Custer

NYTs: Debate over Little Big Horn Battlefield on Crow Land

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

An excerpt from yesterday’s NYTs article (full article here):

Nearly 30 years ago, a group called the Custer Battlefield Preservation Committee began buying up land around the monument — some 3,300 acres in all — in an effort to stave off development. The group has since tried to donate the land, which it bought for $14 million that was raised through donations, to the Park Service.

But the service has said that unless Congress or the president changes the battlefield’s boundaries, it does not have the legal authority to accept the land.

Moreover, any land deal would need approval from the Crow tribe, which has considerable political influence in Montana and has resisted such a large land transfer.

The tribe cites a 1920 federal law, known as the Crow Act, which it says limits nontribal members to ownership of about 2,000 acres on the reservation, which is almost 2.3 million acres.

“We are trying to explain the advantages of adding on to the historical site right in the middle of their country, which would bring tourists — who need to eat, sleep and buy souvenirs — and produce jobs for Crow people,” said Harold G. Stanton, president of the Custer committee.

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NYTs Book Reviews of New Work on Custer and Quanah Parker

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

From the Legal History Blog:

Also in the NY Times, a review of THE LAST STAND: Custer, Sitting Bull and the Battle of the Little Bighorn by Nathaniel Philbrick, and EMPIRE OF THE SUMMER MOON: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S. C. Gwynne.

L.A. Times Review of “Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of Little Big Horn”

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

From the L.A. Times:

Nathaniel Philbrick

Viking: 466 pp., $30

For many young and impressionable readers in the 1960s, there was an incisive and hilarious book, Thomas Berger’s “Little Big Man,” that did more than any other to replace the outdated narrative of the Old West as a contest between cowboys (good guys) and Indians (bad guys) with a reversal of roles, portraying European Americans as swashbuckling clods who committed genocide on the good-hearted natives.

George Armstrong Custer, once known as a brave maverick, came across as a deranged maniac in this new story. The battle of Little Bighorn, where Custer and his U.S. Army forces were famously massacred, was transformed from a noble “last stand” into an idiotic boondoggle. Director Arthur Penn’s movie version of “Little Big Man,” released in 1970 and starring Dustin Hoffman, gave this new perspective an even wider audience.

Nathaniel Philbrick, a Nantucket, Mass.-based historian and author of the maritime delights “Mayflower” and “In the Heart of the Sea” admits to having fallen under the sway of “Little Big Man,” as did countless others in our generation, believing it to be more accurate than the pap our parents were fed.

After writing about battles between Massachusetts settlers and natives at the close of “Mayflower,” Philbrick grew curious about the subsequent stages of that struggle, and he shifted his gaze two centuries later to the late 1800s, when the saga of Native Americans neared a tragic crescendo. The story of Custer and Little Bighorn, as an iconic myth at the core of the old civilized-against-heathen storyline and also as a supreme instance of white man’s folly in the “Little Big Man” version, seemed irresistible.

Philbrick set out to find out what really happened at Little Bighorn. It was not an easy task. Because Custer and every one of his officers and soldiers were killed, none could leave an account for posterity. Sioux warriors who were later interviewed by U.S. Army forces apparently “told their white inquisitors what they wanted to hear,” Philbrick notes. The author dug and sifted through previously private letters from soldiers, examined the ship logs on the riverboats that supplied Dakota territory, evaluated Custer’s colorful past and also studied the perspective of Sitting Bull, the Sioux chief who won at Little Bighorn.

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