The Story of the Little Big Horn: Custer’s Last Fight

By W. A. Graham

“Custer had been usually effective as an Indian fighter for several years… He was adept in bringing off surprise attacks that crushed and paralyzed resistance. Both his reputation and his experience as an Indian campaigner were second to none; and the Seventh Cavalry…was held one of the best regiments in the service. It was but natural, then, that when the regiment marched proudly away from the mouth of the Rosebud on its mission, Terry could and did feel confident that if he could but catch the recalcitrant braves of Sitting Bull between Custer and Gibbon, he would certainly crush and capture them; and if, perchance, Custer found them elsewhere than was expected, the Seventh Cavalry, under such a leader, would be more than equal to any emergency.” From the Story of the Little Big Horn
In June 1876, General George A Custer was detailed to a column under General Alfred H. Terry. After being sent ahead of General George Crook at the Rosebud River, Custer and the Seventh Cavalry discovered a Souix encampment on June 25. Not realizing that he was far outnumbered, Custer divided his regiment into three sections, sending two, led by Major Marcus A. Reno and Captain Frederick W. Benteen, to attack upstream. Custer’s section stayed to launch a frontal assault, and every man under Custer was killed.
Soon after the massacre, Custer became a tragic hero in the eyes of the American public, and the event achieved an almost mythological reputation. It was not until fifty years later, however, that the first book-length history of the battle, The Story of the Little Big Horn, was published.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stackpole Books
• Release date: Dec 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9780811767118

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The Story of the Little Big Horn

The Story of the Little Big Horn

Custer’s Last Fight

W. A. Graham

New Introduction by

Brian C. Pohanka

STACKPOLE

BOOKS

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Published by Stackpole Books

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Copyright © 1926 by the Century Company; 1941, 1945, and 1952 by the Military Service Publishing Company; and 1959 by the Stackpole Company

New material copyright © 1994 by Stackpole Books

Frist Stackpole Books paperback edition 2017

All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The hardback edition of this book was previously cataloged by the Library of Congress as follows:

Graham, W.A. (William Alexander), 1875–1954.

The story of the Little Big Horn / W.A. Graham ; new introduction hy Rrian C. Pohanka.

p. cm. — (The Custer library)

Originally published: New York : Century Co., © 1926.

ISBN 0-8117-0346-0

1. Little Bighorn, Battle of the, Mont., 1876. 2. Custer, George Armstrong, 1839–1876. I. Tide II. Series.

E83.876.G73    1994

973.8'2—dc20 93-48222

CIP         

ISBN 0-8117-0346-0 (cloth)

ISBN 978-0-8117-3739-5 (paper: alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-8117-6711-8 (electronic)

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION TO THIRD EDITION

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION

FOREWORD TO SECOND EDITION

INTRODUCTION

FOREWORD

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

NOTES

APPENDIX I: DID CUSTER WILFULLY DISOBEY HIS ORDERS?

THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE SIOUX IN 1876

INTRODUCTION TO THIRD EDITION

On the fourth of July, 1876, Americans of the era Mark Twain dubbed the Gilded Age celebrated the centennial of the Republic. From the vast halls of Philadelphia’s sprawling Centennial Exhibition to the ramshackle settlements of the western frontier, the patriotic holiday was grander and more festive than ever before.

The fireworks’ echo had barely faded, when, from San Francisco to Manhattan, breathless headlines began to fairly scream the news of disaster. CUSTER KILLED!–Terrific Slaughter–MASSACRED–No Officer or Man of 5 Companies Left to Tell the Tale–Squaws Mutilate and Rob the Dead. In death, George Armstrong Custer had finally received the publicity denied him since his glory days as a boy general in the Civil War. He was again front-page news.

For those far removed from the brutal realities of Indian warfare, Custer’s Last Stand was perceived as tragic yet heroic; the fight at Little Big Horn epitomized the crusade of western civilization against the forces of savagery and barbarism. Custer and his troopers were doomed heroes analogous to Leonidas and his Spartans at Thermopylae–waging a hopeless but gallant struggle against overwhelming odds, and, as the old adage went, dying with their boots on.

Because it was mythologized from the outset, the battle of Little Big Horn quickly entered the realm of the dime novel and Broadway melodrama. Buffalo Bill staged a reenactment of the episode for his Wild West Show, and some of the very first silent films were devoted to the subject.

The Last Stand was, and still is, a perennial favorite of anists and illustrators. In his 1968 survey of the genre, historian Don Russell documented no fewer than 848 depictions of Custer’s demise–as Russell put it, a lot of picture making for a happening of so little importance. The artwork ran the gamut from a 50-by-300-foot circular panorama to a ubiquitous barroom adornment commissioned and distributed by the Anheuser-Busch brewery.

The iconography of the Last Stand is remarkably consistent in these paintings, rendered with varying skill and invariable inaccuracy. A beleaguered knot of soldiers, hunkered down behind their slain horses, blazes away at a swirling horde of mounted Indian warriors. Clustered about their buckskin-clad commander, the bluecoats die hard, making every bullet count. By and large the artwork reinforced the heroic image of the frontier military.

Given the popularity of the topic, it is something of a surprise to realize that the first book-length history of Little Big Horn was published in 1926–fifty years after Custer made his last stand. It is the work of an officer accustomed for years to weigh evidence, wrote Indian Wars veteran Charles King, whose objective has been the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. The book was called The Story of the Little Big Horn, and its author was a fifty-one-year-old Army colonel named William A. Graham.

Graham, the son of a Civil War veteran turned Regular Army officer, was born in Chicago on January 23, 1875 – a year and five months before Custer fell at Little Big Horn. He spent much of his youth in Iowa, where he attended the Cedar Falls High School before transferring to the Beloit College Academy, a preparatory school in Beloit, Wisconsin. Not surprisingly, William Graham entered Beloit College, but left there at the end of his freshman term, and from 1894 to 1896 studied at California’s Stanford University. Having elected to pursue a legal career, Graham spent his senior year in the Law Department of the University of Iowa, from which he graduated in June 1897.

From 1897 to 1902, Graham practiced law in Cedar Falls and continued his general practice after relocating to Des Moines. On May 20, 1912, the thirty-seven-year-old lawyer was commissioned a first lieutenant in the Iowa National Guard, receiving promotion to captain the following year. In 1916 he had a taste of active duty on the Mexican Border, where the insurgent leader Pancho Villa was threatening American interests. Though Captain Graham’s primary duty was as judge advocate of the Iowa Brigade, a brief spell as Inspector of Horse and Mule Transport at Brownsville, Texas, gave him hands-on experience with an important, if unglamorous, aspect of an army in which horsepower quite literally remained the principal means of transport and reconnaissance.

America’s entry into the First World War brought Graham promotion to major, and, in August 1918, assignment overseas as judge advocate on the staff of the 88th Division–an Iowa unit known as the Cloverleafs because of their black shamrock insignia. Stationed in a relatively quiet sector of the Vosges Mountains, just east of the border between France and Germany, the 88th Division experienced little combat beyond the occasional barrage and skirmish. They launched no offensive, took only three Germans prisoner, and sustained a total loss of only seventy-two men. Virtually all of Graham’s wartime service comprised court-martial duty, befitting his legal background, though the war did bring him promotion to the rank of lieutenant colonel.

Soon after the cessation of hostilities, Graham traveled to Paris, where he represented the 88th Division at the caucus that established the American Legion. He played a considerable role in structuring the legal framework of the great veterans’ association, and remained an active life member following his return to the United States.

In 1919 Graham began a five-year tour of duty as judge advocate in Washington, D.C. It was during this period that he commenced his study of the battle of the Little Big Horn–a subject to which he was drawn not by a fascination with the frontier, or from an interest in strategy and tactics–but rather as a direct result of his knowledge of military law.

At a time when most nineteenth-century Army records had yet to be organized and catalogued, Graham managed to gain access to the proceedings of the so-called Reno Court of Inquiry–the 1879 military tribunal that had investigated the controversial conduct at Little Big Horn of Custer’s surviving second in command, Major Marcus A. Reno. With efficient copy machines a thing of the future, Graham spent months of his spare time making a laborious longhand transcription of the testimony given before the Reno Court. It was a record that Graham would always consider the most comprehensive and authentic source of information in existence pertaining to the 1876 engagement.

As he continued to transcribe the Reno Court of Inquiry, Colonel Graham sought out and interviewed a number of military veterans of the Custer fight. Through his membership in the Army and Navy Club, he made the acquaintance of General Edward S. Godfrey, who, as a first lieutenant, had commanded Company K of the Seventh Cavalry at Little Big Horn. In 1892 Godfrey had authored one of the first serious articles on the subject, and the passing years had increased his antipathy for Major Reno, whose lack of leadership Godfrey considered a principle cause of the disaster. Another septuagenarian veteran of the battle, General Winfield Scott Edgerly (who was less critical of Reno), likewise shared his reminiscences with Graham, as did Colonel Charles Varnum. Undoubtedly Graham’s status as a fellow officer and judge advocate won the trust of these old soldiers, though the relationships remained, as Graham put it, formal.

Graham also corresponded with several former Seventh Cavalry enlisted men, including Theodore Goldin (whose story of having carried a message from Custer to Reno Graham clearly disbelieved), and retired Sergeant John Martin (who did indeed carry a last message from Custer to Captain Frederick Benteen’s battalion). In 1922 Graham paid a personal visit to Martin in his Brooklyn home, and the following year told the story of the Italian-born courier in an article for The Cavalry Journal.

Graham was transferred to Chicago in 1924, but continued his correspondence with Godfrey and other officers of the Indian fighting Army, most notably Captain Robert G. Carter, who, like Godfrey, was a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor. In 1925, prior to submitting his Story of the Little Big Horn to the Century Company for publication, Graham sent copies of the manuscript to several of the elderly veterans with whom he had become familiar, and solicited their comments.

While all of the officers were supportive of Graham’s endeavor, and reacted with general favor to the printed result, both Godfrey and Carter felt that Graham’s professed desire not . . . to enter the field of controversy caused him to shy away from overt condemnation of Major Reno’s conduct. It was their decided opinion that had Reno pressed his initial assault on the great Indian encampment, or resisted the warriors’ counterattack, Custer and his five companies might well have survived – perhaps even triumphed. Reno was not, in Carter’s view, a leader with guts.

Though not present at Little Big Horn–he was serving with Colonel Ranald Mackenzie’s Fourth U.S. Cavalry–Captain Carter had clearly absorbed the prevalent Army scuttlebutt regarding Reno’s sorry performance. Reno showed the white feather from the start, Carter fumed, and his entire conduct was that of a white-livered, yellow-streaked coward.

Though Graham was not unsympathetic to Carter’s characterization of Reno as a cowardly poltroon, his professed objectivity, stressing as it did the carefully worded testimony presented at the Reno Court of Inquiry, prevented him from damning Reno as the one and only cause of Custer’s demise. Graham did not doubt that Reno was alarmed and frightened, and lost his head, during the valley fight, but he shied away from branding the unfortunate officer with abject cowardice. I hold no brief for Reno, Graham assured Carter, but I believe in giving even the devil his due; and it is not necessary to attack and condemn Reno in order to account for what happened to Custer.

In Graham’s opinion Custer had underestimated the numbers, armament, and fighting prowess of his foe; had fatally divided his twelve companies into four widely separate contingents; and had initiated his assault without the benefit of a clearly defined battle plan. Though he never ceased to excoriate Reno, it is a measure of Captain Carter’s respect for Graham’s judgment that the crusty old trooper concurred with the author’s assessment. I put that tragical affair . . . directly upon Custer, Carter agreed; by separating himself by miles from his other units [he] invited the disaster which inevitably befell him. All things considered, Carter felt Graham’s effort a very fair and reasonable statement of facts . . . carefully prepared and well written.

By the 1940s, the controversial events of June 25, 1876, had attracted quite a following among amateur historians and Indian War buffs, many of whom corresponded with Colonel Graham, whom they considered one of the deans of Custeriana. The prolific writer E. A. Brininstool called Graham the best posted man alive on Custer’s Last Fight, an opinion that was widely held.

It is perhaps a measure of Graham’s success in achieving impartiality in The Story of the Little Big Horn that though some critics felt he was too soft on Reno, researchers like the cranky Michigander Fred Dustin–a noted Reno partisan–thought just the opposite. The manufactured prejudice against that officer has affected even well balanced and judicial minds, Dustin grumbled, and Col. Graham is no exception.

William A. Graham retired from active duty in 1939 and, except for a brief recall to service during the Second World War, spent the last decades of his life in Pacific Palisades, California. His interest in Little Big Horn persisted, and in 1953, the year before he succumbed to a heart attack at age 79, the Stackpole Company published Graham’s 411-page compendium of reports, correspondence, and newspaper articles titled The Custer Myth: A Source Book of Custeriana.

Though Graham’s 1926 study went through four reprintings in the author’s lifetime, he made no substantial revisions of the text. It was his opinion, as stated in his preface to the 1941 edition of The Story of the Little Big Horn, that nothing of any moment has been discovered since 1926; and . . . it becomes increasingly unlikely that anything of importance will be discovered. Detailed as it was, The Custer Myth was an anthology, with no pretense of synthesis into a cohesive account of the battle. Graham, who was invariably skeptical of theoretical reconstructions of the Last Stand, was content to leave those endeavors to Fred Dustin, Charles Kuhlman, and other students of Little Big Horn.

Although Kuhlman in particular spent countless hours hiking over the battlefield, recreating the maneuvers and deployments of the contending forces in his mind’s eye, there is no evidence that Colonel Graham ever visited the site. Indeed, there is reason to believe that he turned down an opportunity to do so while on a visit to Billings, Montana, from which point the battlefield was easily accessible.

Judicious as Graham attempted to be in analyzing the Custer fight, he nonetheless evinced an ethnocentric rigidity of thought that caused him to overlook a vast body of evidence. Though Graham credited the victorious Sioux and Cheyenne with almost Napoleonic sagacity, he rejected warrior accounts of the battle as replete with misconstruction and distortion. Since, in Graham’s opinion, these stories were inherently indecipherable to the white man, he made no effort . . . to use them.

In addition, Colonel Graham neglected to pursue the voluminous mass of notes assembled by another Little Big Horn researcher, Walter Mason Camp (1867–1925), who has spent several decades interviewing both white and Indian veterans of the Indian Wars. Though Camp died before he could assemble these first-person accounts in a cohesive narrative, Graham knew of the existence of Camp’s notes. One of Camp’s admirers was Graham’s prolific correspondent, retired Captain R. G. Carter, who was unsuccessful in his efforts