The Real Custer (71 page)

28
.
    
Keim's account of the events, based on his newspaper dispatches and follow-up research, was first published in 1870. DeBenneville Randolph Keim,
Sheridan's Troopers on the Borders: A Winter Campaign on the Plains
(Philadelphia: David McKay, 1885).

29
.
    
Ibid., 103.

30
.
    
Anglo-American Times
, December 5, 1868, 78.

31
.
    
Albert and Jennie Barnitz,
Life in Custer's Cavalry: Diaries and Letters of Albert and Jennie Barnitz, 1867–1868
, Robert M. Utley, ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 215–16.

32
.
    
Keim,
Sheridan's Troopers on the Borders
, 113

33
.
    
Meder to Godfrey, November 27, 1927, Godfrey Papers, USMA Special Collections.

34
.
    
Custer AAR to Sheridan, November 28, 1868.

35
.
    
Sheridan,
Personal Memoirs of P. H. Sheridan
, vol. 2, 315.

36
.
    
See Vincent Colyer, “Shall the Red-Men be Exterminated?”
Putnam's Magazine
, September 1869, 372.

37
.
    
Frank W. Blackmar. ed.,
Kansas: A Cyclopedia of State History, Embracing Events, Institutions, Industries, Counties, Cities, Towns, Prominent Persons, etc
., vol. 2 (Chicago: Standard Pub., 1912), 177.

38
.
    
Elliott in Evan S. Connell,
Son of a Morning Star: Custer and Little Bighorn
(New York: North Point Press, 1984), 195.

39
.
    
Letter by Frederick Benteen to William J. De Gresse, December 22, 1868, reprinted in the
New York Times
, February 14, 1869, originally appearing (unsigned) in the
St. Louis Democrat
.

40
.
    
“Indian Relics,”
New York Times,
June 13, 1869.

41
.
    
Letter by Frederick Benteen to William J. De Gresse, December 22, 1868, reprinted in the
New York Times
February 14, 1869, originally appearing (unsigned) in the
St. Louis Democrat
.

42
.
    
Meder to Godfrey, November 27, 1927, Godfrey Papers, USMA Special Collections.

43
.
    
Letter by Frederick Benteen to William J. De Gresse, December 22, 1868, reprinted in the
New York Times
, February 14, 1869, originally appearing (unsigned) in the
St. Louis Democrat
.

44
.
    
“Indian Treatment of Whites,”
Vermont Daily Transcript,
January 9, 1869, 2.

45
.
    
Memphis Daily Appeal
, January 4, 1869, 1.

46
.
    
“The End of the Indian War and ‘Ring,'”
New York Times,
December 22, 1868, 6; and “Sheridan's Winter Campaign,”
New York Times,
December 4, 1868, 4.

47
.
    
Sheridan,
Personal Memoirs of P. H. Sheridan
, vol. 2, 318.

48
.
    
Anglo American Times
, February 13, 1869, 14.

49
.
    
“The Indians. Col. Wyncoop's Letter Resigning His Agency,”
New York Times
, December 19, 1868, 3. Note that Wynkoop believed that any excesses on the campaign would be committed by Indian scouts and militia units, not by U.S. Army troops.

50
.
    
Anglo American Times
, February 13, 1869, 14.

51
.
    
Nelson Appleton Miles,
Personal Recollections and Observations of General Nelson A. Miles
(Chicago: Werner, 1896), 150.

52
.
    
Quoted in the
Anglo American Times
, April 26, 1873, 10.

53
.
    
Sheridan denied saying this, though witnesses claim he did. But Sheridan did not originate the expression. In May 1868, on the floor of Congress, Montana delegate James M. Cavanaugh said, “I like an Indian better dead than living. I have never in my life seen a good Indian—and I have seen thousands—except when I have seen a dead Indian.”
The Congressional Globe: Containing the Debates and Proceedings of the Second Session, Fortieth Congress
(Washington: Office of the Congressional Globe, 1868), 2638. See also
Ohio Statesman
, June 4, 1868, 1.

54
.
    
GAC to EBC, January 1869, in Marguerite Merington, ed.,
The Custer Story: The Life and Intimate Letters of General George A. Custer and His Wife Elizabeth
(New York: Devin-Adair, 1950), 224.

55
.
    
Newport Daily News
, March 18, 1869.

56
.
    
New York Times
, March 21, 1869.

57
.
    
See March 21, 1869, dispatch in the
Grand Traverse Herald
, April 15, 1869.

58
.
    
Galveston Flakes Daily Bulletin
, April 8, 1869, 1.

59
.
    
My Life on the Plains
, 241.

60
.
    
Custer's report in the
Galveston Flakes Daily Bulletin
, April 8, 1869, 1.

61
.
    
See report in “Official Report of General Custer's Late Campaign—Rescue of the Two Female Captives,”
New York Herald
, April 3, 1869, 3. A detailed though dramatized account of these events is in Charles J. Brill,
Conquest of the Southern Plains
(Oklahoma City: Golden Saga Publishers, 1938), chapters 10 and 11.

CHAPTER 23

1
.
      
George Armstrong Custer,
My Life on the Plains. Or, Personal Experiences with Indians
(New York: Sheldon and Company, 1874), 20.

2
.
      
Anglo-American Times
, July 23, 1870, 11.

3
.
      
Custer,
My Life on the Plains
, 37–39.

4
.
      
Quoted in Shirley A. Leckie,
Elizabeth Bacon Custer and the Making of a Myth
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993), 122.

5
.
      
EBC to GAC, July 1873, in Marguerite Merington, ed.,
The Custer Story: The Life and Intimate Letters of General George A. Custer and His Wife Elizabeth
(New York: Devin-Adair, 1950), 250.

6
.
      
Godfrey to Roe, February 28, 1918, Godfrey papers, USMA Special Collections. Godfrey continued, “I feel indignant over such lies and I've got to explode a little to get it out of my system, and this time you are the goat!”

7
.
      
GAC to EBC, 1871, in Merington,
The Custer Story
, 235.

8
.
      
Toledo Commercial report reprinted as “How the Generals Kissed,”
Hagerstown (MD) Mail
, October 31, 1873, 1.

9
.
      
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper
37, no. 945 (November 8, 1873), 140.

10
.
    
Oral History Interview with Keith Wilson Jr., March 8, 1989, by Niel M. Johnson, Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri, 20–21.

11
.
    
Custer,
My Life on the Plains
, 191.

12
.
    
For details, see Richard G. Hardorff, ed.,
Washita Memories: Eyewitness Views of Custer's Attack on Black Kettle's Village
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006), 231–32.

13
.
    
See Jeffry D. Wert,
Custer
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), 33–35 and 287–88.

14
.
    
GAC to EBC, February 13, 1869, Gilder Lehrman Collection #GLC06179.

15
.
    
Robert Utley,
Cavalier in Buckskin: George Armstrong Custer and the Western Military Frontier
(Norman: University of Oklahma Press, 1991), 46.

16
.
    
Larned quoted in George Frederick Howe, “Expedition to the Yellowstone River in 1873: Letters of a Young Cavalry Officer,”
Mississippi Valley Historical Review
, December 1952, 523. Larned's description of Custer's orders is reminiscent of the reaction of officers and civilians at the Rumsfeld-era Pentagon to the ubiquitous directives known as “snowflakes.”

17
.
    
Ibid., 524.

18
.
    
Manuscript in Godfey Papers, USMA Special Collections.

19
.
    
Interview with Sturgis, originally printed in
the Chicago Tribune
, reprinted in the
Army and Navy Journal
, July 29, 1876.

20
.
    
Benteen's disappointed Confederate father said he wished his son would die with the war's first bullet, and that ideally it would be fired by a family member.

21
.
    
Benteen letter to Theodore W. Goldin.

22
.
    
Comment by Robert M. Utley in
Life in Custer's Cavalry
, Robert M. Utley, ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 251.

23
.
    
Custer,
My Life on the Plains
, 21.

24
.
    
Ibid., 17.

25
.
    
Ibid.

26
.
    
Custer,
My Life on the Plains. Or, Personal Experiences with Indians
, 12, 16.

27
.
    
Reprinted in “General Custer on the Sioux Indian Problem,”
Worthington (MN) Advance
, June 4, 1875, 1.

28
.
    
Custer,
My Life on the Plains
, 21.

29
.
    
Reprinted in “General Custer on the Sioux Indian Problem,” 1.

30
.
    
Ibid.

31
.
    
Custer,
My Life on the Plains
, 17.

32
.
    
Ibid., 18.

CHAPTER 24

1
.
      
Alexis de Tocqueville had prophesied forty years earlier that the United States and Russia seemed “called by some secret desire of Providence one day to hold in its hands the destinies of half the world.” Alexis de Tocqueville,
Democracy in America
, J. P. Mayer, ed., vol. 1, 413.

2
.
      
His Imperial Highness the Grand Duke Alexis in the United States of America during the Winter of 1871–72
(Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1872), 47. Reports such as this led to rumors in Moscow that the Grand Duke had married a Russian woman in America against the tsar's wishes.

3
.
      
For Custer's time in Kentucky, see Theodore J. Crackle, “Custer's Kentucky: General George Armstrong Custer and Elizabethtown, Kentucky, 1871–1873,”
Filson Club History Quarterly
49 (April 1974): 144–55.

4
.
      
Wichita Eagle
, April 6, 1876.

5
.
      
“On Receiving an Eagle's Quill from Lake Superior,”
Poems of John Greenleaf Whittier
(Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1878), 141.

6
.
      
Randolph B. Marcy,
The Prairie Traveler: A Handbook for Overland Expeditions
(New York: Harper and Brothers, 1859), 234.

7
.
      
Letter of June 28, 1973, in David S. Stanley,
Personal Memoirs of Major-General D.S. Stanley, USA
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1917), 239.

8
.
      
The Petroleum Centre (PA) Daily Record
, August 5, 1872, 2.

9
.
      
Dodge,
The Hunting Grounds of the Great West
, 133.

10
.
    
Ibid., 131.

11
.
    
Ibid., 143.

12
.
    
Frank A. Root and William Elsey Connelley,
The Overland Stage to California
(Topeka: Crane, 1901), 33.