Custer at Little Bighorn: A Deep Political Hypothesis

[Charles Drago]

Thanks for looking and rekindling interest in this thread. Our understanding of deep politics can indeed widen and deepen our perspectives on historic events that took place decades, centuries, and even millennia before those we commonly examine here. I'm endlessly curious about Little Bighorn, so I'll re-post my opening thoughts -- EDITED AND EXPANDED -- with the hope that they'll stimulate renewed exchanges.
____________________________________________________________________________________________

The Battle of the Little Bighorn (a/k/a Custer's Last Stand and the Battle of the Greasy Grass) comprises, with Gettysburg and the Alamo. the holy trinity of American military engagements fought in North America. The events of Sunday, June 25, 1876 leading to the annihilation of Brevet Major General George Armstrong Custer's command nucleus of five troops of the 7th U.S. Cavalry along the banks of a narrow, twisting river in the high plains country of what is now eastern Montana remain the subjects of intense scrutiny by an international cadre of scholars, amateur historians, and "buffs."

Literally thousands of books focusing on that engagement and its principal combatants have been published in the intervening 137 years. Yet mysteries and impassioned arguments regarding everything from the development of the battle itself to the motives and even mental states of Custer and at least two of his junior officers continue.

And until the creation of this DPF thread, no one has recognized, let alone analyzed, Little Bighorn as a deep political event.

Without further ado, I offer the following hypothesis:

Deep political forces within the military/industrial complex of the time conspired to embarrass Custer -- and thus neutralize him as a political force viewed as a serious impediment to the fulfillment of Manifest Destiny -- by sabotaging his actions during the Montana campaign. Perhaps due to the fog of war, perhaps intentionally, the "embarrassment" escalated into something far more terrible.

ITEM -- Custer had incurred the undying enmity of President Ulysses Grant. Earlier in 1876, the House Committee on Military Expenditures had conducted an investigation of alleged criminal acts committed by Secretary of War William W. Belknap. Custer was called to testify in the proceedings. He all but confirmed the accusations not only against Belknap, but also against President Grant's brother, Orville.

ITEM -- Custer had incurred the undying enmity of mining and railroad interests. In 1875, Custer had made a solemn, spiritual commitment to the Sioux (hereinafter Lakota) that never again would he take up arms against the continent's tribal peoples. Custer's promise coincided with a meeting between a U.S. Senate commission and Lakota leaders to negotiate the purchase of access to the gold mining fields in the Black Hills (which Custer had discovered a year earlier). The Lakota eventually turned down the government offer in favor of an 1868 treaty that promised U.S. military protection of their lands.

ITEM -- Custer, writing under the nom de plume Nomad in "Turf, Field and Farm," had reached a wide audience with his idealized depictions of "noble savages" and wilderness worth preserving. At its core, the conflict between the indigenous peoples of the North American continent and Americans was and remains a spiritual conflict (ask Leonard Peltier).

ITEM -- Custer's "And we are all mortal" declaration: In his memoir, My Life on the Plains, Custer had written, "If I were an Indian, I often think, I would greatly prefer to cast my lot among those of my people adhered to the free open plains rather than submit to the confined limits of a reservation, there to be the recipient of the blessed benefits of civilization, with its vices thrown in.... The Indian can never be permitted to view the question in this deliberate way.... When the soil which he has claimed and hunted over for so long a time is demanded by this... insatiable monster, there is no appeal; he must yield, or, like the car of Juggernaut, it will roll mercilessly over him, destroying as it advances. Destiny seems to have so willed it, and the world looks on and nods its approval.... Two hundred years ago it required millions to express in numbers the Indian population. Today, less than half the number of thousands will suffice. Where and why have they gone? Ask the Saxon race ... " [emphasis added]

How was the aforementioned "sabotage" carried out?

To reduce a long and complex story to its essence: Custer's attack on the huge village encountered at Little Bighorn was doomed to failure due to the actions and inactions of the subordinate officers to whom he had entrusted command of combat battalions.

Historians continue to try -- in vain -- to explain why the as yet unengaged Captain Frederick Benteen refused to obey Custer's direct, written order, issued at a point in the fight when Custer finally understood the enemy's strength, to ride quickly with his intact battalion to his commander's relief. As Custer's five troops came under fire, and as Major Marcus Reno senselessly ended his all-important charge against the village and retreated in panic across the river to take up a defensive position some five miles distant from Custer's final stand, Benteen casually watered his horses miles from the action and finally came up at a leisurely trot.

Benteen, an avowed Custer hater, found Reno's whipped troops and, rather than rallying them in a march toward Custer, sat impassively within the sound of Custer's volleying rifle fire (an established signal to indicate position and predicament) and allowed his commander's battalion to be destroyed.

I submit that the confusion of historians is in the main to be attributed to the absence of deep political perspective in their analyses of Little Bighorn.

You should not read the absurdly condensed narrative offered above as an argument for George Armstrong Custer's highly developed moral conscience. The Boy General was an opportunist of the highest order. And he was America's first modern public relations creation. (In violation of a direct order, he brought Mark Kellogg, a reporter for the Bismarck Tribune, with him on the final campaign. They died less than a mile apart.)

There is much more to tell. My hypothesis is the basis for a motion picture treatment that I've written and that will be seriously shopped beginning in September. The story of Little Bighorn is a bonanza for sub-plots. The best: The only officer at the Reno-Benteen position who attempted to ride to Custer's aid was Captain Thomas Weir -- the man who Custer suspected of having had an affair with his wife, Elizabeth Bacon Custer. Weir survived the Custer fight only to die -- allegedly of acute alcoholism -- less than six months later. Shortly before his demise, he had written to Libby Custer to note that he knew the "real" story of why her husband perished.

In any event, I hope this little exercise in deep political thinking helps us along as we pursue more contemporary -- but hardly more relevant -- inquiries.