Wandering Lizard

Biographical Notes

George Armstrong Custer

When General Grant assumed the presidency, General Sherman was given command of the army and General Sheridan took his place as commander of the Military Division of the Missouri with headquarters in Chicago, Illinois. During this period gossip had it that both Custer and his wife were having affairs and that their marriage was in trouble. Also during this period Custer took seven months of leave to explore once again a career in finance. He became involved in a mining stock venture that failed and considered going into politics. He courted Democratic politicians and associated openly with his former commander, General McClellan, much to the anoyance of President Grant. In September 1871 he returned to the Seventh Cavalry and was posted to Elizabeth, Kentucky, in command of two companies of the Seventh. While in Kentucky he wrote a series of articles on his frontier experiences that were gathered together into a book entitled "My Life on the Plains." In February 1872 Custer was transfered to Fort Abraham Lincoln on the Missouri River in Montana. The mission of the Seventh was to protect the construction of the Northern Pacific Railroad. In 1873 the Seventh Cavalry participated in the Yellowstone Expedition during which there were several battles with Sioux war parties. Custer was judged to have handled the Seventh well and he was once again described as an extraordinary Indian Fighter. The Northern Pacific Railroad was particularly grateful. Virtually all of the senior officers in the army including Sherman, Sheridan, and Custer regarded the railroad as a "final solution" to the Indian problem. By extending civilization into Indian territory the railroad would force the Indian to submit to the settler. They saw it as their duty to do everything that they could to protect the "iron horse." Custer even wrote an important article favorable to the Northern Pacific.

In November 1873 Custer and Elizabeth returned to Fort Lincoln. In December 1874 Custer captured a Sioux warrior named Rain-in-the-Face who had earlier boasted of having killed three white men from Custer's command. Custer tried him and found him guilty of murder, but he escaped before anything more could be done. (This incident stimulated Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to write "The Revenge of Rain-in-the-Face.) In the summer of 1874 Custer led an expedition into the Black Hills to find a suitable location for a new fort. It is thought that a secondary purpose was to scout the region for gold. On July 30, 1874, Horatio Nelson Ross discovered the first gold. In succeeding days more was found. On their return to Fort Lincoln in August Custer confirmed that gold had been found and set off a gold rush into the Black Hills. President Grant ordered the army to enforce the Treaty of 1868 that proclaimed the area to be part of the Sioux Reservation and closed to Anglo-Europeans. Custer and Sheridan both stated publicly that they would obey orders, but that once the Indian claims to the territory were eliminated by Congress they would support settlers and miners. In 1875 Sheridan named Brigadier General George Crook, commander of the District of the Platte, to lead a second expedition into the Black Hills. Professor Walter P. Jenny of the New York School of Mines accompanied Crook and confirmed the presence of gold. In September 1875 the Allison Commission met with Sioux leaders in an unsuccessful attempt to purchase the Black Hills. In Washington the commissioners recommended that Congress fix a fair price for the land and present it to the Sioux as a fait accompli.

Generals Sheridan, Crook and Custer all believed that the time had come for a military solution. In a meeting on November 3, 1875, with President Grant, a decision was made to look the other way as prospectors flooded into the Black Hills in search of gold and to seek an excuse to use military force against those Sioux who resisted. Zachary Chandler, a friend of Custer, had been appointed Secretary of the Interior and he quickly found the necessary excuse in a report from one of his inspectors. Generals Sheridan, Terry and Crook prepared for war with the Sioux, but Custer appears not to have been privy to their plans. During 1875 and 1876 he wrote a number of articles which were widely published and in some of them severely criticized the Grant administration. The Grant administration was accused of blatant corruption and Custer assisted the critics in proving that it extended to the military post trader operations throughout the west, even though some argued that he himself engaged in less than legal activities from time to time. During 1876 he again flirted with the financial world and lent his name to a stock market scheme that lost heavily. Transportation mogul Ben Halladay cosigned his note for $8,500 in February 1876. At about the same time Secretary Chandler ordered Sitting Bull to move all of his people to the reservation. If he failed to do that voluntarily the military would force him to do so. On February 1, 1876, Secretary Chandler turned the Sitting Bull problem over to the Secretary of War William W. Belnap and Sheridan was ordered to proceed with a winter campaign against the Sioux.

On February 15, 1876, Custer reported to Department headquarters in St. Paul where he found that the Department Commander, Major General Alfred H. Terry, had not adequately prepared for a winter campaign. Weather further delayed things and General Crook's force, which had managed to get off earlier, was forced to retreat back to their base after being mauled in an engagement with Sioux on the Powder River. On March 15 Custer was ordered to return to Washington to serve as a witness in Congressional hearings into corruption charges against the Grant administration. At the end of March and again in early April Custer testified against the Grant administration. The Republican press attacked Custer vigorously and Sheridan joined in saying that Custer's testimony was mere hearsay and frontier gossip. In anger President Grant forbade Custer to participate in the forthcoming campaign. At this point General Sherman befriended Custer and, along with Generals Terry and Sheridan succeeded in convincing President Grant that Custer was needed in the field. On May 17, 1876, Custer led twelve companies of the Seventh Cavalry out of Fort Lincoln as part of General Terry's 1,000 man column. The strategy that was developing called for converging columns led by General Crook from the south, Colonel John Gibbon from Montana, and General Terry's column from Fort Lincoln. None of the generals knew where the Sioux were.

Crook's engagement on the Powder River alerted the Indians that the soldiers were hostile and they gathered together in the Upper Yellowstone River country to consider what action to take. On June 17, 1876, Sioux warriors attacked General Crook's command on Rosebud Creek and forced him to retreat to his base camp to refit. On June 18, the Indians moved their camp site to the Little Big Horn and spent six days celebrating their victory over the soldiers. During those six days an ever larger group of Indians assembled unbeknownst to the soldiers. On June 22, Custer led the Seventh in review before General Terry and pushed up Rosebud Creek following Indian sign discovered earlier by Major Reno. On June 25 Custer led his troops into battle against an unexpectedly large body of Sioux and Cheyenne along with a few Arapahoe. The battle lasted two days. Although many have analyzed the battle there is no real consensus as to exactly what happened except to say that Custer was killed and the Seventh Cavalry was trounced by a superior force ably led by Sitting Bull. Some analysts have criticized Custer's battlefield decisions suggesting that he was out for glory and was over-confident. Others have made him a martyred hero and a symbol of the frontier spirit that settled the West. Still others have made him a symbol of all that was wrong with Anglo-European attitudes and policies toward the Native American. He is buried at West Point, New York.

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