Custer died for your sins

Custer’s Last Stand has many names. White America calls it the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Many tribes refer to it as the Battle of the Greasy Grass. Whatever the battlefield in southeastern Montana is called, what it is no longer called is a massacre.

The Oxford dictionary defines a massacre as “an indiscriminate and brutal slaughter of people.” Colonel George Armstrong Custer, and the 210 men under his direct command who died on June 25, 1876, may have been “rubbed out,” as the tribes involved in the conflict have been known to remark, but they were not massacred. Regardless of how many warriors were present, Custer ordered 11 companies of the 7th Cavalry Regiment (475 men) split into three groups, to attack a large village comprised of mostly women and children. This was by design; he deliberately selected a striking point where women and children were clearly present as preferable to one where warriors were present. There was a dark history behind his preference.

The 7^th Cavalry troopers were well armed and commanded by a decorated Civil War veteran, and would have considered themselves extremely dangerous, had any person bothered to ask them. They would not have considered themselves the victims of a massacre, but the instigators of a battle they felt surely they would win.

Major Marcus Reno first struck the village at the southeast end, where his command of 140 troopers collided with the Hunkpapa and they quickly forced Reno to seek higher ground on the east ridge of the Powder River. The troopers covering the retreat took heavy losses. This is where Custer and his five companies found Reno, Custer ordered Reno to dig in and he set out north along the east ridge, but what was he looking for? He had Hunkpapa warriors right in front of him, and he had more than doubled Reno’s attack numbers.

Custer was looking for something, a schwerpunkt, a striking point, one the Geneva Convention would have greatly frowned upon as violating the rules of civilized warfare, but those rules were not adopted until 1949. He had learned this tactic from General William S. Harney, known to Lakota as “Woman Killer.” The idea was to viciously attack the women and children because this tactic forced an emotional reaction from the warriors that broke up their cohesion and fighting effectiveness.

Even before he fought in the bloodiest war in American History, the Civil War, Harney had made a reputation as an Indian fighter in 1855 at the so-called Battle of Ash Hollow. Even before he had made that reputation, he had earned a reputation as a man who beats defenseless women to death. Harney used a cane to beat a slave named Hannah to death in June of 1834. Two major newspapers deemed him “a monster.” Harney holed up in Wheeling, Virginia, for almost a year before he was acquitted of all charges in March, 1835.

Before we get to his Indian fighter exploits in 1855, and how he earned the sobriquet “Woman Killer,” we must go back to August 19, 1854 and the death of Sicangu Chief Conquering Bear. A cow had wandered off the Oregon Trail and was killed by a visiting Miniconjou named High Forehead. According to the 1851 treaty, the Indian Agent was charged with handling this situation, but the Army decided to illegally intervene instead. Conquering Bear was aware of the treaty stipulation but was willing to negotiate with the Army anyway. Second Lieutenant John Gratton entered the large village with 30 men, heavily armed, including two artillery pieces. Conquering Bear offered restitution for the cow, but Gratton insisted he was there to arrest High Forehead. Among Gratton’s party was Lucian Auguste, a French-Indian interpreter, who spoke bad Lakota and had a surly and insulting disposition toward the Lakota. One thing led to another, a fight broke out, and Conquering Bear was mortally wounded, and the entire Army detachment was wiped out. Wikipedia calls the incident the “Grattan Massacre,” although it does not meet the definition of massacre. The soldiers came armed and looking for trouble. This was a battle, one foolishly instigated by an inferior if well-armed force, but a battle, nonetheless.

The US Army fully intended to retaliate. That next spring Harney was recalled all the way from Paris. Instead of engaging a village of 4000 with 30 men, like Gratton did, Harney went after a Sicangu village of 230 with 600 men. He killed 86 Sicangu, half of them women and children. Back then the New York Times rightly called the Battle of Ash Hollow a massacre, but Wikipedia still lists this massacre as a battle.

Harney was the man from which Custer had learned the tried-and true tactic of attacking women and children. This was Custer’s intent, the hot dusty afternoon he led 210 troopers up the east ridge above Powder River. To his left he saw exactly what he was looking for, women and small children with nothing to protect them but 19 teenage boys. Those 19 boys stood their ground, and they all died, but they bought enough time for warriors to arrive, and the rest is history. Custer’s direct command perished on that ridge, as they all paid the ultimate price for his arrogance, narcissism and recklessness.

Had he won that battle, and it was deemed a massacre for the longest time, Custer had a future that could have resulted in the presidency of the United States. He was handsome, charismatic, likeable, when he could keep his narcissism in check, and his wife Libbie Custer was an attractive woman who well knew the ins-and-outs of 19^th Century social networking.

When we look past the personality of Custer, we see there were the lives of uncounted Lakota needlessly lost that day, and there were 210 trooper lives needlessly lost with Custer. The tribes may not have been on the Great Sioux Reservation proper, but they were hunting on land treaty designated to be land they could hunt on. There was really no reason to pursue them, let alone attack them. The buffalo were almost gone, and they would have been forced back to the reservation for supplies within a year or two. But the government sought pretext for taking the Black Hills, and the rubbing out of Custer provided enough pretext for Congress to pass the 1877 Black Hills Act and seize the prize that had prompted all the conflict. They wanted the gold, and they took it.

(Contact James Giago Davies at skindiesel@msn.com)

 

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