Tuesday. June 28,1966 Summer Session Kansan
Page 3
Leaend dominates story of Custer's Last Stand
By Robert J. Sterling United Press International June 25,1976
On that day in history, Gen. George Armstrong Custer led five troops of United States Cavalry into their own Valley of Death.
In brief but violent combat (some sources claim the fight lasted only 15 to 20 minutes), Custer and 207 men under his command were wiped out. Another 57 officers, enlisted men and scouts with Custer's subordinate, Maj. Marcus Reno were killed in an accompanying action.
Up to the actual moments of the Last Stand, the facts were fairly simple.
CUSTER HAD BEEN instructed to break up a reported massing of Sioux near the Little Big Horn in Montana. Those orders became the center of controversy. The fiery Custer was told to delay any attack until a force of infantry came up. The two columns—Custer's 7th Cavalry Regiment—and the infantry would converge and snap a scissors on the Sioux.
But the orders also included a verbal admonition to "use your own judgment and do what you think best if you strike the trail."
Student aids in Viet Nam
Robert Morrison, Leavenworth, is one of 40 graduate students, all male, all over 21, and all volunteers, who have been selected from 27 universities to work in Viet Nam and Laos this summer through a grant provided by the Agency for International Development.
Modeled on the success of a similar project last year in which 19 students served in the rural areas of Viet Nam, the program placed 30 volunteers in Viet Nam and 10 in Laos to assist local officials in carrying out development programs.
THE STUDENTS left the United States in mid-June following three days of orientation in Washington. Tennesseean Allan Cameron, who worked in Viet Nam on the summer program last year, is team leader for both groups. He formerly lived in Oak Ridge.
The Institute of International Education, a New York nonprofit firm specializing in people-to-people programs, is in charge of the project under the AID grant.
They will receive no salary during their 10-week tour of duty but will be paid travel expenses and a minimum per diem allowance to cover living costs.
The volunteers will help distribute supplies, work with refugee relief and resettlement, and assist in the continuing development of health, education, public works, and agriculture.
They will be working long hours under difficult, sometimes hazardous conditions. One student, Ted Smith of Fullerton, Calif., was slightly injured last summer when a Viet Cong bomb destroyed a wall of the house in which he was living. His brother Roger is one of the volunteers selected for this year's program.
Kathol will enroll at KU in September
Roger Kathol, the Kansas class AA 880-yard champion from Kapaun high school of Wichita, has signed a national letter of intent to enroll at KU this September. Kathol won the state 880 title with a time of 1:541.
Custer acted with typical impulsiveness.
Kathol is the second 880 champion from the Wichita area to sign with the Jays'.
As soon as he reached the vicinity of the Little Big Horn and the signs of heavy Indian concentrations increased, he held an officers' council. He had been proceeding up the Rosebud River for 28 miles. He had been specifically told not to turn into the valley of the Little Big Horn if the Indian trail led there, but to turn south long enough so the infantry could come up and close the trap.
Custer announced at the Council he would advance into the valley to avoid detection. It was a technical disobedience of orders, followed by another controversial decision. Once into the valley, he spotted an enormous Sioux village and ordered an attack without waiting for the infantry.
HIS COMMAND of 12 troops (companies) was split into four detachments. Maj. Reno was to attack the village frontally with three troops. Custer's five troops were to circle the village and attack it from the other end. Three more troops under Capt. Fred W. Bentene went far to the left beyond Reno to form a third prong. The 12th troop was held in reserve with pack mules.
Custer's plan was demolished in the first minutes of fighting. Reno advanced rather cautiously toward the village, met with heavy resistance, retreated and fought a defensive action to save his own three troops. Benteen received a courier message from Custer to the effect that the Indian force was larger than expected, and "bring packs." Benteen started out to join Custer but wound up going to Reno's rescue instead.
Custer, never knowing that Reno's "charge" had failed, rode confidently into action—and into a massacre. The Indians left enough warriors to keep Reno pinned down in heavy timber, and hurled their main force against Custer. The Last Stand ended a few minutes later on a hot, dusty Montana hillside—and thus was born the Custer Legend.
NINETY YEARS later, the Legend is a strange mixture of gallantry and goofs, of bravery and stupidity. It is only a decade short of a century since the Last Stand, yet for a comparatively minor battle, its details are more hotly debated than Gettysburg. Scores of books, at least a dozen movies and hundreds of articles have been written about Custer's defeat. There are no fewer than 105 paintings of The Last Stand—most of them highly imaginative and inaccurate.
For example, many show Custer, his officers and men fighting with sabers after their ammunition ran out. There was not a single saber in the 7th Cavalry when it started its ill-fated expedition against the Sioux, and there still was plenty of ammunition when the last man went down—in fact, the Indians armed themselves with captured rifles and bullets when they resumed their attack on Reno.
Fact—Partially true. Custer admittedly was a "Glory Hunter." Yet the orders he received contradictory. He violated them in part, but he followed them in part.
Legend—The battle largely hinged on Custer's desire for glory.
Here are some of the other legends and myths about Custer:
Fact—Pure Mond ay morning quarterbacking. Custer's strategy was the accepted technique for fighting Indians and had been followed successfully in previous engagements.
Legend—Custer's fatal decision was to divide his command.
a force of Sioux far exceeding his own strength. But he did not know the Sioux had been joined by the Cheyennes. It is doubtful, however, whether even this knowledge would have made him hesitate. He had unbound confidence in the 7th Cavalry and its ability to defeat a force 10 times its size. While the exact strength of the Indians is unknown, most reputable historians place the approximate number of warriors at between 3,500 and 5,000.
Legend—Custer was defeated because he underestimated the Indian strength.
Fact—Custer expected to meet
Legend — Cpster was betrayed by inferior weapons, while the Indians were using modern repeating rifles furnished by unscrupulous Indian agents.
Fact-The 7th Cavalry's caribines were not the best, but there is little evidence to show that the Indians were better equipped. In fact, many of the Sioux and Cheyenne used bows and arrows.
Legend—Sitting Bull was the chief who master-minded the biggest Indian victory of all.
Fact—Sitting Bull was not a chief, but a Sioux medicine man whose talents were diplomatic and inspirational rather than military. Sitting Bull was a vital figure in the Custer story because it was his drive and personality that held the Sioux-Cheyenne alliance together. But Gall and Crazy Horse of the Sioux were the "field commanders."
Legend—Custer was the last to fall.
Fact—Highly doubtful, Sitting Bull himself is responsible for this myth. Interviewed years later, he described the death of Custer in these words: "Yellow Hair stood like a sheaf of corn with all the ears fallen around him." Actually, Sitting Bull stayed back in the village making medicine and never got close to the fighting. No one knows who was the last to die. Some evidence points to a Sgt. Butler, other historians say it was a Lt. W. W. Cook—a Britisher—whom the Indians praised as one of the bravest men on the field.
Legend—The encounter was bitter, lasted for hours and although Custer was defeated the
Indians suffered many more casualties.
Fact—Total Indian dead numbered less than 50. How many were wounded will never be known, but even if this number exceeded U.S. casualties it did not hide the fact that the Indians won the fight. It is highly probable that Custer's command was eradicated in less than a half hour.
Legend—The villain of the Last Stand was Reno, who could have gone to Custer's rescue but instead allowed himself to be pinned down by a handful of Indians after making a feeble charge.
Fact—Historians will argue Reno's role forever. The failure of his initial attack may not have been his fault—he advanced into an overwhelming number of Indians. But when Gall diverted his attack from Reno to Custer, there is evidence he left only a few hundred Indians to hold Reno in check. Many writers have held that Reno would have suffered Custer's fate if he had attempted to break out. Years after the Massacre, Reno demanded a Court of Inquiry which cleared him of cowardice charges. But the stigma clouded his reputation to the day he died.
Legend—There were survivors of the Last Stand.
Fact—A Crow scout named Curly was supposed to have escaped by hiding in a Sioux blanket. However, anyone wearing a blanket on that hot June day would have been about as conspicuous as a man with a tuxedo on a beach. At least three men, many years after the Last Stand, claimed to have survived the battle. One said he escaped by hiding in the carcass of a dead buffalo. Another told of suffering amnesia and being spared by the Indians because of his mental condition. A third related an account of his horse bolting through the Indian lines and carrying him to a trapper's cabin, where he was cared for until he found his way back to civilization. All three, however, gave names which were not on the 7th's roster.
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The only real survivor of the Last Stand is something called Controversy. Most of the questions will never be answered, nor will Custer's true stature ever be determined without debate. To some, he will always be a brave man who died because of mistakes by others—a martyr whose life was sacrificed on an altar of greed. To others, he was a vain, fool-hardy soldier who deliberately violated orders because of personal ambition.
One thing is certain: Custer died bravely. And the Last Stand of the 7th Cavalry became, in effect, the Last Stand of the Red Man—the final piece of major resistance against the tide of civilization that swept westward, carried alternately by the winds of avarice and progress.
THE TRUTH about Gen. George Armstrong Custer may lie between those two extreme portraits, and the seeds of defeat may very well have been sown by others. By the Indian Bureau, for example—an incompetent, graft-tridden agency which originally suggested an expedition against the Sioux as a little disciplinary action.
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