American Experience (1988–…): Season 24, Episode 2 - Custer's Last Stand - full transcript

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The news flashed across
telegraph wires

on July 6, 1876.

George Armstrong Custer and 261
members of his Seventh Cavalry



had been massacred by Cheyenne
and Lakota warriors

near a river called the Little
Bighorn, in Montana Territory.

There were no survivors.

This was a thunderbolt.

The West was won.

How could this happen?

It's like the sinking of the
unsinkable Titanic, you know.

It just doesn't compute.

All across the nation,
in big cities and small towns,

word of Custer's death was
greeted with stunned disbelief.

It's shocking, it's astonishing.

It's not the way
the script was written.

It was not supposed
to end that way.

In Philadelphia,



at the Centennial
International Exhibition,

an exuberant celebration
of America's 100th birthday

was in full swing.

As they marked
their first century,

Americans were in an expansive
and optimistic mood.

The nation had survived
the Civil War,

built a railroad
across the continent,

and was settling the vast spaces
of the interior.

It's two days after the happy
birthday of America.

A century of incredible progress
and achievement

has just been celebrated.

And then comes news that Custer,

this representative
of the victorious military

of the Civil War,

of railroad building,
of pushing back the frontier,

has been wiped out
by a bunch of savages.

He embodied so much of America.

And not just our good impulses,

but very many of our
worst impulses.

Custer was cut down in his
prime, in dramatic fashion.

And it all adds up
to the making of a myth.

There was a famous poster
of Custer's Last Stand

produced by Budweiser
that was probably hung

in every bar
in America at one time.

It shows white men
surrounded by a dark horde,

unwilling to surrender,

white men willing to make
the last sacrifice

as they fend off this enemy.

This became the way
that Americans

of a certain generation came
to understand the American West

and to have an image of what
Custer's Last Stand meant.

For those of us who grew up
in the '50s

playing George Armstrong Custer,

it was the incarnation
of American courage

and the pathos of a Last Stand.

You have this individual figure
on the hill,

his men dead around him,

because of course we all know
Custer died last.

And as with Errol Flynn
with a bullet in the heart

and then falls heroically
to the ground...

This was the way Americans
expressed their courage,

the way Americans died in wars.

He's the central figure

in the last great battle
of the Indian wars.

He really incarnates
one of the fundamental problems

in American history:

"What do we really make
of the progress that we made?"

What did it cost
for the United States

to become the country
that it's become?

What price was paid
and who paid the price?

Standing on that battlefield
on the highest point

and looking at that place,
you can still feel it.

You can still feel that battle.

You can still feel
frightened, anger...

Everything you can feel
is still there yet.

On July 3, 1863,

outside the small town of
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania,

the fate of the Union Army
and the course of the Civil War

hung in the balance.

On the third day
of a climactic battle,

Confederate cavalry
under Jeb Stuart...

The legendary gray horsemen
known as "the Invincibles"...

Threatened to overrun the
Union's vulnerable right flank.

As the overwhelmed Union forces
began to fall back,

only the veteran
First Michigan Cavalry

remained to counterattack.

At that moment,

a figure came riding to the
front of the Michigan lines,

dressed in black velvet,
his saber held high,

yellow hair streaming
in the wind.

It was the 23-year-old
Brigadier General

George Armstrong Custer.

Custer, who's at the head
of this charge,

turns around and shouts,
"Come on, you wolverines!"

And it's a full speed charge.

The horses are screaming
as they slam into each other.

"So sudden and violent was the
collision," wrote one veteran,

"that many of the horses
were turned end over end

"and crushed their riders
beneath them.

"The clashing of sabers,
the firing of pistols,

"the demands for surrender,

and cries of combatants
filled the air."

When it was over,
the Union lines had held,

and Custer's wild charge

had helped win the most decisive
battle of the Civil War.

There is a streak of either
courage or foolhardiness,

and you can take your pick.

But there certainly
is something there

that does lead him to charge
headlong into guns blazing.

And it's a critical moment in
the Union victory at Gettysburg.

It was a giant risk
and he took it and it paid off.

Custer in a battle
was a thing of beauty.

He could direct people with
precision, never get rattled.

I mean, he just had a sense
of physical courage

that was inspiring.

And that's a real gift

when you're out there
in the chaos of war.

And Custer had it.

"Oh, could you but have seen

some of the charges that we
made," he wrote to a friend.

"While thinking of them I cannot
but exclaim, 'Glorious War!""

George Custer
was the first-born son

of a blacksmith-turned-farmer
from New Rumley, Ohio.

From an early age, it was clear
that he was a boy determined

to transcend his lowly origins,

and his self-confidence so
impressed his Congressman that,

despite his lack
of qualifications,

he won a coveted spot
at West Point in 1857.

West Point offered
a marvelous opportunity

for a young man like Custer
to rise socially.

Here was a way
to distance himself

from the community
he had grown up with.

He always wanted to be more.

He really always had a sense
that he wanted to be great.

He wanted to be famous.

He wanted to make his mark
in the world.

West Point is going to provide
him with that opportunity.

That is, of course,

if he can manage
to get through West Point.

Custer excelled at all
the skills necessary

for a promising career
in the cavalry,

but when he was
out of his saddle,

he was in a state of perpetual
rebellion against authority.

He lives on the edge.

He has a tremendous desire
to fit in,

but also to play
with the margins.

He wants to stand out.

He's a risk-taker,
he's a daredevil.

By the time of his graduation
from West Point,

in June of 1861,
Custer's insubordination

had helped him compile
a record of infractions

never before equaled
in the history of the academy.

Custer would finish last
in his class.

But he wasn't stupid
by any means.

Whenever he was running
into serious trouble,

he'd hunker down
and work his way back.

And so in one sense, he led
a chaotic, fun-filled life,

but on the other, there was
a real discipline there.

Although Custer was
fresh out of West Point

when the war began,
his exploits on the battlefield

proved that he was more
than ready for command.

He's a guy who sees his chance
to rise during the war.

And he recognizes that
the only way he...

the only capital he has
is his life.

He's got to put himself
in a post of danger

if he wants
to distinguish himself.

And so he does.

He's on the firing line
with his troops.

He gets horses shot out
from under him

and he dresses
so that he's a mark

for any sniper on the field.

He's got a huge sombrero
with a feather in the cap.

He's got a big scarlet
neckerchief.

He's got a velvet jacket
with gold braid.

He's asking for it.

Custer didn't just look the
part, he acted the part.

He never asked anyone to do
anything he wouldn't do himself.

In the bloodiest war
in all of American history,

he's in the thick
of the fighting

from the first battle
to the last battle.

And he's barely scratched.

It's just absolutely remarkable.

"Custer's luck" he called it,
and he came to believe in it.

Cited for bravery in his very
first engagement,

at the Battle of Bull Run,

Custer distinguished himself

in a string of brilliant
cavalry actions

that made the dashing
young officer

a darling of the nation's press.

The New York Tribune proclaimed,

"Future writers of fiction will
find in Brigadier General Custer

most of the qualities which go
to make up a first-class hero."

The men of his Michigan Brigade,

many of them twice his age,
idolized Custer,

following him into some of the
war's most violent engagements,

proudly sporting the bright red
neckties that he wore.

The Civil War was a time

that called for Custer's
brand of leadership,

somebody who was daring
and brash and inspiring

to the people who fought
underneath him.

Remember, on the Civil War
battlefield

everything is visual.

He has to be a great actor.

He has to get out in front
of his men and perform courage.

And that image of Custer,

not at the back, but at the
front, with his sword out,

that's the Custer that put him
on the cover of Harper's Weekly

and that everybody came
to associate him with.

Now, with his triumph
at the Battle of Gettysburg,

Custer had become one of the
most famous officers of the war.

He was known as
"The Boy General."

He stayed on the front lines

until the very last day
of the conflict,

receiving the flag of truce
when General Robert E. Lee

finally surrendered at
Appomattox, on April 9, 1865.

Custer's most admiring
commander,

Lieutenant General
Philip Sheridan,

gave him the table upon which
the peace terms were signed,

along with a note
to Custer's wife Libbie.

"Permit me to say, Madam,"
it read,

"that there is scarcely
an individual in our service

"who has contributed more

"to bring about
this desirable result

than your gallant husband."

One of the things that's
remarkable about Custer:

the number of photographs
that are made of him.

He understood that there was

a new kind of visual imagery
at work in society

and that it could be
manipulated.

Custer's costumes and his long,
cascading hair, right,

all that cavalier look.

What's he playing into there?

Well, partly he's drawing
on popular literature.

And he's drawing on the legend

of the knight-errant
and the cavalier.

And he kind of mixes them
all together

to come up with this figure.

He grows his hair long

and perfumes his hair
with cinnamon oil.

And he takes pride
in his girlish good-looks

and his fine complexion.

And I think one of the things

that makes him
so prominent as a figure

is the success
with which he mingles

this feminine, masculine,
gentleman, roughneck combination

and brings it off.

There are men who look at him
at the time and think,

"This guy looks like
a circus performer."

There are people who look at
Custer and say, "What a freak."

But most of the time
it's working for him.

Just about every public figure
in the late 19th century

had to have some kind
of theatrical persona.

Custer had a profoundly
theatrical sensibility.

He had a way of arriving
that everyone would see

and would pay attention.

During the months following
the surrender at Appomattox,

Custer would find peace
more challenging than war.

He had won a battlefield
commission

to major general of volunteers,

but was now a lowly captain
in the regular army.

In this post-war army...

it's shrunk from an army of...

At the end of the war
it was something like

a million and a half men
under arms...

To what, 30,000,
something like that.

The officer corps
has shrunk way down.

And nobody's going
to get promoted.

People are going
to spend 30 years

at whatever rank
they happen to be in.

He was not leading men to war
for a good cause anymore.

The military was being
downsized dramatically.

During the Civil War, there was
a battle, it seemed, every day,

I mean, a pace of life that just
could not be sustained.

And suddenly it was over.

He was at sea.

But he really just doesn't know
what to do.

And so he turns
to the one person

that he actually
counts on the most,

the person that has
the most influence over him,

the person who really is the
bedrock upon which he stands,

and that is his wife,
Elizabeth Bacon Custer.

Oh, Autie, we must die together.

Better the humblest life
together

than the loftiest, divided.

Need I repeat to my darling that
while living she is my all,

and if Destiny wills me to die,
my last prayer will be for her,

my last breath
will speak her name,

and that Heaven
will not be Heaven

till we are joined together.

They had first met in the small
town of Monroe, Michigan,

where Custer had come
as a boy of 14

to live with his half-sister

and attend school
at the Stebbins Academy.

He had returned
in the fall of 1862,

a dashing 23-year-old captain

on the staff of General
George McClellan

and one of Monroe's
most eligible bachelors.

Three years younger than Custer,
she was known as Libbie,

the radiant and sophisticated
only daughter

of Monroe's prominent judge,
Daniel Bacon.

She was also one of the most
sought-after girls

at the Young Ladies' Seminary.

Libbie was not immediately
impressed by Custer

when they first met,

but he was so persistent.

He told her that he had vowed
to marry her from the get-go,

and he just kept at it and even
though her father disapproved,

she ultimately was won over by
the fact that she seemed to be

the supreme thing for Custer
in his life.

She was a catch, and she was
pretty, too, and very bright.

And I think that would have
appealed to Custer.

They had a real passionate
relationship

that both of them idealized.

Oh, how dear he is.

I love him so.

His words linger in my ears,
his kisses on my lips.

I forget everything sometimes
when I think of him.

If loving with one's whole soul
is insanity,

I am ripe for an insane asylum.

The two of them put forth

this image of the cavalier
and his lady,

which is very pleasing to Libbie

because she doesn't want
a mundane life,

she wants a life of excitement.

Custer's astonishing rise
through the ranks

swept aside whatever
reservations

Judge Bacon may have had
about the match,

and the couple were married
on February 9, 1864.

After a brief honeymoon,
Custer was called back to duty.

His new wife headed straight
to the front to be with him.

Libbie, contrary to almost
all army officers' wives,

wants to be there.

So she is, in many instances,
in a tent or in a house

very near where the fighting
is occurring.

And this is a pattern
that they would keep to

throughout Custer's life.

She was, in her own way, a very
charismatic, stalwart figure.

There was a sense that his
career was a joint project

between the two of them.

I think Libbie saw in Custer a
kind of aspiration to greatness,

and she wanted to be
a part of that.

When the fighting
forced them apart,

they wrote to one another
incessantly,

in letters that sometimes ran
20 pages or more.

He called her "My Rosebud,"
or "My Darling Sunbeam,"

or sometimes "My Little Durl."

She called him "Autie,"

a childhood rendering of
his middle name, Armstrong,

or "Dear Old Standby,"

or sometimes just "Bo,"
and from the onset,

they saw their lives as
inseparable from one another.

When I think of how successful
I have been of late

and how much has been said
of my conduct and gallantry,

I think, "She will hear of it,
and will be proud of her Boy!"

Remember, I cannot love as I do

without my life blending
with yours.

I would not lose
my individuality,

but would be,
as a wife should be,

part of her husband,
a life within a life.

I was never an admirer
of a submissive wife,

but I wish to look to my husband

as superior in judgment
and experience

and to be guided by him
in all things.

They had a true partnership.

She did everything she could
to promote her husband

because she really felt
that he had something to offer

and, you know,
that he was making history.

Finally, in the fall of 1866,

Custer received an offer
to join the Seventh Cavalry,

a new regiment
being mustered out

to the southern plains
of Kansas and Oklahoma.

He gets promoted to lieutenant
colonel within the regular army.

And he's able to really act
as a major force

in shaping this regiment.

And that becomes his salvation.

In mid-October 1866, George
and Libbie, their cook Eliza,

and Custer's pack of staghounds

arrived at Fort Riley
in northeastern Kansas.

By then, the Western frontier
was awash in conflict.

As railroads continued
to push further west

and new waves of settlers
followed in their wake,

the clashes with Indians on the
northern and southern plains

had intensified.

Eastern reformers
in the Indian Bureau

promoted a policy of tolerance
and accommodation

toward the tribes,

while Westerners demanded
their subjugation,

if not outright extermination.

Like most army officers,

Custer had to operate
under this contradictory policy,

and now he
and the Seventh Cavalry,

serving under Major General
Winfield Scott Hancock,

were charged with chasing down
Cheyenne and Lakota bands

that had been raiding
the new settlements

along the Kansas frontier.

Custer goes out
to the Indian frontier.

It's really the only active
theater of operations.

The struggle
he gets involved with

has been called Hancock's War.

And it's botched from the start.

This isn't like
the Confederates.

The Sioux and the Cheyenne
and the Arapaho,

they don't know the histories
of, say,

Napoleon Bonaparte's armies,
and they don't care.

Custer camps on top of hills

so that he has a view
of the countryside.

Builds big fires.

Well, the first thing
that happens,

the enemy sees him
and goes away.

What he doesn't realize is

he's fighting what we have come
to know as a guerrilla war.

It's not that he doesn't have
courage to show,

it's that he doesn't have
a place to show it in,

because he can't find the enemy

and display the courage
the way he's used to.

Hancock's campaign dragged on
for an entire summer,

and an increasingly restless
Custer

endured a series
of fruitless skirmishes,

inconclusive negotiations,

and miserable rain that mired
his troops in thick mud.

Custer is frustrated.

It's a wild goose chase.

It's a mismanaged campaign.

He's getting nowhere,
he misses his wife.

He's not very happy.

The conditions are just
so different for him.

The soldiers are not of the
caliber that he's used to,

it's a much smaller field
of endeavor,

he's distracted by having
been apart from Libbie

for a long period of time.

And I think
all of these things together

cause him to go off the rails.

While a depressed Libbie waited
for their return to Fort Riley,

Custer's mood darkened

and morale amongst his men
plummeted.

During one particularly
brutal march

along the Republican River,

desertion from his regiment
became so brazen

that one group of men
left camp in broad daylight.

Enraged, Custer ordered
the soldiers tracked down

and told Major Joel Elliott

he wanted him to
"bring none in alive."

Several of the deserters
were killed

and others badly wounded.

On July 13, 1867,

Custer's column limped into camp
near Fort Wallace.

Before his exhausted troops
had time to recover,

Custer suddenly ordered
four officers and 72 men

to accompany him on a punishing
150-mile march to Fort Riley,

lasting 55 straight hours.

He gets word that Libbie
has arrived at a fort

which is quite
some distance away

and force-marches his men
at an incredible rate

in order to get back to her.

And some of the men
who can't keep up,

whose horses become lame,
are left behind.

At least one is killed by
Indians, others are wounded.

The couple spent
only 24 hours together

before Custer returned
to his command,

but an outraged General Hancock
saw to it

that Custer was court-martialed
for abandoning his regiment

and ordering deserters shot
without trial.

It's a very strange moment
in Custer's career.

Custer was impulsive,
he was a risk-taker.

But he was also ambitious,

and this was probably
the most dangerous thing

he ever did to his career.

He seems to have lost control,

and to have just bolted
from a situation

that for all kinds of reasons
he found intolerable.

At Fort Leavenworth,

Custer vigorously defended
his actions, charge by charge.

He was found guilty
on all counts,

suspended from his rank
and command,

and denied pay for a year.

For Libbie, the circumstances
of this court-martial

were truly romantic.

It was Armstrong
coming back to her,

and she said that, you know,
after this long march to her,

they would have
that one perfect day.

I believe that she embraced
that moment so much

because it proved to her

that she was more important
than the army.

He's throwing away his entire
career, and he has to know it,

to be with her.

And so on a personal level,

Custer's ride is an affirmation
of their love.

On a professional level,
it's catastrophic.

Custer's first Indian campaign

had ended in almost
total failure.

He had been unable to find,
let alone fight,

most of the Indian
troublemakers,

his discipline problems had left
his regiment deeply divided,

and his own career
now lay in ruins.

Libbie defended her husband.

"When he ran the risk
of a court-martial,

he did it expecting
the consequences,"

she wrote to a friend back home,

"and we are quite determined
not to live apart again,

even if he leaves the army,
otherwise so delightful to us."

General Sheridan hosted
the couple at Fort Leavenworth

for several months,
but eventually they returned

to a long, hot summer
back in Monroe.

George and Libbie
still had each other,

but it seemed as though the
vaunted run of "Custer's Luck"

had finally run out.

In July of 1868, after a dispute
with a corrupt Indian agent,

Cheyenne warriors attacked
the white settlements

along the Kansas frontier,

killing 15 men
and raping five women.

Within weeks, the entire region

was once again engulfed
in violence.

Determined to bring
the Indians to heel,

Generals Sherman and Sheridan
resolved to use the tactics

that had defeated
the Confederacy

against the Indians of the West.

The thought was that
if we went in the winter,

when the Cheyenne were forced
to stay in their winter camps,

we could capture them.

What Sheridan is doing is
bringing the war to the Cheyenne

in a way that had
never been done before.

Indians raided in the spring
and the summer.

When the grass was high,
their ponies were fat.

During the winter, they hunkered
down in secluded camps,

usually on rivers or streams.

They had always been protected

by the enormous distance
of the West from their foes.

But now Sheridan felt that
his well-supplied troopers

could hunt the Indians down
in their winter camps.

This is ruthless war.

You destroy the will
of the people.

You impoverish them,

you bring pestilence upon them
and break them.

While Sheridan got ready to put
his bold new plan into action,

George and Libbie
were still stuck in Monroe,

and Custer's career
was at a standstill.

He's in serious difficulty,
financially speaking.

He's earning
a little bit of money

by writing
for hunting magazines,

outdoor kind of magazines.

The pay is pretty much
all he has to live on.

He's gone from being major
general of volunteers,

now he's not only lieutenant
colonel of his regiment,

he's a suspended lieutenant
colonel of his regiment.

Whatever glory is being won
is being won by other people.

Libbie and George are
languishing in Monroe, Michigan.

There are still several months
left on the year unpaid leave

when Custer gets a telegram
from Sheridan,

who is leading a new kind of
campaign against the Cheyenne.

Custer is called back

and thus begins the new chapter
of his career in the West.

Sheridan knows
that he can count on Custer

to do the nasty, dirty,
really unpleasant business

that is Indian warfare.

He knew Custer had the vigor,
the energy, and the ambition

to accomplish what was needed.

On November 23, 1868,

Custer and his Seventh Cavalry
left their base...

Called Camp Supply...
In western Oklahoma,

and marching through heavy snow
and bitter cold,

set out in search of Indians.

Three days later,

they struck the trail
of a war party heading south

and followed it until it led
to a Cheyenne village

along the banks
of the Washita River.

Custer had no idea how many
Indians were in the camp,

or whether they were in fact the
hostile warriors he was seeking,

but he was determined to attack.

In the darkness, he divided his
regiment into four detachments

and had them quietly
surround the village.

Then Custer ordered his men

to wait in the freezing cold
for dawn.

The tracks lead
straight into the village

of Chief Black Kettle,

who was renowned
as a peace chief

among the Cheyenne.

And Custer,
following the tracks,

decides to attack the village.

At first light,

with temperatures so cold

the instruments froze
to the musicians' lips,

Custer instructed his band
to strike up his favorite song,

"Gary Owen."

"At last the inspiring strains

of this rollicking tune
broke forth,"

one lieutenant remembered.

"On rushed these surging
cavalcades from all directions,

a mass of Uncle Sam's cavalry
thirsty for glory."

You ride into the village
in the snow,

you're shooting anything
that moves.

You're shooting women,
you're shooting children.

You're shooting old people.

You're shooting people
who are shooting at you.

You're shooting people
who are running away.

You're shooting people
who are trying to surrender.

It's a madhouse.

And a lot of people in Black
Kettle's village are killed,

including Black Kettle himself.

The battle was over in minutes.

103 Indians lay dead.

A handful were warriors,

but many more were old men,
women, and children.

To attack at dawn,

to attack a village
that's full of a few warriors,

a lot of women,
a lot of children,

and to kill indiscriminately,

as often happens
in these battles, right...

I mean, this is
a new kind of warfare,

and it reflects contempt for
Indian people as human beings.

And Custer's right there
at the heart of it.

Five of Custer's men were killed

and a dozen wounded
in the mayhem.

What Custer doesn't realize is
that this village

is actually an outlier,

and that just down the river
are a series of villages

holding many more Cheyenne
and Arapaho Indians

than he expected.

By the end of the day,

those Indians are starting
to come up river

and see where
the Seventh Cavalry is.

Custer then has to get out of
the Washita safely and quickly.

So he marshals his men,

and they start to ride off
toward those other villages.

It's a feint and a fake,
and it works.

The warriors who've been
surrounding them go back

to protect their villages.

Under cover of darkness,
Custer then doubles back his men

and they start heading back
north, toward Fort Supply.

It's actually probably
one of Custer's

most brilliant military
maneuvers.

As they approached the fort,

Custer arranged his column
as if in a parade,

his Osage scouts in the lead,
singing their war songs,

followed by 53 captive
Cheyenne women and children,

escorted by the Seventh Cavalry,
in formation,

their rifles and sabers
glinting in the sun.

But the celebration was dampened

by the news that not all
of the members of the regiment

had returned safely.

Major Joel Elliott
and his company

were missing and presumed dead.

In the midst of the battle,
Elliott and his men had set off

in pursuit of some Cheyenne
warriors and disappeared.

In danger of being surrounded,
and with darkness approaching,

Custer had refused
to search for them.

Their mutilated bodies were
discovered several weeks later.

Some members of the Seventh

believed Custer had deserted
Elliott and his men

and never forgave him.

Foremost among
Custer's detractors

was the regiment's senior
captain, Frederick Benteen.

He feels that Elliott and his
men were abandoned in the field

and that this is unforgivable.

He feels that Custer
is mostly about theatrics

and that he will stop at nothing
to advance his own career,

even getting his own men killed.

He thought Custer was pushing
the envelope way too hard.

And this really got stuck
in Benteen's craw.

He felt Custer had deserted
Elliott at the Washita.

And Benteen was totally
embittered by this.

This caused a rift not only
between Benteen and Custer,

but really a rift
in the entire regiment.

The desertion of Elliott
at the Washita

would haunt the regiment
all the way to Little Bighorn.

Some newspapers back East
claimed Custer was responsible

for an Indian massacre,

but his triumphant version
of events would rule the day.

Custer is hailed as the greatest
Indian fighter on the plains.

Here is the first successful
blow against the Plains tribes

by the United States Army.

And Custer
and the Seventh Cavalry

are praised throughout the East.

In many ways,

the Washita establishes Custer
as an Indian fighter,

and this is his next incarnation
as a warrior

from the Civil War general

and is a very important
way station

on his way to celebrity status
in the culture.

It was "the hardest fought
and bloodiest Indian battle

which has taken place on the
continent during many a year,"

proclaimed the New York Times.

"One or two repetitions
of Custer's victory

will give us peace
on the plains."

Despite the loss of Elliott
and his men,

Custer's exploits
at what had become known

as the "Battle of the Washita"
had made him famous once more,

this time as a hero
of the American frontier.

Custer's salvation
would be the West.

It would be the plains,
where he could ride his horse

as fast as he had ever done
in a cavalry charge

during the Civil War.

It was a new land of exoticism,
of discovery, of danger.

One of the reasons the frontier
is such a powerful myth

is it's about possibility
and self-making.

The West was a story

that everybody who belonged
to the United States proper

could agree upon.

It was a story
about nation-building

and national expansion.

Custer understood the West was
where the next big drama was.

He clearly thought he was
destined for greatness.

He truly felt that all he wanted
to be was great,

to be remembered for all time.

Custer had emerged from the
ashes of a court-martial,

created a stunning victory,
at least in his own telling,

and now the future was his.

The story was quickly passed
from band to band

throughout the northern plains.

Along the banks of the
Yellowstone River in Montana,

a group of warriors

had reached a stand-off
with a surveying party

for the Northern Pacific
Railroad.

Suddenly a chief named
Sitting Bull called out,

"Whoever wishes
to smoke with me, come,"

and began walking
toward the enemy's lines.

Four of his men joined him
and sat down to smoke,

with bullets whizzing
all around them.

"He just sat and looked around
and smoked peacefully,"

his nephew White Bull
remembered,

while others puffed furiously
on the pipe,

"their hearts beating fast."

When it was done, with bullets
kicking up dust by his feet,

Sitting Bull methodically
cleaned out his pipe

with a stick,

then walked slowly back
to his people.

White Bull called it
"the bravest deed possible."

He was the leader
of the Hunkpapa band

of the Teton Sioux, or Lakota,

and he was renowned as a warrior

and for visions that had
the power of prophecy.

Sitting Bull's power,

his rise to power
comes from spirituality.

And he had tremendous visions.

And I really believe
looking at Sitting Bull,

looking into his eyes,
I think you can see it.

Sitting Bull led by example.

He had a history of bravery.

He had the charisma
and he had a spirituality.

He embodied for the Lakota
the kind of person they needed

at a point when they were facing

cataclysmic change
in their lives,

when presented with the
challenge of white civilization.

A few months before Custer's
battle at the Washita in 1868,

the Fort Laramie Treaty

had created the Great Sioux
Reservation, which encompassed

most of the modern-day state
of South Dakota,

as well as millions of acres
of hunting grounds

to the west and north,
including the Black Hills.

The Black Hills was a breath
of life for the Lakota.

Not only was it a place
to get food,

it was a place
of extreme holiness.

It was a place
where they would be born,

a place where they would live,

they would die,
that they much respected.

They had a lot of sacred areas
in the Black Hills.

It was their backbone, it was
a place that was their creation.

Sitting Bull coined the phrase,
the "food pack,"

to think about the Black Hills,

something you carry
with you on a journey

where you hold some kind
of reserves for yourself.

The Black Hills were
those reserves for them.

By the terms of the treaty,

these lands had been granted
to the Sioux forever,

and in return they were supposed
to cease their hostilities

against the Americans
and live peacefully,

accepting rations
from the government

at offices known as agencies
on the reservation.

The majority of the tribe
had followed this course,

but Sitting Bull
had remained defiant,

refusing to even acknowledge
the treaty, let alone sign it.

He and his followers,

whom General Philip Sheridan
branded as "hostiles,"

traveled with the buffalo herds
as they always had,

frequently clashing
with railroad workers

and white settlers,

stirring up trouble
on the reservations,

and luring Indians away
from the agencies every summer

to hunt buffalo.

Sitting Bull and his people

simply refused
to come into the agencies.

They were conservatives.

Conservatives, socially.

Conservatives, spiritually.

They were determined to adhere
to an old way of life.

Sitting Bull had nothing
but scorn for the Sioux

who had chosen life
on the reservations.

"You are fools to make yourself
slaves to a piece of fat bacon,

some hard tack, and a little
sugar and coffee," he said.

"The whites may get me at last,

but I will have good times
till then."

For the moment, Sitting Bull
remained defiant,

a symbol of resistance
for his people,

but in the mind
of General Sheridan,

a day of reckoning
was fast approaching.

During the years
of Sitting Bull's ascent,

Custer was doing
everything he could

to keep himself
in the public eye.

He organized celebrity buffalo
hunts on the Kansas plains,

led a railroad survey expedition
deep into Lakota territory,

and wrote a series of articles
about his exploits

for the Galaxy magazine.

Then, on a wintry evening
in November of 1873,

the Custers arrived
at their new post,

Fort Abraham Lincoln,
in Dakota Territory.

After being broken up and
assigned to peacekeeping duties

all across the South,

the Seventh Cavalry was
at last being reunited

to project American power
onto the northern plains.

Fort Lincoln was to serve as the
regiment's, and the Custers',

first real home.

Perched on high ground

on the western shore
of the Missouri River,

just south of the town
of Bismarck,

the fort was built to help
protect the crews

working on the Northern Pacific
Railroad.

In the dim light, I could see
the great post of Fort Lincoln,

where only a few months before
we had left a barren plain.

Our quarters were lighted,
and as we approached,

the regimental band played
"Home, Sweet Home,"

followed by the general's
favorite, "Gary Owen."

The general had completely
settled the house,

but he had kept this fact
a secret, as a surprise.

Our friends had lighted it all

and built fires
in the fireplaces.

It seemed too good to believe
that the Seventh Cavalry

had a post of its own.

He and Libbie have
a nice headquarters.

They entertain.

They have musical evenings.

They have theatrical evenings.

They provide amusement and
a social life for the officers

who were serving under them
at the fort.

They're glamorous
and they're sociable.

They're celebrities.

It's a very happy time.

Part of the beauty
of this little utopia

was that it was a family utopia.

He had reinvented in many ways

the circumstances
under which he grew up.

His younger brother Tom
was there.

And then his sister Maggie
married Lieutenant Calhoun.

Boston Custer, the youngest
of the Custer brothers,

would join them.

And so this truly became
a Custer enclave

in the northern plains
of North Dakota.

Custer liked being surrounded
by people who loved him.

It was like a little
microcosm of society,

and Custer
was at the center of it.

Not everyone
in the Seventh Cavalry

was welcomed into Custer's
charmed circle,

what one new lieutenant
dismissed as the "Royal Family."

Officers with little tolerance
for Custer's narcissism...

Like Frederick Benteen,

and the senior officer of the
regiment, Major Marcus Reno...

Were banished to more distant
outposts in the territory.

But if the divisions within
the Seventh bothered Custer,

he didn't let it show.

"One was permitted
to receive the courtesies

of the happiest home I ever
saw," one visitor enthused,

"where perfect love
and confidence reigned."

Libbie's ambition
was equal to Custer's.

But you had to be
a little more indirect

if you were a woman
in the 19th century.

And so she saw her project
as her husband.

Libbie was more
politically astute,

had a better social IQ,
could read people.

Custer was Custer.

He could read things
in the middle of battle,

but when it came to
everyday encounters,

he could really miss it.

And so Libbie was
there often saying,

"Now wait a minute, George.

Now you sure you want
to say that?"

They were truly the power
couple of their day.

George and Libbie Custer,

they were young,
they were beautiful.

They were childless.

And I think the assumption
was there would be children.

And that was not to be.

Although Libbie in particular
yearned for a large family,

both she and George eventually
tried to make a virtue

out of their circumstances.

"How troublesome
and embarrassing

babies would be to us,"
George comforted Libbie.

"Our pleasure would be

continually marred
and circumscribed."

They seemed to have this kind
of domestic aura about them.

In reality, behind the scenes
there are plenty of indications

there was trouble
in that marriage.

He loved playing cards
and gambling.

He loved risk.

And one can speculate that it
wasn't all that easy a marriage,

some of the time at least.

During his frequent trips
to New York and Washington,

Custer made no secret
of his nights on the town,

often in the company
of socialites and opera stars.

He is always writing
in his letters from New York

about other women
that he spent time with.

He seems to have, I would call,
a childish need

to show that other women
admire him

and to parade this
before his wife.

They were separated for the
Christmas season of 1869.

We don't really know why.

We do know that George
sent Libbie a letter

saying, effectively,

"I wish you wouldn't be
so angry.

She means nothing to me."

Sometimes she wouldn't
write him at all.

And then he would be
begging for letters.

The low point of their marriage
was in December of 1870.

Custer was alone and they
would spend Christmas apart

for the second year in a row

and he wrote a long,
contrite letter to Libbie.

And he promised never
to play cards again,

but he also went on
to talk about

inexcusable behavior on his part

and that he was afraid
that he had ruined

the very best relationship
that he'd ever had.

I think the reconciliations

were highly emotional,
highly romantic.

I think the two of them
needed each other.

On July 2, 1874,
as his band played

the regimental battle song,
"Gary Owen,"

Custer and the Seventh Cavalry
set out west

from Fort Lincoln on an
expedition to the Black Hills.

Libbie was not with them.

"At the very last, news came
through Indian scouts

that the summer might be full
of danger," she recalled,

"and my heart was almost broken
at finding that the general

did not dare
take me with him."

The expedition's stated purpose

was to scout a new location
for a fort,

so that Sheridan could exert
more control

over the so-called "hostiles"

that ranged across
the reservation.

Publicly, the United States
government continued to support

the Lakota's rights
to the Black Hills.

Privately, however,
Washington was determined

to provoke a conflict
with Sitting Bull

and unleash a rush
of white settlement

that would render the Fort
Laramie treaty meaningless.

Everybody knows that
this is an expedition

whose purpose is to get
the public interested

in seizing the Black Hills.

Custer is there not just
to explore the Black Hills,

he's there to publicize
the discovery.

It's a tremendous affair.

A thousand soldiers, 110 wagons.

There are 70 Indian scouts.

There are geologists, botanists.

Four newspaper reporters.

And probably the most important
people of all,

two miners who are there

to search for whatever minerals
might happen to be there.

The Black Hills expedition could
not have been better tailored

for Custer's talents.

It was like a circus,
and Custer was the ringmaster.

This was a big stage for him,
and he took advantage of it.

Over the next few weeks,

as the huge wagon train
moved south and east

through the Black Hills,
Custer was everywhere at once.

My Darling Sunbeam,

your dear Bo can't send
a very long letter,

though with volumes to say.

After dinner, when we reach
camp, I usually take an escort

to search out a few miles
of road for the following day,

and when I return,
I am ready to hasten

to my comfortable
but oh-so-lonely bed.

Reveille regularly
at quarter to 3:00.

Breakfast at 4:00.

In the saddle at 5:00.

We have discovered a rich
and beautiful country.

Custer is somebody who's...

has a kind of restless energy
that can't be contained.

So this expedition
was perfect for him

because it gave him all
of the opportunities for him

to pursue his various
interests and hobbies

and to do so in front of a very
watchful eye of reporters

who had come along
for the journey.

He was teaching himself
taxidermy

and collecting specimens

that were then being sent to
some of the major repositories

throughout the country.

He shoots a bear and then has
a photograph of himself taken

in this buckskin outfit.

In a way, presenting himself
as a kind of frontier hero.

To a public that had grown up

on the novels
of James Fenimore Cooper,

that photograph
was really powerful.

And Custer's using
the Black Hills expedition

as a kind of stage for himself,
to build his public reputation.

Throughout their nearly
four weeks in the Black Hills,

the men saw surprisingly little
sign of hostile Indians,

and gradually the expedition
took on the air of a picnic.

He describes the Black Hills
as earth's paradise.

There's a wonderful scene where
he describes the cavalrymen

riding through meadows
of wildflowers and grasses

that come up so high

that the horses are, like,
wading through them.

Throughout the expedition,
Custer writes official reports

that he knows are going to be
quoted heavily in newspapers.

So the newspapers
of the East Coast and Chicago

are quoting from him
extensively.

It puts Custer back
on the front pages.

And of course the headline
that lands Custer

on the tip of every tongue

is of one four-letter word:
gold.

The first glint
in the surveyors' pans

had turned up at French Creek
on July 30, 1874.

"From the grassroots down,
it was pay dirt,"

proclaimed the Chicago
Inter-Ocean,

while the Bismarck Tribune
announced

that Custer's discovery

"bids fair to become
the El Dorado of America."

Custer has a great phrase.

He says, "We found gold
among the roots of the grass."

And he creates this image
in that phrase

that you just go there,
you're a farmer, right,

you're going to just
plow up the land.

You're going
to plow up the land.

First you dig up the gold,
you put the gold in the bank,

then you put your wheat
in the ground.

It's 1874 when the news
hits the public

that there's gold
in the Black Hills.

And this is a time of depression
in the United States.

And so those men who...

and some women
who can outfit themselves

get their equipment
and head to the Black Hills

to mine for gold.

The position of the U.S.
government is

that miners are going
to invade that country

and there's going to be
a war with Indians,

and that is inevitable.

Custer arrived back at Fort
Lincoln on August 30, 1874,

amidst a flood of positive press
about his expedition.

But William Curtis,

the correspondent
for the New York World,

had a premonition
about the journey.

"We are goading the Indians
to madness

by invading
their hallowed grounds,"

he wrote before
the expedition set off,

"and throwing open to them
the avenues

leading to a terrible
revenge."

When Custer's out on the plains,

he's writing a column
for a sportsman's magazine

about hunting.

And he takes a pen name...
Nomad, he calls himself.

And this is the period when
he starts to think about

and talk about his enemies,
Indian enemies, and saying,

"If I were an Indian, I would
want to be with the men

"who are today fighting me.

I would want the free,
open, wandering life."

He embodies and exhibits this,
this kind of weird polarity,

this weird conflict in the way
Americans think of Indians.

Custer had kind of
a tortured relationship

with native peoples.

He identified with them
very strongly,

prided himself in his knowledge
of their rituals and lifestyle.

And so that at one point
he's embracing them

and in many ways imitating them,
but on the other side,

he was part
of white civilization

and saw them as a primitive race

that were going to eventually
melt into the shadows.

Violence is such
a central part of this story

where through this
violent dispossession

of the native peoples,
we can create our destiny.

That is a tortured legacy.

That is something that is hard
to feel proud of and good about

when you're defeating a people
with whom you have no issue

except for the fact
that they're in the way.

By the fall of 1875,

just over a year after Custer's
expedition to the Black Hills,

more than 15,000 miners
had flooded into the region,

establishing the towns
of Custer and Deadwood.

The government had offered
to buy the Black Hills

for six million dollars,

but the Lakota
had turned them down.

Elements from Sitting Bull's
camps come down

and threaten to kill any chief
that touches pen to paper.

The government has continually
made treaties with Indians

and usually
you can adhere to them

for at least, you know,
ten or 20 years,

at least a generation,

and well, now,
gold in the Black Hills means

that we're going to have
to abrogate this treaty

a little quicker.

The government's interest
in the Black Hills

would in a sense play
into Sitting Bull's hands.

He was really looking for a way
to pull his people together

in the face of this threat
coming from the East.

Sitting Bull has decided
that he will not negotiate

with the United States
government.

And he continues
to recruit Indians

who want to come out with him
during the summer and hunt.

He's trying to gather
a kind of Lakota resistance

to this incursion.

Finally, on November 3,
President Ulysses Grant

convened a meeting of his top
cabinet officers and generals

to discuss the administration's
Indian policy.

Still handcuffed by the terms
of the Fort Laramie treaty,

but determined to eliminate
one of the last pockets

of Indian resistance
in the West,

Grant and his generals
made two fateful decisions.

They would do nothing to prevent
white miners

from flooding
into the Black Hills.

And they issued an ultimatum:
any Lakota or Cheyenne

that refused to come in
to the agencies

by the end of January 1876
would be considered hostile,

and the Army would be used
to bring them in.

Sheridan would later look
to this as almost a good joke.

This insistence that they come
into the reservations

through all this heaping snow
of the northern plains winter

was patently ridiculous.

What they were doing
was forcing the issue,

was creating a dirty little war

that would serve the agenda
of American imperialism.

There's really no other way
to look at it.

It was a calculated strategy

to force the Lakota
to sell the Black Hills.

Custer was the natural choice
to lead such an operation,

and it couldn't have come
at a better time.

At 36, he was no longer
a young man,

and while most of his energy
was focused

on winning another victory
against the Indians...

One that he hoped
would garner him

a coveted promotion
to brigadier general...

He and Libbie would spend
much of the winter of 1875

on the East Coast,

looking for other ways
to secure their future.

Custer is still trying
to figure out what's next.

So he's in New York, he's trying
to meet with important people.

He's hobnobbing with rich
people, actors and actresses.

This is the society he moves in,

the society of wealth,
refinement, power.

And yet he feels outside of it.

Despite his fame
and despite all the glory

that he had won
in his brief lifetime,

it hadn't led to any kind
of financial security.

And he wants
that financial security

that will come with some money
in his pocket,

because you can't eat fame.

He tells Libbie his ideal in
life is to go back to New York,

become a rich man, and have
a mansion on Fifth Avenue.

He's looking for business deals.

He was a terrible businessman,

but he always thought
that maybe the next one

would be his chance
to make it big.

And unfortunately
he's also gambling

and he's losing
a lot of money that way.

He's in financial trouble.

He's been investing
in risky stock options

and silver mines
that are unprofitable.

And he's on the brink
of financial ruin.

The Black Hills expedition is
a couple of years in the past

and nothing much
has been happening.

Custer pinned his hopes
on a lucrative lecture tour

he had arranged with
the Redpath Speakers Bureau.

"When I tell you the terms,
you will open your eyes,"

he wrote to his brother Tom
in January.

"They urged me
to commence this spring,

but I declined, needing
more time for preparation."

Then, in late March,

while readying his regiment
for the coming campaign,

Custer was called to Washington.

He appeared in front of
a congressional committee

trying to discredit the Grant
administration's handling

of contracts at Indian agencies
on the frontier.

Custer's testimony
was mostly hearsay,

but he did manage to accuse
the president's brother Orville

of influence peddling.

Grant is furious and decides

he's going to keep Custer
on the sidelines.

Custer in fact tries
to go to the White House

to apologize to Grant,
and Grant refuses to see him.

Grant would respond

by stripping Custer of command
of the Seventh Cavalry,

saying that he could not go out
in pursuit of Sitting Bull.

For Custer, this was
the lowest of the low.

I mean, here he was,

he was on the edge of what might
have been his final campaign

to win the glory that could
give him all sorts of honors,

and this testimony
had tripped him up

and now he had none other
than the president

of the United States
against him.

Custer was reduced to pleading
with Grant for his career.

"I appeal to you as a soldier,"
he wrote to the president,

"to spare me the humiliation

"of seeing my regiment
march to meet the enemy

and I not to share its dangers."

Grant was unmoved,

but Sheridan and Brigadier
General Alfred Terry

both desperately wanted Custer
in the field.

In the end, it's General Terry
who saves him.

Terry is not an Indian fighter,
he's been an administrator.

And he's a good deal older
than Custer.

And he realizes that Custer
is probably his best bet

as far as leadership

and accomplishing the objectives
of his department.

So he helps Custer draft
a letter that pleads his case

and gets Custer reinstated.

But with a caveat that Terry
will be leading the column.

Custer's like a kid

who is always getting
into trouble in school

but is so charming that his
smile will get him through it.

And so he's heading west again
in '76 in search of redemption,

as well as in search of glory.

Custer had incredible success
at a very young age,

and the qualities
that made him a success...

His daring, his flamboyance...
Were qualities of youth.

And I think throughout
his entire life,

he worried that the clock
was running out

and that if he didn't achieve
a kind of permanent glory

before a certain point
in his life,

he would never have the chance.

He was somebody who was
really preparing

to kind of go for broke.

Custer's best friend in life

was a Shakespearean actor
named Lawrence Barrett.

And in the winter of 1876,

Barrett was in New York starring
as Cassius in Julius Caesar.

Custer loved the theater.

As Libbie would say, he would
watch a play like a child,

weep when it was sad, laugh
outrageously when it was happy,

that kind of thing.

And if you read Julius Caesar,

the end of that play
is quite interesting

because there you have Cassius
and his friend, Brutus,

they have murdered Caesar
for the good of Rome

and now they're being attacked

by Caesar loyalist Mark Antony.

And they're in a battle,
the battle for their lives.

And the decision is made
to fall on their swords.

And Brutus, with whom Custer
must have identified, would say,

"I shall have glory
by this losing day."

Custer would see his friend
in Julius Caesar

at least 40 times
during that winter.

On May 10, 1876, as General
Terry and a chastened Custer

arrived in Bismarck to ready the
Seventh Cavalry to head west,

President Grant presided
over the opening

of the Centennial International
Exhibition in Philadelphia.

It was a grand affair
with over 200 buildings,

featuring scores of exhibits,

including a giant Corliss
steam engine,

a new condiment known
as Heinz ketchup,

and Alexander Graham Bell's
telephone.

More than 186,000 people
were in attendance.

The Philadelphia centennial
celebration

is this amazing kind of thing.

Americans come from all over the
place to, you know, to see this.

And there's fantastic technology

and everything looks like this
brilliant bright kind of future

and it's celebratory
and the Civil War is over

and the sense that Indians

are going to pose
any kind of threat, right,

to this American future
that's steam rolling forward...

nobody really believes that.

Custer knows
the exposition is on

and if he can just get a victory
during the exposition,

what a great backdrop for him.

And a huge amount of press
coverage and public adulation

will surely follow
his inevitable victory

over the Sioux and the Cheyenne.

The Seventh Cavalry departed
from Fort Abraham Lincoln

on May 17 and headed west.

Grant's ultimatum
had come and gone,

and Sitting Bull and his band
were still at large.

Terry and Custer
had been ordered

to force them
onto the reservation

or destroy them in the process.

"Although we had seen
the men start out

on many long campaigns in those
seven years on the plains,"

Libbie recalled later, "we knew
that this was different,

and we all felt that it might
have very serious results."

Unable to stay behind,

Libbie accompanied the regiment
on its first day's march.

Riding near the front
with her husband,

she looked back at the column
and saw an astonishing sight.

As the sun broke through
the mist, a mirage appeared

which took up about half
of the line of cavalry,

and thenceforth for a little
distance it marched,

equally plain to the sight
on the earth and in the sky.

It seemed a premonition in
the supernatural translation

as their forms were reflected

from the opaque mist
of the early dawn.

She comforts herself
with the idea

that Custer's luck has always
stood him in good stead.

And he doesn't seem
to be troubled.

He hopes to be back
in the summer

and that they will have
time together.

He looks forward to being
on the lecture circuit

and making money.

Finally, he leads his men off
and he stood up in the stirrups,

he turned around,
he waved to her,

and that was the last
that she ever saw.

The Seventh Cavalry
numbered 670 men,

divided into 12 companies,
each commanded by a captain,

as well as a company of guides,
interpreters, and Indian scouts,

mostly Crow and Arikara,

who, as lifelong enemies
of the Lakota,

had allied themselves
with the Americans.

Custer's staff included
his adjutant,

Lieutenant William Cooke,

his brother Tom as aide-de-camp,

his other brother Boston
as a guide,

and his nephew Autie Reed,
who came along as a civilian.

Custer's brother in-law,
Lieutenant Calhoun,

was one of the company
commanders.

The younger officers were
solidly behind Custer,

even dressed like Custer
in buckskin.

And if not worshiped him,
would follow him anywhere.

But always there was Benteen
and those few officers

who did not see Custer
as the God-given answer to all.

And this would mean that
there was always an edge

to whatever happened
in the Seventh Cavalry.

One man who was not welcomed
into Custer's confidence

was Major Reno.

An officer
with an undistinguished

Civil War record,

a brooding and dark countenance,
and a weakness for whiskey,

Reno harbored ambitions
to lead the Seventh Cavalry,

but his chance at glory
had never come.

The Arikara referred to him
as the man with a dark face.

And that really was him.

There was a cloud over him
and he always seemed like

he needed to do something
to right a wrong

that had somehow been
smoldering inside him

pretty much all his life.

General Terry's plan
was for the army

to put three columns
into the field.

He and Custer would lead
1,200 men from Fort Lincoln

and head west,

while 440 men
under Colonel John Gibbon

would march east from Montana,

and General George Crook
would lead 1,100 men

northward from Wyoming.

All three columns would converge

on an area
of the Upper Yellowstone

and its north-flowing
tributaries,

the Powder, Tongue, Rosebud,
and Bighorn rivers,

where the Indians were supposed
to be encamped.

The steamboat Far West

would meet the troops on the
Yellowstone with supplies.

Terry's overall plan
for the campaign

called for three converging
columns

to move into
Sitting Bull's country.

The idea was never

that the columns would converge
and attack together,

but the hope would be

that one column would drive
the Indians into another column.

Everyone was worried
about the Indians escaping.

The mania was, "How will
we ever catch them?"

There's no worry about
how many Indians there are.

Nobody's worried about that.

Out on the trail at last,
Custer was in high spirits,

and despite Terry's orders
to remain with the group,

he and his brothers
repeatedly disappeared

on impulsive hunting
and exploring jaunts.

Almost as soon as
the march starts,

he's doing everything he can
to stray from the column.

He and his brothers
are having a great time

raising hell on the plains.

And Terry's getting increasingly
frustrated until finally,

Terry chastises Custer and says,

"Look, you've got to stay
with the column."

By June 9, the expedition
had followed the Yellowstone

to its confluence
with the Powder River.

Then, perhaps to punish Custer
for his skylarking,

Terry sent Major Reno
and half the regiment south

to scout the Powder River basin

in search of Sitting Bull's
band.

The decision to put Reno
in charge

stunned the rest
of the regiment.

"It has been a subject of
conversation among the officers

why General Custer
was not in command,"

one lieutenant confided
to his journal,

"but no solution yet
has been arrived at."

Custer is left to lead
the rest of the regiment

towards a rendezvous.

But on the way, they come across
an abandoned Lakota winter camp

where hundreds,
perhaps thousands of Lakota

had spent the winter.

And there he finds evidence
of a soldier

who had apparently been beaten
to death, tortured to death

and his body eventually burned.

And Custer sees the skull,
looks down on it,

and is clearly moved
in some way.

And it's at that point

that they camp right beside
this Indian burial ground.

And Custer seems to have been
in the mood for revenge,

and he leads his brothers
and some other officers

in a systematic desecration
of this burial ground.

He and his brothers
had a great old time.

They would write letters

about the great stuff
that they had gotten.

But for some of the other
officers and soldiers,

this was pretty horrifying
stuff.

Four days later, Reno rejoined
the regiment with exciting news.

Contrary to his orders and
against everyone's expectations,

he had crossed over to the
Rosebud and found a large trail

that could only have been made
by Sitting Bull's village.

Reno had followed the tracks
for several miles,

but with his provisions
dwindling,

he had eventually decided
to turn around

and rejoin the column.

Custer was outraged.

He said, "Reno, if you see this
village, why didn't you pursue?"

He thought it was an expression
of cowardice.

This was one of those things
that military people did.

If you knew you would get
a great victory,

even though it was contrary
to orders, you did it.

And Reno, after thinking
about it for a while,

decided not to pursue
the Lakota.

Custer couldn't understand this.

That night, Custer was
so insulted by Reno's caution

that he penned an anonymous
letter to the New York Herald,

impugning Reno's courage.

"Faint heart never won
fair lady," he wrote,

"neither did it ever pursue
and overtake an Indian village."

On June 21, at the confluence of
the Yellowstone and the Rosebud,

Terry gathered his officers
in his cabin on the Far West

and unveiled his revised plan.

Major Marcus Reno was not
invited to the meeting.

Terry ordered Custer

to pick up the Indian trail
that Reno had found,

but then, instead of following
it, to loop south,

until he and Gibbon could
converge on the Indians

from the north.

Custer was a known quantity.

You knew what you had with him.

And to expect him to delay
for a day and a half

while Terry and the rest of the
column positioned themselves

was an absurdity.

What Terry was doing
was making sure

that if everything went well,

he was in a good position,
because it was a great victory.

If everything went poorly,
he was covered,

because Custer had to break
orders to attack the Indians

in the way that they all knew
he would.

Terry absolutely knew
that if he let Custer loose,

Custer was going
to find the Indians

and Custer was going
to attack the Indians.

Custer didn't slip the leash,
the leash was released

and he was... off he went.

He's just like... he's like
one of those wolfhounds

that he loves so much.

He's absolutely on the scent
and he's going 90 miles an hour.

Nothing is going to stop him.

Everybody knew that.

That's why he's there.

As Gibbon's chief of scouts
recorded in his diary,

"If Custer is to arrive first,

he is at liberty to attack
at once if he deems prudent."

"He will undoubtedly exert
himself to the utmost

"to get there first

and win all the laurels
for himself and his regiment."

Their assumption with fighting
the Plains Indians

was that they weren't
very good at fighting.

That is,
they won't stand and fight.

They'll snipe at you,
they'll hold you off,

and then they'll scatter
and run.

Charging into the village from
a number of different directions

was Army doctrine at the time.

Since the Indians
have no command system,

they don't know which way
to run to fight you.

And therefore
they'll become demoralized

and they'll flee or surrender.

So you should be able to defeat
a much larger Indian force

with a smaller force of cavalry.

On June 22,
Custer and his regiment,

along with a pack train of mules

carrying rations and ammunition,

bade farewell
to Terry and Gibbon.

As they rode off,
Gibbon called out,

"Now, Custer, don't be greedy;
save some for us."

"No," Custer replied,
"I will not."

Five days before Custer set off,

General George Crook and his
Wyoming Column were relaxing

along the banks of the Rosebud.

Suddenly, a large force of
Lakota and Cheyenne warriors

came pouring
out of the mountain.

Crook's men tried desperately
to defend themselves

as wave after wave
of Indians attacked.

Only the brave fighting of
their Crow and Shoshone scouts

prevented the Wyoming Column
from being overrun.

The next day, a shaken Crook
retreated south.

Never before had Indians so
boldly attacked him, in force,

and kept up a battle
all day long.

He eventually sent a report back
to General Sheridan in Chicago,

but he made no effort to inform
Terry of what had happened.

A real sea change was occurring

in terms of the population
of the Lakota and Cheyenne.

It was moving out
in support of Sitting Bull,

who had put out the call,
"Come on out," you know,

"This may be our last summer
out here on the plains.

"There's a lot of buffalo.

"Look what they're doing
with the Black Hills.

Come on out."

People start coalescing
around Sitting Bull.

People start leaving
reservations

to gather up together,

to provide one sort
of massed group

that are going to fight off
this, you know,

this incursion and this...
and this direct threat.

And so there was a desperation,

there were people
coming together,

there were warriors coming
together and joining forces,

and so they started
gathering and gathering.

And soon the Little Bighorn
valley is teeming with life.

A vast pony herd numbering
in the thousands.

And not just hundreds of people,

but in the great camp
circles there,

there are thousands
upon thousands of people,

perhaps the greatest gathering
of native peoples

on the northern plains
in its history.

For Sitting Bull's people,
there's no place to run,

there's no place to go.

This is it.

I mean, this is the last great
defense of the Lakota homeland.

Custer's column found the trail
of Sitting Bull's village

on June 23
and began following it.

"There's a lot of them,"

Custer said at one point
to his orderly, John Burkman,

"more than we figured."

Burkman asked if there were
too many.

Custer smiled and replied,
"What the Seventh can't lick,

the whole US Army
couldn't lick."

Worried that Sitting Bull's band
would scatter,

Custer pushed his column hard,

marching through the night
of June 24,

until his exhausted men
collapsed on the eastern slope

of a divide
in the Wolf Mountains.

On the other side, Custer hoped,
would be Sitting Bull's village.

If he and his men
were still undetected,

if the village
could be surrounded,

if they could turn their
surprise into an advantage,

Custer might at last
have the victory

he so desperately needed.

Shortly after dawn on the 25th,

Custer climbed to the top
of the divide,

to an overlook called
The Crow's Nest.

They cannot see
the village directly

because the terrain
is very deceptive.

But in the valley
of the Little Bighorn,

they can see arising
a huge cloud of smoke.

The Crows were
the first ones to recognize

the fact that there was...

they said there was
more Indians there

than the military had bullets.

Custer is very skeptical

that there even is a village,
you know,

that his eyes are darned good
and he can't see it.

But eventually he becomes
convinced that yes,

you cannot see it directly,

but this is going
to prove to be the day.

Soon after, he hears a report

that several Sioux have been
discovered near the pack train

that's following the cavalry.

And Custer is
immediately worried

that they've been discovered.

His troops are exhausted,

they've been marching
for several days,

and they're about to engage
in a battle

against odds that they
never predicted.

Just after noon on June 25,

Custer organized his regiment
into battalions,

keeping five companies,
some 200 men, under his command,

while Reno and Benteen
led battalions

of three companies each.

Custer has surrounded himself
with his loyalists,

so all of his inner circle
is traveling with him.

This means that the pivotal
forces that are crucial

to diverting the attention
of the village

and to helping him surround it

are led by the two men with whom
he has a kind of deep enmity,

both Major Marcus Reno
and Frederick Benteen.

Custer pushed forward, following
the trail towards the village

that ran along a small stream
known as Sundance Creek.

His scouts give him reason
to believe that the Indians

down there in the village
have begun to scatter,

that his greatest fear
is unfolding.

Custer divided his forces,

sending Benteen towards
some hills on the left,

hoping to prevent the Indians
from escaping to the southwest.

Seeing dust ahead

and fearing that the Indians
were beginning to scatter,

Custer ordered Reno to attack,
promising to support him.

Then, Custer veered right,
toward a set of high bluffs,

hoping to encircle the village
and attack from the north.

He reached the top of the bluffs

and finally saw the immense
village lying before him,

seemingly defenseless.

Custer sent a note
to Benteen: "Benteen.

"Come on.

"Big village.

"Come quick.

"Bring packs.

Bring packs."

Then, waving his hat
in his hand, he shouted,

"Hurrah, boys, we've got them!

We'll finish them up and then
go home to our station."

Reno is ordered to charge
into the village.

He crosses
the Little Bighorn River

and he sets out with
a little over 100 men,

charging down the valley.

As he gets closer, he still
cannot see the village,

but there's evidence of Indians.

Reno's battalion
kept racing forward

until they rounded a bend
in the creek,

and Sitting Bull's tepees
came into view.

A scattering of warriors
were riding out to meet them.

Suddenly, Reno ordered his men
to halt and dismount.

They formed a firing line and
began shooting into the village.

He became convinced
that Custer had ordered him

into what was basically
an ambush.

By throwing out
this skirmish line

he was putting brakes to it,
literally.

And unfortunately
what happened is

that all of the fear and panic
that he had

flowing into that village
began to flow the other way.

Watching Reno's men pause,

a mounted Sitting Bull sent
his nephew and another warrior

to see if the soldiers
would negotiate,

but they were fired upon
and badly wounded.

Then, Sitting Bull's
favorite horse was killed.

"Now my best horse is shot,"
he cried.

"It's like they have shot me.

Attack them."

More and more warriors came
pouring out of the village,

and the outnumbered troopers
began a panicked retreat

to a stand of trees
alongside the river.

The soldiers were not prepared.

They were tired;
they had ridden all night long.

You're fighting these Indians
and they got war paint on

and they look mean,
you're scared of them.

You're not going to act
like normal.

They were absolutely scared
of the tribes coming

and of course the Indians
took advantage of that.

They could see warriors
flitting around the woods.

The sounds were incredible.

The whistles, the screams,
the firing of the guns.

Particularly bad were the arrows

that were coming down
through the trees.

It was terrifying.

It was over 90 degrees,
it was hot,

you had gunpowder in the air,

you had people screaming,
people crying,

women on the battlefield
rattling their tongue,

singing songs,
singing praise songs.

And what would happen
is that Bloody Knife,

who was Custer's favorite
Arikara scout,

was on a horse beside Reno

as they were pulling
everybody together.

And at one point, as Reno was
talking to him in sign language,

shots went out and Bloody Knife
was hit in the back of the head

and his blood and brains
burst onto Reno's face.

This seemed to be
the last straw.

You can tell
that he was confused

because he told the troopers
to mount up, then to dismount,

then to mount up, then dismount,

and after that,
all hell broke loose.

I think Reno's behavior
had a lot to do with the fact

that he had been
drinking whiskey

during the charge
down the valley.

That didn't help.

So Reno, you know,
his face covered with blood,

lifts up his pistol
and cries out,

"Anyone who wants to live,
follow me."

And off he goes.

Reno heads out of the timber,
riding hell-bent for the river.

The Indians
are forcing them across,

and so even though the bank
is almost ten feet high,

they jump over into the river...

and find a cut in the bank
on the other side

that allows
only one person through.

And this becomes
a terrible bottleneck.

Some of the soldiers
got so scared and so mixed up,

they even threw down
their weapons

in trying to get out of there.

They'd ridden all day.

Their horses are tired and
the Indian ponies were fresh.

The Indians said it was
like a buffalo hunt.

Those that survive make
their way up into the bluffs,

and clearly Reno
and the survivors

are completely shell-shocked

by the time they make it
out of the valley.

As he arrived at the top
of the hill,

Reno saw Captain Benteen
approaching.

"For God's sake, Benteen,"
he said,

"halt your command and help me.

I've lost half my men."

Benteen paused and replied,
"Where is Custer?"

Reno's men had seen Custer
wave his hat up on the bluffs

and then disappear from view.

Despite the fact that Benteen
had received Custer's orders

to "come quick,"

he and Reno
simply sat and talked.

They do nothing.

There's firing occurring
to the north on the other side

of an intervening bluff.

All the warriors have rushed
in that direction.

Reno and Benteen spend
more than an hour and a half

basically doing nothing.

They're talking about Custer.

And Benteen brings up the ghost
of Major Joel Elliott.

He says,
"I know what Custer's doing.

"He's marched off once again,
to leave us.

"And like Major Joel Elliott,

"we are probably
going to be the ones

who end up getting wiped out."

It's fascinating to see
at this absolutely pivotal point

the ghost of the Washita
bubbles up and leaves Custer

without any support
from the other battalions.

Finally, one of his officers...

Captain Weir, who is
a good friend of Custer's...

Is so frustrated
by the lack of action

and the fact that they can
hear the firing to the north,

he decides to head out
on his own.

And this seems to have shamed
Benteen into following up.

And they make it
to this prominent hill

and they look to the north,

and in the distance they see
clouds of smoke and dust.

They see what look like Indians
shooting down into the ground.

And then they see this group
of warriors coalescing

into a virtual tidal wave

as they come streaming
in their direction,

and they realize
they've got to retreat

and find some ground
for a final stand.

For the next 36 hours,
Reno, Benteen,

and 400 soldiers and scouts

would hold off more than 2,000
Lakota and Cheyenne warriors.

Finally, at sunset on June 26,

the exhausted men watched as
Sitting Bull's entire village

of 8,000 Indians
and 20,000 horses

began to move away to the south.

That evening, when the decision
was made by Sitting Bull

for the Indians to leave,

had to have been
an amazing sight.

There would have been
dogs barking,

there would have been
war songs going on,

there would have been
people crying,

because there was
Indian losses as well.

The cavalry didn't have
their heart or their spirit

into their fight,

whereas Sitting Bull and the
rest of those warriors did.

It was their land,
it was their last stand.

They were fighting for something
completely different

to a certain extent.

They were fighting
for their survival.

They were fighting
for their way of life.

The following day, General Terry
and Colonel Gibbon

at last arrived
on the battlefield.

A lieutenant reported finding
197 bodies lying in the hills.

Terry makes his way
up to the hill

and one of the first people
to speak is Benteen.

And Benteen, you know,
"Where's Custer?"

And Terry says,
"Well, we're not sure exactly,

"but over on the other side
of that ridge

"are a couple of hundred bodies

and we think that's where
Custer is."

And Benteen says,
"No, no, Custer's alive.

"He's on the Bighorn River,

watering his horses while we've
been here in this great siege."

So Terry puts Benteen
in charge of the group

that go out to check out
the battlefield,

and Benteen does that,

and one of his privates
is the first to find Custer.

And Benteen gets off his horse,
walks down, looks down and says,

"My God, it's him."

And what you see in that moment
is the vindictive dream

that Benteen held to
throughout those two days...

That Custer was out there
and by their survival

they were going to bring him
down... was gone.

That Custer had been
the Major Joel Elliott.

Custer had been the one
who had been abandoned,

and it had been Benteen,
you could argue,

that had abandoned him.

The exact details of Custer's
death would never be known.

Lakota and Cheyenne witnesses

would claim that he died
early in the battle,

attempting to cross
the Little Bighorn

at a place called
Medicine Tail Coulee.

A member of Custer's battalion
later claimed to have seen him

riding alone
along the river's edge.

Others argued he was
one of the last to fall,

while making a desperate attempt

to capture Lakota and Cheyenne
non-combatants

at the northern end
of the village.

The great mystery will always
hover over this battle

because everyone under Custer's
immediate command

would be killed.

There were plenty of Lakota
and Cheyenne witnesses,

but it was just
a crazy battlefield...

Smoke, dust, arrows everywhere,
horses panicking,

a wave of warriors,
troopers basically naked

in the middle of a battlefield.

Only about a hundred of them
were alive.

And then it was the unfolding

of what has become known
as the Last Stand

where you have, you know, just
basically a handful of people

surrounded by this huge force.

Custer's body was found at the
crest of a flat-topped hill,

with a bullet wound in his chest

and another
through the left temple.

His brother Tom lay beside him.

Boston Custer, Autie Reed,
and William Cooke's bodies

were all nearby.

In the early morning hours
of July 6, 1876,

the Far West completed
its more than 700-mile journey

and arrived at Fort Lincoln
with the news of the disaster.

The fort is asleep,
but really no one is asleep

because they've heard the
whistle from the steamboat

as it came into Bismarck
a couple hours earlier.

And so they go to the Custers'
quarters and tap on the door.

And Libbie comes downstairs

with her sister-in-law,
Custer's sister,

and they get the news.

Libbie Custer and 26 other women
at the fort were now widows.

"Imagine the grief
of these stricken women,"

one observer noted,

"their sobs,
their flood of tears,

the grief that knew
no consolation."

Libbie has to be the commanding
officer's wife.

She has to be of comfort
to the other women,

and she keeps that in mind.

At the same time,

she's shivering
even though it's very hot.

Once she has performed
that duty,

she goes into
a very deep depression.

No one could believe it,

that Custer and all of his
companies of the Seventh

had been wiped out.

Custer, the boy general,

Custer, the hero of the plains
and the Seventh Cavalry,

wiped out.

How could that possibly be true?

No one could believe it.

They couldn't accept the fact

that Custer was beaten
by American Indians.

And some of the press
even went so far as to say

that Sitting Bull
really wasn't Indian.

They didn't want
to accept the fact

that an Indian or Indians
outsmarted them.

They say that Sitting Bull
must have studied Napoleon

to defeat Custer.

That he was a... he was a spy
who graduated from West Point

and then had gone back
to the Sioux

and had become, you know,
this... this genius,

a military genius for the Sioux.

There were immediate
calls for revenge,

and the Army of the West
dispatched new columns of troops

to track down the Indians.

By the fall of that year,

virtually all of the Lakota
and Cheyenne

would be forced back
onto the reservations.

Only Sitting Bull
remained unyielding,

living with his band
of 5,000 Lakota in Canada.

Meanwhile, Americans argued
over who was responsible

for the debacle
at the Little Bighorn.

"I regard Custer's Massacre
as a sacrifice of troops

that was wholly unnecessary,"
President Grant declared.

In his report, General Terry
blamed the catastrophe

squarely on the Seventh's
commander.

Even Custer's allies,
Sherman and Sheridan,

admitted that he had been

"rashly imprudent to attack
such a large number of Indians."

One voice, however,

refused to allow General Custer
to take the blame.

Libbie Custer has to decide what
she's going to do with her life,

and her cousin tells her,

"Wouldn't you rather be
the widow of such a man

than the wife
of many another?"

And that's the basic decision
that Libby makes,

that she will find ways

of maintaining his reputation
as a hero.

Libbie's ally in her campaign
to sanctify her husband's memory

came in the guise
of a dime novelist

named Frederick Whittaker.

She granted him access to some
of George's personal letters,

and he quickly fashioned
a fawning biography of Custer

that extolled his heroic virtues
and dauntless courage.

What the Whittaker
biography does is

it takes a scattered bunch
of stories

that exist in this newspaper
and that magazine

and it composes a master story.

Now you've got the authoritative
source for the Custer legend.

Painted as the villain
in Whittaker's book,

Marcus Reno spent
the rest of his life

fighting to clear his name.

Consumed by alcohol and
dismissed from the service,

he died of complications
from throat cancer in 1889.

Frederick Benteen
continued his career

until he criticized
one commander too many

and was forced out of the Army.

He would keep writing diatribes
about Custer for years,

unable to escape his nemesis.

While many of the participants

in the Battle
of the Little Bighorn

seemed tormented
by the experience,

one Westerner managed
to turn a profit on it.

Only weeks after the news
of the massacre,

the Western scout and promoter
William F. Cody

could be seen on a New York
stage in a melodrama entitled

Buffalo Bill's First Scalp
for Custer.

Right away, Custer becomes
a kind of martyr

to the cause
of American progress,

and this allows the cause to be
more acceptable than ever,

because it isn't as if Americans

have not sacrificed
anything now.

Right, it's not as if they
haven't given something up.

They gave up Custer.

The more glorious
they can paint Custer

in the aftermath of his death,

the more they seem
to have sacrificed

as they take away
all the Indians' land.

In the end, it was Libbie
who did the most

to burnish the Custer legend.

Libbie becomes a grieving widow.

Not a role
she would have chosen,

but it's one she takes on
for the rest of her life.

And the widow is a very powerful
figure in American culture.

It's impossible to criticize
her husband while she's alive.

She writes three memoirs,

and in these books she presents
life with George Custer

as charming and glorious
and honorable.

Her books became best-sellers

and shaped the image of Custer
for more than half a century,

until Libbie died in 1933,

just four days shy
of her 91st birthday.

Libbie fashioned one version
of the Custer we know,

but there were many more
to come.

Custer, you know,
is a lightning rod.

He is an icon.

He's wired for immortality
in a way

in that, as the times change,

he's there to channel
those changes.

And so with each age,
he's reinvented.

In 1941 comes Errol Flynn's
role as Custer

in They Died
With Their Boots On.

And this movie at that moment,

the Last Stand scene
is very useful for Americans

who are conceiving
of combat in these terms.

The civilization must triumph

with the men
who will not surrender,

even when they are faced
by overwhelming odds.

After the Second World War,

and especially by the time
of the Vietnam War,

the Last Stand myth
gets put to different purposes,

most famously in Little Big Man.

Sound the charge!

We're running out
of ammunition, General.

Right.

It becomes useful for critics...

We're running out of ammunition.

Who present Custer as crazy,

an absolute maniac,
a megalomaniac.

Get on your feet and fight!

And the Last Stand becomes
the final proof of his insanity

and of the insanity
of the whole expansionist,

imperialist mission.

A hero, a myth

is a symbol to think with.

And as we change our attitudes
about race,

as we change our attitudes
about Native Americans,

as we reread American history
as our present changes,

looking backwards,

we reinterpret
the image of Custer.

He's gone from hero to villain,

from brilliant commander
to fool.

He is deeply flawed.

But the ambition,
the ruthlessness

is why we remember him.

I think this is ultimately
kind of passion play,

where human personality
is laid out there

in the most extraordinary,
terrifying circumstances.

And it's not pretty.

It never is pretty.

Custer is controversial
for the same reasons

he was so successful
in his own time.

He was an outsized personality
who used the tools around him

to shape himself
into a public figure

that embodies many of the things

that make us uncomfortable
about American history.

The way that Americans sometimes
rush into a military action,

the way that America
has treated American Indians

and other peoples
now around the world.

These are questions that are
really raw and nagging,

and we haven't resolved them.

And until we do, we're going
to keep returning to Custer

and the controversies
that surround him.

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