By James Donovan. Published by Little, Brown and Company, 237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017. Price: $26.99
Available at most bookstores, or Amazon.
More than six-score years after George A. Custer let his ego get the best of him, books are still being written about his fatal error in judgment. This 540-plus page hardbound volume is one of the latest, and the best on the subject, in this reviewer’s opinion.
The beige-colored end papers consist of maps relative to the books content, with the major two-page spread being the Sioux War Country 1876; with smaller inset related maps being the Little Bighorn Campaign 1876, and The Battlefield. (These same maps also appear just prior to the Contents page of the text, for easy reference. (A couple of small maps of other campaigns appear in early chapters.)
Following some Author’s Notes and a short Prologue, this tome is divided into four parts, with a total of twenty-one chapters. The regular text is followed by 81 pages of notes, with the number of notes per chapter ranging up to a maximum of 99 for chapter twelve, The Charge. There are also two dozen pages of bibliography and an extensive index. (Mention is made at the beginning of the bibliography that it has been said that more has been written on the 1876 battle on the Little Bighorn than on the 1863 battle at Gettysburg. True, or not, it might be the fact that no one survived of those who followed Custer to his last stand. Whereas, at Gettysburg, there were survivors. This reviewer, having been to the Little Bighorn site twice, from Last Stand Hill to Reno’s Hill, and to Gettysburg three times, can only say there is more to see at Gettysburg.)
Each of the four parts, from Approach to the Aftermath, is divided into from four to six chapters, each of which is titled as to the main content to follow.
In Part One: Approach, for example, Chapter Six, “Submit to Uncle Sam or Kill the 7 Hors”, the author details the makeup of the 7th at this time. Some 30 percent were new recruits, many never having been on a horse prior to enlistment, or having any familiarity with firearms, although there were a few Civil War veterans. ‘Formal military training …in marksmanship, horsemanship, skirmishing—any practical lessons that Indian fighting actually involve—was virtually nonexistent.’ (They were issued fifteen rounds, up from a previous ten rounds, per month for target practice.) Even many of the officers were new, and unaware of Indian tactics or fighting skills. (European-style “conventional” warfare was dramatically different from the warfare conducted by the Plains Indians. As the author stated: ‘The Seventh’s chain of command was shaky at best.’
Illustrations, other than maps, consist of four-dozen back and white photographs, the first being of G. A. in his self-designed brevet Major General uniform. (At the time of his death, Custer was only a Lt. Colonel in the Regular Army.) The photos appear in a group about mid-way through the text.
Each chapter features a pertinent poem, song lyrics, or quote, following the title, such as “Before many days you will hear of a big fight or a lively foot race.” by Lieutenant George Wallace at the beginning of Chapter Nine, The Seventh Rides Out. A quote by a Crow scout, White Man Runs Him, “We scouts thought there were too many Indians for Custer to fight…. It was the biggest Indian camp I had ever seen.” is the lead for Chapter Eleven, On The Jump in Part II. In Part III, Attack, the lead by frontiersman R. J. Smyth, is “When you run from an Indian you are his meat.”
This gem of a text on one of the most controversial battles of all times, is worthy of space on the bookshelf of any reader interested in American history. Even the ponderous of notes are interesting to read. The only feature this reviewer would correct, and you cannot correct someone’s quote, is the use of the word bullet when you actually mean cartridge. (A cartridge usually consists of four parts: case (container), primer (ignition), powder (charge), and bullet (projectile). On firing the powder charge gases force the bullet out of the case into and out of the firearms barrel, leaving the empty cartridge case, with dead primer, to be extracted. As a general rule you do NOT find bullets just lying around a firing point, only the empty, or fired, cases. Caseless cartridges, such as the Daisy VL, as the saying goes, are a different ballgame.
This a most interesting volume on a man who ranked 34th out of 34 cadets in his graduating class at West Point; a cadet who had 129 demerits at the end of his first semester at the Academy. It makes you wonder when this overgrowth teenager finally realized he had bitten off more than he could chew. (The best description this reviewer has seen of Custer’s early life appears as the Historical Background in the 1993 reprint of Custer’s My Life on the Plains, edited by Milo Milton Quaife.)—Larry Sterett
