General Custer and the Battle of the Little Big Horn

The grip that Custer's Last Stand has had upon the American imagination, generation after generation, is indeed curious. Standard details of television dramas depicting Indian fighting have been set by it. Indeed, more has been written about the fight at Little Big Horn than about any other battle in American history with the exception of Gettysburg. Today, ninety years after the event, the interest continues. An account from Van de Water's book, Glory Hunter, 8 included by Ernest Hemingway in his Anthology, Men at War, has been read by well over a million persons.

The battle is, for one thing, of great significance as a symbol. In a sense, Custer's last fight was like Pickett's charge at Gettysburg, “the high watermark of the Confederacy.” On the one hand, it was the greatest victory of red fighting men over white men in American history; on the other, it ushered in the beginning of the end of the freedom of the Plains Indians. Yet the unflagging interest of military scholars and, to an extent, of the general public, is not confined to the battle as a symbol, but is invested in its detail as fact. Within the past few years, for example, a monograph has been published which is entirely devoted to the question of whether or not Custer disobeyed the orders of his superior officer in engaging the Indians when and how he did.5 Attesting to the same interest is the recent successful reissue as a paperback of