Search

Sergeant Charles Windolph was the last white survivor of the Battle of the Little Big Horn when he described it nearly seventy years later. A six-year veteran of the Seventh Cavalry, Windolph fought in Benteen's troop on that fatal Sunday and recalls in vivid detail the battle that wiped out Custer's command. Equally vivid is the evidence marshaled by Frazier and Robert Hunt on events leading up to the battle and on the investigation that followed.

In June of 1876, the U.S. government's plan to pressure the Lakota and Cheyenne people onto reservations came to a dramatic and violent end with a battle that would become enshrined in American memory. In the eyes of many Americans at the time, the Battle of Little Bighorn represented a symbolic struggle between the civilized and the savage. Known as the Battle of the Greasy Grass to the Lakota, the Battle of Little Bighorn to the people who suppressed them, and as Custer's Last Stand in the annals of popular culture, the event continues to captivate students of American history. In The Battle of Little Bighorn, Debra Buchholtz narrates the history of the battle and critically examines the legacy it has left. Through government documents, newspaper articles, and eyewitness accounts, Buchholtz situates the material and symbolic impact of the battle at the time. Using popular film and cultural references, she investigates the ways in which the wake of the event continues to shape the way students understand indigenous peoples, the Wild West, and the history of America.

'I highly recommend this book to any one who is interested in nineteenth-century warfare on the Northern Plains or in the life of the American Indian.... This book was a very enjoyable read and greatly increased my knowledge of the Plains Indians.'--Charles H. Bogart, Journal of America's Military PastWooden Leg was one of the sixteen hundred warriors of the Northern Cheyennes who fought with the Sioux against Custer at the legendary Battle of the Little Bighorn. As an old man in his seventies, he related his story of the battle to Thomas B. Marquis, formerly an agency physician for the Northern Cheyennes, in scores of interviews, illustrating his statements with drawings and maps. Some aspects of Wooden Leg's account have provoked controversy, but—as Marquis points out—soon after the battle the Sioux were settled in the Dakotas while the Cheyennes'were located on the reservation in the heart of the region where had been the conflicts. Thus they have kept their memories fresh or have kept each other prompted into true recollections. This advantageous condition has rendered them the best of first-hand authorities.'The author checked and corroborated or corrected all points of importance with other Cheyennes—among them Limpy, Pine, Bobtail Horse, Sun Bear, Black Horse, Two Feathers, Wolf Chief, Little Sun, Blackbird, Big Beaver, Medicine Bull, and the younger Little Wolf—'all of whom were with the hostile Indians when Custer came.'