, “The Black Hills Expedition,” 10.
Monaghan, Custer, 355; Gerber, “The Black Hills Expedition,” 12.
New York Tribune, August 28, 1874; Gerber, “The Black Hills Expedition,” 14; Monaghan, Custer, 355.
Custer’s report was printed as Executive Document No. 32, 43d Congress, Second Session, Washington, D.C., 1874. Reprinted in Robinson, A History of the Dakota, 289.
Grouard, “An Indian Scout’s Recollections,” 70–72; Sandoz, Crazy Horse, 284–86. All sources agree that Crazy Horse mourned his daughter deeply, but Grouard is the sole source for the claim that he went with Crazy Horse, and Grouard is not the most reliable witness.
Hinman interviews with He Dog, Red Feather, and others, Nebraska State Historical Society; Sandoz, Crazy Horse, 290.
Whittaker, Custer, 636; Monaghan, Custer, 358–59; Frost, Custer Album, 135–47, has some striking photographs taken that winter.
CHAPTER 20
Hinman interview with He Dog, Nebraska State Historical Society; Sandoz, Crazy Horse, 222.
Olson, Red Cloud, 177; Robinson, A History of the Dakota, 414–15; Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, 230–31.
Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, 243–44; Hyde, Spotted Tail’s Folk, 213–14; Olson, Red Cloud, 204–5.
Robinson, A History of the Dakota, 418; Hyde, Spotted Tail’s Folk, 214.
The fullest account is Robinson, A History of the Dakota, 418–20; see also Hyde’s books and Olson, Red Cloud, 204–12, which is the best analysis of the council.
Garnett interview, Ricker tablets, Nebraska State Historical Society.
Ibid., 421; Utley, Frontier Regulars, 246; Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, 250.
Robinson, A History of the Dakota, 422–23; Utley, Frontier Regulars, 246–47; Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, 250.
Ibid., 221; Utley, Frontier Regulars, 248; Sandoz, Crazy Horse, 300–1.
Elizabeth Custer, “Boots and Saddles,” 207–9; Merington, The Custer Story, 277.
Stewart, Custer’s Luck, 121; Merington, The Custer Story, 289.
William B. Hesseltine, Ulysses S. Grant: Politician (New York, 1936), 395–96.
Merington, The Custer Story, 293; for Custer’s testimony, see Stewart, Custer’s Luck, 124–31.
New York Herald, May 6, 1876, quoted in Stewart, Custer’s Luck, 134.
St. Paul Pioneer-Press, May 11, 1876, quoted in Stewart, Custer’s Luck, 135.
This story appears in Orin G. Libby, ed., The Arikara Narrative of the Campaign Against the Hostile Dakotas, June, 1876 (North Dakota Historical Collections, VI, Bismarck, 1920), 58–63, and is based on Arikara sources. It is summarized in Stewart, Custer’s Luck, 181.
CHAPTER 21
Stewart, Custer’s Luck, 188; Olson, Red Cloud, 219–22; Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, 258–61.
Hinman interview with Short Buffalo, Nebraska State Historical Society; Sandoz, Crazy Horse, 303–4; Stewart, Custer’s Luck, 90.
Telegram, Lieutenant Ruhlen to Adjutant General, April 19, 1876, War Department Records, AGO, Division of the Missouri; Stewart, Custer’s Luck, 90–91, 309; Olson, Red Cloud, 217; Robinson, A History of the Dakota, 423–24.
The best discussion is Stewart, Custer’s Luck, 309–12; see also Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, 261, and Utley, Frontier Regulars, 255.
Sandoz, Crazy Horse, 314–15; Vestal, Sitting Bull, 152–53; Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, 263.
Ibid., 201–2; Utley, Frontier Regulars, 255; for an eyewitness account by a newspaperman of the ensuing battle, see John F. Finerty, War-Path and Bivouac: The Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition, ed. by Milo M. Quaife (Chicago, 1955), 124–52.
David Mears, “Campaigning Against Crazy Horse,” Nebraska State Historical Society Publications, XV (1907), 68–77.
Hinman interview with Short Buffalo, Nebraska State Historical Society.
See Stewart, Custer’s Luck, 204–6; Stands-in-Timber, Cheyenne Memories, 186–87; Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, 264; Sandoz, Crazy Horse, 318–21; various Hinman interviews, Nebraska State Historical Society; Grinnell, The Fighting Cheyennes, 334–45.
Elizabeth Custer, “Boots and Saddles,” 275–76; Monaghan, Custer, 376.
W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth: A Source Book of Custeriana (Harrisburg, Pa., 1953), 135.
The following account of Custer’s march to the Little Bighorn is based on many sources, but primarily Stewart’s careful and exciting account in Custer’s Luck, 263–82; see also Utley, Frontier Regulars, 258–59; Monaghan, Custer, 382–84; and especially Graham, The Custer Myth, 135–38, which reprints Godfrey’s narrative.
CHAPTER 22
Quoted from Lieutenant E. S. Godfrey’s account, ibid., 138–39.
Garnett interview, Ricker tablets, Nebraska State Historical Society.
Hinman interview with Short Bull, Nebraska State Historical Society.
Clark to the Assistant Adjutant General, September 14, 1877, War Department Records, AGO, Division of the Missouri.
Monaghan, Custer, 384–86; Graham, The Custer Myth, 287–95; Stewart, Custer’s Luck, 341.
Yellow Horse interview, Ricker tablets, Nebraska State Historical Society.