Product Description

On the morning of June 25, 1876, soldiers of the elite U.S. Seventh Cavalry led by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer attacked a large Indian encampment on the banks of the Little Bighorn River. By day's end, Custer and more than two hundred of his men lay dead. It was a shocking defeat--or magnificent victory, depending on your point of view--and more than a century later it is still the object of controversy, debate, and fascination.
        
What really happened on that fateful day? Now, thanks to the work of Herman J. Viola, Curator Emeritus of the Smithsonian Institution, we are much closer to answering that question. Dr. Viola, a leader in the preservation of Native American culture and history, has collected here dozens of dramatic, never-before-published accounts by Indians who participated in the battle--accounts that have been handed down to the present day, often secretly and accompanied by oaths of silence, from one generation to the next. These remarkable eyewitness recollections provide a direct link to that day's events; together they constitute an unprecedented oral history of the battle from the Native American point of view and the most comprehensive eyewitness description of Little Bighorn we have ever had.
        
Here are the dramatic stories of the Cheyenne and Lakota warriors who rode into battle against Custer, the yellow-haired Son of the Morning Star, an adversary whose valor they admired--but who became a mortal enemy after breaking his peace-pipe oath, a scene described vividly in these pages. Here in their own words are the stories of the Crow scouts, allies of Custer, who advised against attacking Sitting Bull's village on the Little Bighorn. Here are tales of valor told by the Arikara scouts who fought side by side with Custer's men against the Lakota and Cheyenne; although the Great Father in Washington rewarded their heroism with silence, it is celebrated to this day in tribal stories and songs that come to us from beyond the grave with hair-raising immediacy and power.
        
Lavishly illustrated with more than two hundred maps, photographs, reproductions, and drawings, this remarkable book also includes:

• An account of the battle, including startling descriptions of Custer's conduct, collected from the Crow scouts by the famed photographer Edward S. Curtis in 1908. Curtis never published this report--President Theodore Roosevelt advised him not to--and it remained a secret until his ninety-year-old son recently gave the material to the Smithsonian.
  
  
• New archaeological evidence from the battlefield that casts fresh light on the Seventh Cavalry's movements, along with discoveries from the site of Sitting Bull's village--including the complete skeleton of a cavalry horse with its rider's well-
  preserved saddlebags and personal items.
  
  
• A series of illustrations made soon after the battle by Red Horse, a remarkable tableau that is reproduced here in its entirety for the first time.
  
  
• Three letters written by Lieutenant William Van Wyck Reily just days before he died at Little Bighorn that provide key and potentially controversial insights into the conduct of the cavalry under Custer's command.
  

        
In short, this landmark book takes us much closer to knowing what really happened on that June day in 1876 when Custer died and a legend was born.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #828964 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10-11
• Released on: 1999-10-11
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

From Library Journal
One of those events familiar to even the historically unaware or uninterested, Custer's Last Stand (or the Battle of Little Bighorn) has suffered the unfortunate fate of becoming a cultural icon, to be repackaged to fit different historians' ideologies. The last large-scale pitched battle between Indians and soldiers, it was a dramatic defeat for the U.S. military and yet the beginning of the end for the victorious Plains Indians. The picture is more complicated, though, as several Indian tribes served as scouts for Custer. Viola, curator emeritus at the Smithsonian and a frequent writer on Indian subjects, creates an interesting overview by collecting accounts of the battle by descendants of Indians who fought on both sides. Lavishly illustrated with period photographs, maps, and color drawings by witnesses as well as photographs of descendants, this recalling of the battle, supplemented by new archaeological research, should be popular with many readers. Recommended for larger public and academic libraries. (Photos not seen.)ACharles V. Cowling, Drake Memorial Lib., Brockport, NY
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Inside Flap
On the morning of June 25, 1876,  soldiers of the elite U.S. Seventh Cavalry led by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer attacked a large Indian encampment on the banks of the Little Bighorn River. By day's end, Custer and more than two hundred of his men lay dead. It was a shocking defeat--or magnificent victory, depending on your point of view--and more than a century later it is still the object of controversy, debate, and fascination.
        
What really happened on that fateful day? Now, thanks to the work of Herman J. Viola, Curator Emeritus of the Smithsonian Institution, we are much closer to answering that question. Dr. Viola, a leader in the preservation of Native American culture and history, has collected here dozens of dramatic, never-before-published accounts by Indians who participated in the battle--accounts that have been handed down to the present day, often secretly and accompanied by oaths of silence, from one generation to the next. These remarkable eyewitness recollections provide a direct link to that day's events; together they constitute an unprecedented oral history of the battle from the Native American point of view and the most comprehensive eyewitness description of Little Bighorn we have ever had.
        
Here are the dramatic stories of the Cheyenne and Lakota warriors who rode into battle against Custer, the yellow-haired Son of the Morning Star, an adversary whose valor they admired--but who became a mortal enemy after breaking his peace-pipe oath, a scene described vividly in these pages. Here in their own words are the stories of the Crow scouts, allies of Custer, who advised against attacking Sitting Bull's village on the Little Bighorn. Here are tales of valor told by the Arikara scouts who fought side by side with Custer's men against the Lakota and Cheyenne; although the Great Father in Washington rewarded their heroism with silence, it is celebrated to this day in tribal stories and songs that come to us from beyond the grave with hair-raising immediacy and power.
        
Lavishly illustrated with more than two hundred maps, photographs, reproductions, and drawings, this remarkable book also includes:

   An account of the battle, including startling descriptions of Custer's conduct, collected from the Crow scouts by the famed photographer Edward S. Curtis in 1908. Curtis never published this report--President Theodore Roosevelt advised him not to--and it remained a secret until his ninety-year-old son recently gave the material to the Smithsonian.

  New archaeological evidence from the battlefield that casts fresh light on the Seventh Cavalry's movements, along with discoveries from the site of Sitting Bull's village--including the complete skeleton of a cavalry horse with its rider's well-
preserved saddlebags and personal items.

  A series of illustrations made soon after the battle by Red Horse, a remarkable tableau that is reproduced here in its entirety for the first time.

  Three letters written by Lieutenant William Van Wyck Reily just days before he died at Little Bighorn that provide key and potentially controversial insights into the conduct of the cavalry under Custer's command.

        
In short, this landmark book takes us much closer to knowing what really happened on that June day in 1876 when Custer died and a legend was born.

About the Author

Herman J. Viola, Curator Emeritus of the Smithsonian Institution and former director of the Smithsonian's National Anthropological Archives, is the biographer of Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, whose Cheyenne grandfather Black Horse fought at Little Bighorn. His work with American Indians over the last twenty-five years has given him unique access to the Indian community. In 1997, he became the adopted brother of Joseph Medicine Crow, whose grandfather White Man Runs Him was one of Custer's six Crow scouts. Dr. Viola is the author of fifteen books, including After Columbus, North American Indians, and It Is a Good Day to Die. He lives in Falls Church, Virginia, and Bozman, Maryland.

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Customer Reviews

Beautiful Book Marred by Debatable Crow Scouts Testimony
Viola's book is a coffee table book sized, beautiful rendition of photographs of participants, Indian art picturing the LBH battle, a good recap of the Sioux war and injustices done to them and some very interesting oral histories presentd by several tribal descendants of all the tribes involved. Unfortunately the book includes a summary of photographer Edward Curtis' 1907 interview with the three Crow scouts that left Custer as he went north to attack the village. Curtis claimed that White Man Runs, Goes Ahead and Hairy Moccasion witnessed Reno's rout from Weir Point and they claimed Custer saw Reno's collapse. The scouts indicated to Curtis that Custer ignored Reno's circumstances and uncaringly moved to the north. Although the book takes the Crow scouts testimony to Curtis as fact, it has been well documented that the Crow scouts left Custer early enough when they turned back that they met Benteen's battalion (3rd wing) before Reno's retreat could have crossed their path. In other words they were seen by Benteen's entire battalion several miles south of where Custer was when Reno collapsed. See Walter Camp's interviews with participants and note John Gray's fine book on "Custer's Last Campaign". It has been well documented that after meeting Benteen, the three scouts stayed with Reno and Benteen briefly and then abandoned them later reporting all dead. The last crow scout to see Custer alive, Curley has often suffered from White Man Runs Him's statements. This unchallengable portrayal of the Curtis testimonies mar the book presenting it as fact other then what appears to be sensationalized testimony that cannot be accurate. The biographies of many of the brave Native American participants is interesting particularly thier post battle life summaries. The articles on the archeology of the battle sites is fascinating along with Swanson's story of the recovery of Lt. Reily's ring. Langeiller 's essay on the Custer Myth brings out Custer's warts but is an informative read.

Crow accounts are valuable
I found this book to be fascinating pictorially and in its presentation of Indian viewpoints of Little Bighorn.

Some other reviewers have criticized Herman Viola's inclusion of the accounts of Custer's Crow scouts, as if Viola is somehow doing a disservice to scholarship. However, I don't think he is necessarily presenting these accounts as gospel. Viola acknowledges the inconsistencies between witnesses' stories, but he gives the Crow a chance to speak for themselves, which seems like a good thing to me.

Perhaps by publishing these little-known testimonies, Viola will encourage other Indian sources to share their knowledge of Little Bighorn while that knowledge still exists.

A major work.
In general I'm not really big on modern history (my notion of "modern" being everything after 1200 BC!), but Viola's book "Little Bighorn Remembered," featured as it was as the "untold Indian story of Custer's last stand," intrigued me. I have to admit to having had to take a second run at it before I really got into the subject. It isn't that the work is poorly written; it isn't. I think that the up front and in your face brutality of the 19th Century US government in dealing with the Native American population was just hard to deal with for me. It`s not that I am myself Native American; I just have a strong sense of fairness and fairness had no part in it. When I finally did settle into the material, however, it read rapidly. In fact it probably classifies highly with some of those I-couldn't-put-it-down novels over which people burn the midnight oil. (In my case I should have been getting a quick nap between patients while I was on-call for the OR on a night shift).

The first two chapters of the book concern the antecedents leading up to the Indian confrontation with Custer and the 7th Cavalry. These included Custer's own pre-dawn attack on a sleeping Cheyenne village under the leadership of Chief Black Kettle on the Washita River in 1868 and an earlier similar attack on Plains Tribes camping at Sand Creek in 1864. In both instances dozens of men, women, and children were hunted down and shot and their bodies butchered. In the 1868 attack even the Cheyenne pony herd, some 900 animals, was also killed, severely crippling the people's ability to pursue their traditional lifestyle. The narrative of these two chapters is filled with unfulfilled promises and broken treaties with Native Americans in the furtherance of US territorial expansion during the 19th Century. Certainly anyone familiar with the attitudes of Europeans toward technologically less advanced populations world wide in areas they wished to exploit will recognize the pattern.

The remainder of the book is divided into chapters each dealing with various perspectives on the battle of the Little Bighorn. Here is where the book rises above others on the subject, for Viola makes use of very diverse sources in his effort to thoroughly and fairly cover the subject .

Included are the oral histories passed on by the Indian participants, stories from the Cheyenne and the Dakota on one side and from the Crow and Arikara scouts with Custer on the other. Probably the most interesting part of this material is the fact that not all Plains Indians felt the same about the coming of the army into the area. In fact the imperialism of the US government was actually superimposed upon on-going events among traditional enemies within the community of local people. The long standing enmity of certain groups actually facilitated the ultimate defeat of the Plains Indians. Even allies weren't necessarily of one mind and still are not. A popular saying among the modern Cheyenne is that "The Sioux got the glory, the Crows got the land, but the Cheyennes did the fighting(p. 27)."

Also among the narratives are notes left by Edward S. Curtis who undertook the mission of creating a photographic preservation of Native American Indian lifestyles before they disappeared. During the pursuit of this work Curtis took the opportunity of covering the battle site in the company of three of Custer's Crow scouts. From information about events provided by these individuals he came to the conclusion that the battle had not proceeded as recorded thirty years previously. His intent to publish his conclusions in his project was discouraged by President Theodore Roosevelt, primarily because the latter was concerned that pro-Custer factions would ruin Curtis. The information was preserved and given over to the National Museum of American History by his son Harold just prior to Harold's death at the age of 95 in 1988.

Among the "documents" preserving the Battle at Little Bighorn are the Indian drawings of the event of which Viola includes illustrations of many. Though simple line drawings they give every bit as clear an image of the violence and carnage of the battle field as do the photo images of the Civil War. Included are drawings by the Dakota, Red Horse, and some etched drawings by an unknown artists on flattened metal from trade kettles. Also presented, many for the first time, are some of the victory memorabilia collected from the battlefield and preserved by family members of the Indian participants through the generations.

A fire across the battlefield in 1983 made an archaeological examination of the site possible and almost imperative. Application of modern techniques to the charting, recovery and analysis of the material remains on the site by professionals and trained volunteers in the decade between 1985 and 1995 have allowed a reinterpretation of what occurred and an external verification of the stories of various participants. (For a more in-depth account of which see my review of "They Died With Custer : Soldiers' Bones from the Battle of the Little Bighorn.")

Among the most amazing reports of the battle and its events is that of the contribution of suicide to the death toll. Apparently the notion of torture at the hands of Indian combatants, fostered in part by the tradition of post mortem mutilation of enemy bodies (to prevent their full enjoyment of the afterlife) produced a "save the last bullet for yourself" mentality that led to a far higher mortality than might have occurred. One Indian witness reported having seen a man "murder" a compatriot and than shoot himself. Apparently he was not the only individual to have seen this puzzling behavior either.

Probably the most arresting facets of Viola's book, and certainly the ones I found most enjoyable, were the many rotogravure/tintype portraits of the various American Indian personalities involved in the drama of the Plains. The faces are filled with dignity, composure, and intelligence. It leaves the viewer with a sense of compassion and loss. One wonders what the country might have been like had the two worlds learned to coexist more peacefully and to learn from one another.