I've been fascinated by the history of the American West in general and that of the Little Bighorn in particular since I was a kid. Maybe it started with the Disney movie, "Tonka" about the "last" survivor of the LBH, a horse found by an Indian kid played by Sal Mineo.Of course, there were plenty of survivors of the battles including 200 some soldiers at a different part of the battlefield and perhaps over 1500 Sioux and Cheyenne, not to mention Crow andArikara scouts who worked for the US Army.
And, yes, there was a famous equine survivor, Major Myles Keogh's horse, Comanche who was found wounded, wandering around. He was probably relieved to find some familiar humans - General Terry and General Gibbon's columns who arrived the day after the battle. They took care of him, and lovingly carried him back to Fort Abraham Lincoln. He lived a long and no doubt happy life. You can Google him. Let me just add, I saw him in his glass case at the University of Kansas, Lawrence.
Anyway, to get back to the reason for this blog.
It occurs to me that the LBH is another one of those wonderful subjects, like Lizzie Borden, another interest of mine, or the Kennedy Assassination, not so much, that can at the drop of a forage cap take off on 50 different topics. I'll try to work better at keeping to the point.
I have written three novels, the first of which was published in 1991. It was not about the American West, but about Nazi Germany. My second novel was, well, still is, about Elizabethan England, specifically about Shakespeare and the third was about the Bozeman Trail forts, specifically about Caspar Collins and the 10th Ohio Volunteer Cavalry.
I got interested in the army in the West because it seemed to be they were between a rock and a hard place, that is the politics in Washington and the rights of the indigenous people already in the West to live. And there are always great stories at the intersection of hard places.
Plus my ancestors, mostly English, came to North America in the 1600's. No, not on the Mayflower, but in the second or third ship. This is on both my mother's and my father's sides. We fought in the Revolution out of New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts then slowly moved west. Most of my ancestors were farmers until the middle of the 19th Century when both of my great-grand-fathers became ministers. They moved from the east to theMidwest to wind up in California. My dad was born in Nebraska and lived in Montana before WWI. He remembered the Crow Indians in Billings and told me his father, a doctor, had been appointed doctor to the Crow chief Plenty Coups. Plenty Coups who did a great deal of good for his tribe, helping them deal with the massive changes to their culture and lives, was appointed by Calvin Coolidge as chief of all the Indians in America.
You can just imagine all the discussion this caused.
Anyway, my father's mother and father divorced and moved to Los Angeles. My mother was actually born in LA. Her mother was born in San Francisco which makes my great-nieces and nephews that most rare of creatures fifth generation Californians.
So when I read Dee Brown's "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" when it was first published - when was that? - I realized that as my family moved west, they had been part of the displacement, the destruction Brown described. I hoped very much none of my ancestors were out slaughtering people, but just the fact of their existence on this continent made my liberal guilt flare.
What's more, I was born in Saudi Arabia where my dad worked for the Arabian American Oil Company. So the urge to move west continued. When I began reading about the army in the West I realized too that there were great similarities between their purpose and what's more, their life styles.
They were sent out in the middle of nowhere to do America's will which, as America always has, was defined as saving the world or doing good. The nowhere was full of indigenous people who were seen by us as backward, uneducated and in great need of our help.
Wives and children followed and lived in sometimes difficult circumstances. Post or towns were created that mimic ed as best they could the same posts or towns back in the States. Perhaps most difficult of all, children were sent away to school and grand-parents, aunts and uncles were left behind, not to mention good friends.
So, this is why writing about Elizabeth Custer came to me. And since I think this post is plenty long enough, I will come to her - finally - on the next one.
