Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors (79 page)

CHAPTER 4

1. Hyde,
   Red Cloud’s Folk,
   86.
   

2. Hyde,
   Spotted Tail’s Folk,
   50.
   

3. Precisely what happened with the Mormon and his cow (or ox in some accounts) is impossible to state accurately. I base this account on an interview with Frank Salaway (Ricker tablets, Nebraska State Historical Society), because Salaway was there. For the different versions, see Sandoz,
   Crazy Horse,
   3–12; Hyde,
   Spotted Tail’s Folk,
   47–54; Hyde,
   Red Cloud’s Folk,
   72–79; and Olson,
   Red Cloud,
   8.
   

4. Salaway interview, Ricker tablets.
   

5. Hyde,
   Red Cloud’s Folk,
   73.
   

6. Salaway interview, Ricker tablets.
   

7. Ibid.; Hyde,
   Red Cloud’s Folk,
   74–75.
   

8. Sandoz,
   Crazy Horse,
   29.
   

9. Hyde,
   Red Cloud’s Folk,
   75–77; Sandoz,
   Crazy Horse,
   30–39; Salaway interview, Ricker tablets.
   

10. Sandoz,
    Crazy Horse,
    39–41.
    

11. The dreams “represent the culture’s demand that the individual shall conform to its ways along certain limited lines which it lays down by its specific tradition defined in its myths”; Jackson S. Lincoln,
    The Dream in Primitive Cultures
    (New York and London, 1970), 193. See also Hassrick,
    The Sioux,
    266–95.
    

12. The following account of Curly’s dream is taken from a Ricker interview with William Garnett, a fur trader who often translated for the Army. Garnett heard it from Crazy Horse (Curly) in 1868 when he was visiting Crazy Horse’s village. John Stands-in-Timber, a Cheyenne, saw and was told about the sand rock drawing; see his
    Cheyenne Memories,
    105.
    

13. Aside from the Garnett interview, see also Sandoz,
    Crazy Horse,
    104–5. Sandoz knew many of Crazy Horse’s contemporaries and heard the dream second-hand from them.
    

14. Sandoz,
    Crazy Horse,
    45–62.
    

15. Hyde,
    Spotted Tail’s Folk,
    56.
    

16. Hyde,
    Red Cloud’s Folk,
    77; Robinson,
    A History of the Dakota,
    223–24.
    

17. He Dog interview with Hinman, Nebraska State Historical Society; see also Sandoz,
    Crazy Horse,
    69–70, and Hyde,
    Spotted Tail’s Folk,
    56–57.
    

18. Robinson,
    A History of the Dakota,
    224; Hyde,
    Spotted Tail’s Folk,
    60–61.
    

19. Hyde,
    Spotted Tail’s Folk,
    59.
    

20. Robinson,
    A History of the Dakota,
    224.
    

21. Ibid., 224–25; Hyde,
    Spotted Tail’s Folk,
    61.
    

22. Sandoz,
    Crazy Horse,
    76–78, 92.
    

23. Hyde,
    Spotted Tail’s Folk,
    62–63; Robinson,
    A History of the Dakoto,
    225–26.
    

24. It took great courage for Spotted Tail and the others to give themselves up; they expected to be killed. The prisoners spent the next year at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, where Spotted Tail learned many of the white man’s ways and became deeply impressed with the power of the United States—from that time on he was an advocate of peace.
    

25. Robinson,
    A History of the Dakota,
    225–26; Hyde,
    Spotted Tail’s Folk,
    63–65.
    

26. Robinson,
    A History of the Dakota,
    227.
    

27. George Bird Grinnell,
    The Fighting Cheyennes
    (Norman, Okla., 1955), 119–20.
    

28. Grinnell,
    The Fighting Cheyennes,
    120; Sandoz,
    Crazy Horse
    , 95–98.
    

29. Hyde,
    Spotted Tail’s Folk,
    78.
    

30. Sandoz,
    Crazy Horse,
    99.
    

31. Ibid., 105. On the number of firearms held by the Sioux at this time, see Hyde,
    Red Cloud’s Folk,
    132.
    

32. Robinson,
    A History of the Dakota,
    227–30, reprints Warren’s report.
    

33. Details on Curly’s preparation for battle come from a Ricker interview with Chips, Ricker tablets.
    

34. Hinman interview with He Dog, Nebraska State Historical Society; Sandoz,
    Crazy Horse,
    115–18.
    

CHAPTER 5

1. George A. Custer,
   My Life on the Plains,
   ed. by Milo Milton Quaife (Lincoln, Neb., 1952), x–xiii.
   

2. Jay Monaghan,
   Custer: The Life of General George Armstrong Custer
   (Lincoln, Neb., 1959), 4–5.
   

3. Robert Sunley, “Early Nineteenth-Century American Literature on Child Rearing,” in Margaret Mead and Martha Wolfenstein (eds.),
   Childhood in Contemporary Cultures
   (Chicago, 1955), 152–57. “Since moral virtues were associated with cleanliness, order, and regularity of all habits,” Bernard Wishy writes, “it is not surprising that doctors … stressed the earliest possible rigorous toilet training; control by the age of one month was the goal! Even bladder and bowel control represented moral victories, and regular or controlled ‘habits’ as making life easier for mother and child were usually viewed as subsidiary ideals at best. What we call infantile masturbation was classified in a familiar way; it was the first sign of moral and physical degeneration”; Wishy,
   The Child and the Republic: The Dawn of Modern American Child Nurture
   (Philadelphia, 1968), 40. See also Ronald G. Walters, ed.,
   Primer for Prudery: Sexual Advice to Victorian America
   (Baltimore, 1973).
   

4. Marguerite Merington, ed.,
   The Custer Story: The Life and Intimate Letters of General George A. Custer and His Wife Elizabeth
   (New York, 1950), 6.
   

5. Ibid., 4.
   

6. Ibid., 5; Kinsley,
   Favor the Bold,
   2.
   

7. Kinsley,
   Favor the Bold,
   2–3.
   

8. DeBow,
   Statistical Review,
   291.
   

9. Erich Fromm, “Individual and Social Origins of Neurosis,” in Clyde Kluckhohn and Henry A. Murray (eds.),
   Personality in Nature, Society, and Culture
   (New York, 1949), 409, as cited in David M. Potter,
   People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and the American Character
   (Chicago, 1954), 11.
   

10. Merle Curti,
    The Social Ideas of American Educators
    (Paterson, N.J., 1959), 60.
    

11. Ibid., 62.
    

12. Ibid., 63. After an intensive study of nineteenth-century American educators, Curti concluded that “on the whole there prevailed an attitude of reverence and respect for what had been achieved …” See also Wishy,
    The Child and the Republic,
    75.
    

13. Curti,
    The Social Ideas,
    80.
    

14. Ibid., 85–86.
    

15. Kinsley,
    Favor the Bold,
    3.
    

16. Merington,
    The Custer Story,
    5–6; Kinsley,
    Favor the Bold,
    3; Monaghan,
    Custer,
    8.
    

17. Custer,
    My Life on the Plains,
    xvi-xvii.
    

18. Kinsley,
    Favor the Bold,
    3.
    

19. Custer,
    My Life on the Plains,
    xvi-xvii.
    

20. Merington,
    The Custer Story,
    25; Talcott E. Wing (ed.),
    History of Monroe County, Michigan
    (New York, 1890).
    

21. Kinsley,
    Favor the Bold,
    3.
    

22. Merington,
    The Custer Story,
    7.
    

23. Memo at Custer Battlefield National Monument, cited in Monaghan,
    Custer,
    9.
    

24. Kinsley,
    Favor the Bold,
    4; Monaghan,
    Custer,
    10–11.
    

25. Monaghan,
    Custer,
    11–13; Kinsley,
    Favor the Bold,
    5–7. Custer’s correspondence with Bingham is in the Elizabeth Custer Collection, Custer Battlefield National Monument, Crow Agency, Montana; this source is hereinafter cited as Custer Mss.
    

26. Merington,
    The Custer Story,
    6. Wishy, in
    The Child and the Republic,
    78, has a good description of the pre-Civil War American males: “Their characters were like rocks. They had the ability to resist temptation, the easy way, the lures of the world. They did not go ’round about but straight through. Pre-eminently, they were people with at least a genuine aspiration to principle. Many had moral dignity and some were even capable of tragedy. But inseparable from these qualities that may now seem, nostalgically, so admirable, there was, we must not forget, a persistent moral fanaticism, a crippling hunger for absolutism, for the hundred per cent return on a hundred per cent investment in life.”
    

CHAPTER 6

1. George A. Custer, “War Memoirs,” reprinted in Frederick Whittaker (ed.),
   A Complete Life of General George A. Custer
   (New York, 1876), 42; hereinafter cited as Custer, “War Memoirs.” Whittaker was a close friend of Custer’s and worked with Elizabeth Custer on the preparation of his book. Custer’s “War Memoirs” was also printed in
   Galaxy,
   XXII, September 1876. The original is in the Elizabeth Custer Collection.
   

2. Frederic F. Van de Water,
   Glory-Hunter: A Life of General Custer
   (Indianapolis, 1934), Chap. 2.
   

3. See the Quaife introduction to Custer,
   My Life on the Plains,
   xvii.
   

4. Monaghan,
   Custer,
   36.
   

5. Ibid., 42.
   

6. Stephen E. Ambrose,
   Duty, Honor, Country: A History of West Point
   (Baltimore, 1966), 148.
   

7. Cadet James W. Schureman to sister, October 14, 1840, James Wall Schureman Papers, Library of Congress, and Cadet Cullen Bryant to father, June 17, 1860, Bryant Family Papers, New York Public Library; both quoted in Ambrose,
   Duty, Honor, Country,
   148–49.
   

8. Ambrose,
   Duty, Honor, Country,
   150–51.
   

9. Kinsley,
   Favor the Bold,
   9.
   

10. Custer, “War Memoirs.”
    

11. Monaghan,
    Custer,
    35.
    

12. Cadet Thomas Hartz to sister, December 11, 1852, Hartz Papers, Library of Congress, quoted in Ambrose,
    Duty, Honor, Country,
    151.
    

13. Ambrose,
    Duty, Honor, Country,
    153.
    

14. Ibid., 154.
    

15. Morris Schaff,
    The Spirit of Old West Point
    (Boston, 1907), 194.
    

16. K. Bruce Galloway and Robert B. Johnson, Jr.,
    West Point
    (New York, 1973), 64.
    

17. Oliver O. Howard,
    Autobiography
    (New York, 1908), I, 50–51.
    

18. Schaff,
    Old West Point,
    80–81.
    

19. Cadet Henry A. Du Pont to mother, October 16, 1856, Du Pont Papers, Wilmington, Delaware, quoted in Ambrose,
    Duty, Honor, Country,
    149.
    

20. Ambrose,
    Duty, Honor, Country,
    131–32.
    

21. Cadet George W. Cushing to father, November 28, 1854, George W. Cushing Papers, USMA Library, quoted in Ambrose,
    Duty, Honor, Country,
    133.
    

22. Ambrose,
    Duty, Honor, Country,
    133.
    

23. Cadet Thomas Hartz to sister, July 30, 1852, Hartz Papers, Library of Congress, quoted in Ambrose,
    Duty, Honor, Country,
    131.
    

24. Monaghan,
    Custer
    , 19.
    

25. Merington,
    The Custer Story,
    8.
    

26. Monaghan,
    Custer,
    20, 33; Kinsley,
    Favor the Bold,
    9.
    

27. Monaghan,
    Custer,
    33.
    

28. Schaff,
    Old West Point,
    194.
    

29. Ibid., 86.
    

30. Ibid., 67.
    

31. Monaghan,
    Custer,
    35.
    

32. Ibid., 29, 32.
    

33. Custer Mss.
    

34. Ibid.
    

35. Monaghan,
    Custer,
    36.
    

36. Merington,
    The Custer Story,
    9; Custer Mss.
    

37. Ambrose,
    Duty, Honor, Country,
    167–69.
    

38. Lynwood M. Holland,
    Pierce M. B. Young
    (Athens, Ga., 1964), 43.
    

39. Custer, “War Memoirs.”
    

40. Monaghan,
    Custer
    , 37.
    

41. Schaff,
    Old West Point,
    175; Custer, “War Memoirs”; Ambrose,
    Duty, Honor, Country,
    169–70; Monaghan,
    Custer,
    37.
    

42. Schaff,
    Old West Point,
    207–8.
    

43. Ibid, 84.
    

44. Monaghan,
    Custer,
    39.
    

45. Kinsley,
    Favor the Bold,
    13; Monaghan,
    Custer,
    39; Custer Mss.
    

46. Ambrose,
    Duty, Honor, Country,
    175–76.
    

47. Kinsley,
    Favor the Bold,
    13; Merington,
    The Custer Story,
    10; Custer Mss.
    

48. Merington,
    The Custer Story,
    10; Custer Mss.
    

49. Custer, “War Memoirs”; Monaghan,
    Custer,
    43; Kinsley,
    Favor the Bold,
    15–16.
    

50. Custer, “War Memoirs.”
    

51. Schaff,
    Old West Point,
    260; Kinsley,
    Favor the Bold,
    17–18; Monaghan,
    Custer,
    43.
    

CHAPTER 8

1. For general accounts of the Oglalas during this period, see Hyde,
   Red Cloud’s Folk,
   101–87; Sandoz,
   Crazy Horse,
   121–52; and Olson,
   Red Cloud,
   27–214. On Crazy Horse, see Sandoz’ biography; and the Hinman interviews and Ricker tablets, Nebraska State Historical Society. Helen H. Blish,
   A Pictographic History of the Oglala Sioux,
   with drawings by Amos Bad Heart Bull (Lincoln, Neb., 1967), contains the Sioux “history” of the period. Bad Heart Bull, who was much younger than the participants in these events, drew or sketched scenes from various battles on the basis of information given him by the older men. Delightfully precise in detail, they are frustratingly vague about what happened when. On Plains Indian warfare, consult W. W. Newcomb, “A Re-examination of the Causes of Plains Warfare,”
   American Anthropologist,
   1950, 317–29, and Peter Farb,
   Man’s Rise to Civilization as Shown by the Indians of North America from Primeval Times to the Coming of the Industrial State
   (New York, 1968), 112–32.
   

2. Hinman interview with Short Bull, Nebraska State Historical Society.
   

3. Ibid.; see also Sandoz,
   Crazy Horse,
   125–26.
   

4. Hinman interview with Red Feather, Nebraska State Historical Society.
   

5. Hinman interview with He Dog, Nebraska State Historical Society.
   

6. Hinman interviews, Nebraska State Historical Society; see also Blish,
   A Pictographic History
   , 389.
   

7. Ricker tablets, Nebraska State Historical Society. This information comes from Ricker’s own work on Crazy Horse, prepared from various Indian and trader sources.
   

8. Hinman interview with Red Feather, Nebraska State Historical Society.
   

9. Billy Garnett interview, Ricker tablets, and Hinman interview with He Dog, Nebraska State Historical Society; see also Sandoz,
   Crazy Horse,
   174–78.
   

10. Hinman interview with He Dog, Nebraska State Historical Society. On the Crow Owners Society, see Wissler, “Societies and Ceremonial Associations of the Teton-Dakota,” 23–25.
    

11. Sandoz,
    Crazy Horse,
    131–34.
    

12. Hassrick,
    The Sioux,
    121–24; Llewellyn and Hoebel,
    The Cheyenne Way,
    169–71.
    

13. Hassrick,
    The Sioux,
    125.
    

14. Llewellyn and Hoebel,
    The Cheyenne Way,
    172–74; Hassrick,
    The Sioux,
    129–34.
    

15. Llewellyn and Hoebel,
    The Cheyenne Way,
    187; Hassrick,
    The Sioux,
    136.
    

16. Llewellyn and Hoebel,
    The Cheyenne Way,
    192.
    

17. Hassrick,
    The Sioux,
    136.
    

18. Ibid., 136–37.
    

19. Erikson, “Observations on Sioux Education,” 130.
    

20. Sandoz,
    Crazy Horse,
    173.
    

21. Ibid., 133–35; Hinman interviews with He Dog and Short Bull, Nebraska State Historical Society.
    

22. Hinman interviews with He Dog and Little Shield, Nebraska State Historical Society.