496
pages, Viking, ISBN-13: 978-0670021727
Nathaniel
Philbrick’s The Last Stand: Custer,
Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn is a masterful account
of the battle told from all possible angles and using a variety of eyewitness
accounts. As he makes clear throughout his narrative, each account must be
weighed against each other in order to reach the most accurate and believable account
possible – a difficult proposition at best; just ask your average cop. The title,
The Last Stand, as described by Philbrick,
has a double meaning: not only was it the last stand of Custer and his command,
but it was also the last stand of the native tribes of America. Measures that
Congress would not have funded previously allowed the army to mount a vigorous
assault and within a few years all but one of the major tribal leaders were
living on reservations, the exception being Sitting Bull, who held out until
1881 and even then did not go gently.
Most
of the book revolves around the battle itself. Conflicting accounts were
produced, it seems, by just about everyone who was in the vicinity, but Philbrick
manages to pick his way through these myriad narratives, piecing together a
sequential picture of events from concurring versions, educated speculation and
what evidence remains – including an archaeological study which found that the
Indians had superior guns, in addition to their thousands of arrows. He gives
us a vivid picture of the terrain, with its old riverbank hollows and bluffs
offering limited and deceptive visibility, and cuts between Indian and Army
viewpoints, intensifying the narrative pace and providing a clearer vision of
unfolding events. He fleshes out the participants – particularly, but not only,
Custer and Sitting Bull – with letters and accounts from their friends, family,
enemies, and themselves. Naturally, just as many hindsight accounts took note
of omens, prophetic last words, etc., Philbrick looks at the many ways disaster
could have been averted, or at least mitigated. There is plenty of evidence
that Sitting Bull wanted to negotiate and Custer, though there was nothing he
loved so much as a battle, had shown a talent for Indian negotiation.
Misunderstanding,
drunkenness, ambition, personal dislike, blunders and overconfidence all played
their part at Little Bighorn, and while Philbrick renders no judgments, he
doesn’t shrink from expressing opinions. Of the overall commander, General
Alfred Terry, Philbrick says:
As Terry would
have wanted it given the ultimate outcome of the battle, Custer has become the
focal point, the one we obsess about when it comes to both the Black Hills
Expedition and the Little Bighorn. But, in many ways, it was Terry who was
moving the chess pieces. Even though his legal opinion launched the Black Hills
gold rush and his battle plan resulted in one of the most notorious military
disasters in U.S. history, Terry has slunk back into the shadows of history,
letting Custer take center stage in a cumulative tragedy for which Terry was,
perhaps more than any other single person, responsible.
Outside
of the battle itself, Philbrick gives us glimpses into Indian culture and the
mood of westward yearning, land-hungry Americans. The Teton Sioux, the Lakota,
had made enemies of most other Indian tribes in their own westward push to the
Black Hills, a land Sitting Bull dubbed their “food pack” in his refusal to sell
it the whites after Custer’s discovery of gold there in 1875. The U.S. army had
no trouble enlisting Indian scouts from enemy tribes in its battles against the
Sioux, and many of them held personal grudges against Sitting Bull and his
warriors.
The
Lakota revered war although glory did not always involve killing, but could be
satisfied by “counting coup” – that is, touch the opponent with your weapon but
not harming him. Philbrick describes Sitting Bull’s gruesome sun dance rituals –
hanging suspended from two sticks thrust through his chest wall, having 50
pieces of flesh sliced from each arm – but does not delve into the meaning of
these displays, other than to prove Sitting Bull’s bravery and spiritual
strength. These sun dance rituals usually led to visions. Which is not
surprising after a couple days without food or water, bleeding in the blazing
sun. Philbrick does, however, provide copious notes (nearly 100 pages!), an
extensive 27-page bibliography, and a through index for those who want to
pursue any further particulars. There are also several glossy inserts of
photographs and contemporary pictographs showing all the major principals, the
land, and various battle depictions.
Masterfully
organized and engagingly written, this is a history for anyone who is looking
for a description of one of the seminal events of American history by an impartial
historian without an axe to grind.
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