Nathaniel Philbrick : The Last Stand, Another look at Custer

[Story]

From the paper of record
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/books/re.../Barcott-t.html

and the author's site
http://www.nathanielphilbrick.com/books/the-last-stand

From a  Mass. paper - the author is speaking this Thursday
http://www.telegram.com/article/20100914/N...40404/-1/NEWS06

[Dead I]

I own this book and am having a hard time digging through it.  What I see as liberal bias keeps slapping me in the face.  While it's modern to be liberal in the halls of modern history, it's still bias nevertheless.  Okay, I guess I've got to find an example...I'll grab the book in a minute and find one/some. 

Custer did not hate the Indians.  He admired them.  He believed that they were being screwed by crooked Indian agents.  He also interviewed people who had lost family to marauding Indians.  He must have seen the need for reservations, and in his 19th Century eyes they were the right thing to do. 

We all understand the conflict between the Indians and the whites on the open prairie.  What we do not agree on is who was right?  Should Americans have stayed back east and allowed the Indians to keep the midwest, southwest, and northwest as a pasture,  as Stanley said when he reported on the Medicine Lodge treaty?  Should the whites have allowed the Indians to slaughter anyone who wandered onto the plains?  It did happen you know?  Was Custer right to want to put the Indians on their reservations?

[Dead I]

I am in constant conflict w/t the "Indian question".  The scalps have been removed from display at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center museum in Cody.  They also displayed a necklace of severed trigger fingers cut from Custer's men.  Now all "body parts" are hidden from view.  Why?  Are moderns trying to tell us the Indians didn't scalp people, or cut them up after they were dead....or before!?

What gives?  We need to know and understand what the conflict was really like.  That's why we study  history...but it seems what happened is being hidden away so that a pollyanna Indian emerges.  It seems to me that we are being lead to believe that the Indian nations were populated with people who wanted to live one with nature and harm no one.  Well, in my view, they had to live in nature, and they (many of them) lived in a state of constant warefare.  They were extremely successful light cavalry, maybe the best there ever was on this Continent.

Now I have been called every name in the book, including racist, for stating my opinions w/t Indians. I do not ascribe moral judgments with respect to people in history.  They were as they were and that's what I like to study.  So was Custer.   

[Drayton Calhoun]

I am part 'Indian, Native American, whatever'. I take no offense over written accounts of events that occurred sixty to seventy years before I was born. The liberal tendancy to massage history to make it more palatable to today's generation is pathetic. What is the purpose of the horrors of war and conflict it you clean it up, sanitise it, package it and make it politically correct? We tend to forget the fact that, as William T. Sherman stated, "War is Hell". BOTH whites and Indians scalped and mutilated their defeated adversaries, it is a fact, documented and now glossed over and swept under the carpet. Time for people to wake up and accept the fact that these things happened. Much like when Eisenhower demanded and ensured that the horrors of the death camps so that, from what I have read, he said, "So that seventy years from now some S.O.B. cannot say this didn't happen." well, Ike, it has anyway.

[River City John]

Just recently finished this and I found it to be an excellent, even book.
I believe he did a great job pointing out both sides.

RCJ

[Dead I]

I am part 'Indian, Native American, whatever'. I take no offense over written accounts of events that occurred sixty to seventy years before I was born. The liberal tendancy to massage history to make it more palatable to today's generation is pathetic. What is the purpose of the horrors of war and conflict it you clean it up, sanitise it, package it and make it politically correct? We tend to forget the fact that, as William T. Sherman stated, "War is Hell". BOTH whites and Indians scalped and mutilated their defeated adversaries, it is a fact, documented and now glossed over and swept under the carpet. Time for people to wake up and accept the fact that these things happened. Much like when Eisenhower demanded and ensured that the horrors of the death camps so that, from what I have read, he said, "So that seventy years from now some S.O.B. cannot say this didn't happen." well, Ike, it has anyway.

The Sioux mutilated their enemies even before they were dead, sometimes.  Soldiers after Wounded Knee gathered the Indian wounded and made a hospital on the reservation.  After the Battle of Little Big Horn the Indians swarmed over the battle ground and chopped up the dead and wounded.  We know they took at least three men into their camp and tortured them...probably by dragging them until their heads pulled off.  Whites didn't do that.  It was tradition for Indians (some) to mutilate their enemies I think.  Not so with Whites, we generally cared for the wounded.  Not always, but usually.

[MJN77]

The Sioux mutilated their enemies even before they were dead, sometimes.  Soldiers after Wounded Knee gathered the Indian wounded and made a hospital on the reservation.  After the Battle of Little Big Horn the Indians swarmed over the battle ground and chopped up the dead and wounded.  We know they took at least three men into their camp and tortured them...probably by dragging them until their heads pulled off.  Whites didn't do that.  It was tradition for Indians (some) to mutilate their enemies I think.  Not so with Whites, we generally cared for the wounded.  Not always, but usually.

Soldiers at Wounded Knee, also ran down and shot women and children that were running for their lives. Atrocities were committed on both sides. While I do believe that indians did torture living victims sometimes (read about the Apachis wars) whites did so too. War brings out the worst in people. Look at the Sand Creek massacre. The army, under Colonel Chivington wiped out a villiage of peacful indians that were camped near the fort after they were promised protection by the army. Men, women and children were slaughtered with swords, guns, rifle butts and boot heels. A few soldiers even cut off the genitalia of some of the female indians to make hatbands. Whites could be every bit as "bad" as any indian. It's human nature in times of war. One side does something horrible to your side, you do something worse to their side. They pull a knife, you pull a gun. They pull a gun, you slaughter their villiage, and on and on and on. People in general can be pretty barbaric.

[Doc Cuervo]

Soldiers at Wounded Knee, also ran down and shot women and children that were running for their lives. Atrocities were committed on both sides. While I do believe that indians did torture living victims sometimes (read about the Apachis wars) whites did so too. War brings out the worst in people. Look at the Sand Creek massacre. The army, under Colonel Chivington wiped out a villiage of peacful indians that were camped near the fort after they were promised protection by the army. Men, women and children were slaughtered with swords, guns, rifle butts and boot heels. A few soldiers even cut off the genitalia of some of the female indians to make hatbands. Whites could be every bit as "bad" as any indian. It's human nature in times of war. One side does something horrible to your side, you do something worse to their side. They pull a knif


e, you pull a gun. They pull a gun, you slaughter their villiage, and on and on and on. People in general can be pretty barbaric./////

/abound


You are a bit wrong here. The whites did shoot women and children and did take souviners of a grisly nature, but they did not throw babies into cactus patches or to the dogs, did not roast people over slow fires, did not pull intestines from abdomens nail them to trees and force the victim to run around the tree, didn't take a lot of women captive, repeatedly rape and beat them then cut their throats at the first sighn of rescue. The indians were savage and relentless. During the French and indian wars, the cowardly french used them as terror troops, much like Hitlers Waffen SS. Documented reports of torture, canabalism and butchery abound
Recently, I read in one of the magazines that I read, they are no longer refering to the Fetterman Masacre as a Masacre but as "the Fetterman Fight". Himmm let's see here, tghe entire command was wiped out, everyone that was not killed outright was tortured to death, all bodies were mutilated beyond recognition, entrals scattered accross the field ...sounds like a massacre to me, but oh we must be politicaly correct and not offend the butchers that commited the atrocity.
In 1996 the fedral government allowed the souix indians to go to the Little Bighorn national historicak site and NATIONAL CEMETARY and dance on the mass internment site of the &th Cavalry dead. nThis is aqkin to letting the frikkin Viet Cong and North Viet Namsw vetrans and decendants to come to Arlington and dance on the graves of those that fell in Southeast Asia.
So many people bemoan and snivel about the Sand Creek, "Fight" in Colorado. Guess what, Black Kettle and his band plus several more bands og souix and cheyanne wreaked havock over northeastern Colorado for months; murdering, torturing and burning every white settler that they could get their hands on. However, when winter started to roll around and they knew they couldn't carry on during the rough time of year, black kettle now declare his tribe peaceful and settles down on Sand Creek to ride out the winter, complete with all of their white captives, to ready themselves up to resume the campaign in the summer.
The entire Indian War was exasperated and prolonged by the same problem that we have today, dunb @$$ed liberals in the east that had no idea what the hell was going on but were able to screw everything up with their political sway and ability to manipulate public opinion. The Army wasn't the indians worst enemy, the frikkin G%^ D@33ned politicians and bleeding hearts were.

[MJN77]

Did you really argue that white people never raped or tortured or murdered any indians? You think whites aren't capable of atrocities? I fully understand warfare, but to say no soldier, or settler, or buffalo hunter, or fur trader..etc, in the entire history of the west ever did anything bad to an indian is kind of odd. Whites along with every other race of human being are quite capable of pretty horrible things. They are all humans. Didn't say the indians were peace loving as a whole. Most were very war oriented. But they were just people. You refer to the indians as savage. Do you not think that stomping indian babies to death with boot heels is also savage? Believe me, I'm no liberal. But I also know that a lot of whites in the 1800s didn't consider the indians to be human either. Wasn't it William Sherman who said "The only good indian is a dead indian"? If you want to call me names and say I am sniveling, that is fine, but facts are facts. Whites are kind of brutal to each other too. Look at the Civil War. Lot of atrocities on both sides. You mention the SS. They were white too. All I am saying is, no matter what race you want to talk about ( white, black, indian, asian, hispanic) there are documented atrocities comitted by all of them. I have studied warfare from the F&I all the way to Vietnam. All sides in all wars do things they shouldn't. Not every soldier mind you, but some. War is a terrible thing. You rightfully point out that the PC police are covering up facts about the indian wars, but you paint a picture of moral superiorrty of whites over the "savages". We are ALL capable these things.  Not trying to fight, just pointing out facts.

[Delmonico]

Wasn't it William Sherman who said "The only good indian is a dead indian"?  Not trying to fight, just pointing out facts.

No he said, "The only good Indians I ever saw were dead."  Similar but not the same in anyway.  We study history to learn the facts.  The other quote is like the end of The man who Shot Liberty Valance, "This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

[MJN77]

My point was, human beings, as a whole are pretty rough once in a while.

[Delmonico]

My point was, human beings, as a whole are pretty rough once in a while.

Pretty plain to see, but the problem was you and most others mis-quote poor ol' Phil Sheridain.  No matter if you like him or not he does not deserve being mis-quoted.  Remember we are trying to deal with facts here, not legands.

Now that we have the facts straight, both of you feel free to go one with your ranting.

[MJN77]

There are those assumptions again. I'm not ranting. Just countering his points. This is commonly known as a discussion.

[Delmonico]

There are those assumptions again. I'm not ranting. Just countering his points. This is commonly known as a discussion.

Yep either one and all I care about in this case no matter what you wish to call it is the facts being right.  I pointed you on the straight and narrow path so it's all fine.  Just hate poor ol Phil being misquothed.

I need to find his quote on buffalo hunting, I can paraphrase it but would rather have it exact.  If you discount that his methods were sometimes a bit harsh, the man knew how to get the assigned task done, provided everything went according to plans.

[Delmonico]

Yep either one and all I care about in this case no matter what you wish to call it is the facts being right.  I pointed you on the straight and narrow path so it's all fine.  Just hate poor ol Phil being misquothed.

I need to find his quote on buffalo hunting, I can paraphrase it but would rather have it exact.  If you discount that his methods were sometimes a bit harsh, the man knew how to get the assigned task done, provided everything went according to plans.

"Let them kill, skin, and sell until the buffalo is exterminated, as it is the only way to bring lasting peace and allow civilization to advance.  These men have done more in the last two years, and will do more in the next year, to settle the vexed Indian question, than the entire regular army has done in the last forty years. They are destroying the Indians' commissary. And it is a well known fact that an army losing its base of supplies is placed at a great disadvantage. Send them powder and lead, if you will; but for a lasting peace, let them kill, skin, and sell until the buffaloes are exterminated. Then your prairies can be covered with speckled cattle."

If you don't look at it in the context of right or wrong it was pretty much the only method that would win against the Plains Indian.  And to be truthful the only one that worked in the end.

[MJN77]

It has been said that the Winchester or Colt is the gun that won the west. But I agree with you, it was the buffalo rifle that "won the west".

[Drayton Calhoun]

And here we sit, more than a century later, debating events that happened in a world that was somewhat different than the one we live in now. True, human nature can be pretty barbaric, such as can been seen daily on the news, yet we are still human and driven by human motivation. Be it vengance or greed or fear, these primal instincts have always had a tendancy to overpower our 'civilized' upbringing. To judge anyone so far removed in time and society is not entirely fair, nor is it entirely accurate.
  By today's standards, the citizen's response to the Jame Gang in Northfield would have had most of them up on charges in court along with the Youngers who were captured.

[Delmonico]

It has been said that the Winchester or Colt is the gun that won the west. But I agree with you, it was the buffalo rifle that "won the west".

The Gun That Won the West was nothing but an ad slogan used by Winchester long after the west had been won.  

[Delmonico]

And here we sit, more than a century later, debating events that happened in a world that was somewhat different than the one we live in now. True, human nature can be pretty barbaric, such as can been seen daily on the news, yet we are still human and driven by human motivation. Be it vengance or greed or fear, these primal instincts have always had a tendancy to overpower our 'civilized' upbringing. To judge anyone so far removed in time and society is not entirely fair, nor is it entirely accurate.
  By today's standards, the citizen's response to the Jame Gang in Northfield would have had most of them up on charges in court along with the Youngers who were captured.

It does no good for anyone trying to study history to judge the past based on the standards and the ethics of today, plain and simple.  I don't want to be judged that way in the future, no one in the past should be either.  That is the first thing one wants to know and understand before you get serious about studing history. 

[MJN77]

I'm aware of the origin of "Gun that won the west", thank you. No one was judging anything. I was just saying you cannot say the indians were "savage" while overlooking what was done to them on occasion too. Yes it should be viewed in context, but in times of war noone comes out blameless.