The Custer Controversy

  -Jordan Barrilleaux           

                I have known about a battle at Little Bighorn for a long time.  I never really remembered ever formally learning about it in a class setting, but somehow the knowledge that there was a famous battle near the Little Bighorn River in Montana had been placed in my head somewhere along the line.  As I began researching the topic I found much discrepancy among historian’s description of the battle.  I wanted to know why the Battle of Little Bighorn was so controversial. 

                When I searched ‘Little Bighorn controversy’ the first hit was an article in the New York Times.  At Little Bighorn battle site there is a monument to the soldiers and Indians who lost their lives that day.  There is controversy over the monument because the site of the battle and the monument park is on the Crow Indian reservation land.  The main point of this modern disagreement involving the Battle of Little Bighorn is land.  Since the 1980’s private supporters of the monument have raised money to buy land around the park so it could expand and improve the quality of the facility and park as a whole.  The Crow Indians were against this transfer of their land because the Crow were originally forced out of their land by the Sioux camped at the Little Bighorn River.  The Tribe also cites a law passed in the 1920’s limiting non tribal members to only owning land up to 2,000 acres.  The supporters of the park try to explain that with the enhancement of the park there will be tourists who will be great business for the Crow Indian tribe.  This article also explained that in 1991 congress passed a law to remove George Armstrong Custer’s name from the monument changing it from Custer Battlefield Monument to the Little Bighorn Battlefield Monument.  As of now there is still a stand still over the Crow allowing the donation of the privately owned land to the Little Bighorn monument site. 

                It was definitely interesting to see there is still controversy involving the battle site today, but my question remained unanswered.  Next I came across an article from the magazine called “The Wild West”.  This commentary was trying to convince people that there had been a big cover-up of what really happened at the Battle of Little Bighorn.  At first I did not want to give it any credit thinking it was some conspiracy theorist babbling on about crazy delusions that the government is corrupt and just loves keeping things secret from the people.  After reading into in a little I found the article to be very thorough in analysis containing full names of sources and descriptions of experiments validating assumptions of what happened at the scene of the battle.  Mainly the article criticized the critiques of General; some say Lieutenant Colonel, Custer.  The author described instances where there were inconsistencies with what the critiques said and what actually could have happened.  Some such instances were; not all the 7^th Calvary was wiped out on Last Stand Hill, Custer did not disobey orders and advance to quickly but was left alone by the other commanders who were behind schedule, Custer used proper military maneuvers when engaging the hostile Sioux Indians, and that Custer was left alone after commanders Reno and Benteen made early retreats from their positions. 

I began to notice a pattern.  None of the articles or descriptions I read could discuss the battle without covering some flaw or misconception about George A. Custer.  This was the real controversy.  I could not understand which was famous because of the other.  Is Custer a household name because of his terrible defeat at Little Bighorn or is the battle famous because of the controversy over how Custer handled this encounter. 

After realizing this I focused my research more toward Custer and the mystery surrounding him.  In the same article discussing the cover-up I learned, from the perspective of the author, Custer had an extremely successful career in the Civil war demonstrating well thought out attacks and mastery of tactic of surprise.  This author was obviously on the side of Custer.  Custer later was court marshaled for absence from command without leave and ordering the execution of deserters.  After regaining his command Custer was asked to give a speech in Washington.  Custer brought up topics like the great corruption in the west and how the government was not upholding treaties with the Indian tribes.  

Sources:

 PBS