George Armstrong Custer was the "Boy General" of the American Civil War, promoted to the rank of brevet (a temporary war-time rank) brigidier general at the ripe old age of 23 in June of 1863, just two years after graduating 34th in a class of 34 from the U. S. Military Academy at West Point, N. Y.

He would fight in every major battle of the Army of the Potomac (including Bull Run and Gettysburg). President Abraham Lincoln loved Custer's fearlessness in battle (Custer always rode at the front of his troops into a fight), telling Custer's wife, "I wish I had more generals who would ride into a battle with a whoop and a holler."

By war's end, at age 25, Custer had been promoted to brevet Major General of Volunteers, commanding the Union Army's Third Cavalry Division. His long, flowing, yellow-haired locks beneath a wide-brimmed hat, with a trademark red-neckerchief worn around the neck and dangling nearly to his waist, was a style copied by his troops, who were known as "the red-tie boys" in the press.

After the war, a grateful nation stripped the "brevet" general's rank from its hero and Custer reverted to his regular Army rank of captain (a considerable drop in pay from his $8,000 a year as a major general). When the Army offered Custer a promotion to lieutenant-colonel (with a $2,000 salary), he jumped at the chance to be field commander of the newly formed 7th U. S. Cavalry Regiment in 1866.

For the next 10 years, without a promotion, Custer (an Ohio-born Democrat, son of a poor farmer and Michigan-raised by his sister) and his wife, Elizabeth (the daughter of a wealthy judge in Monroe, Michigan), went west: George Custer to fight the newest designated-enemy of the United States, the American Indian, and Elizabeth to endure the hardships of an Army wife on the plains.

Custer fought numerous skirmishes and the "battle" on the Washita River in Oklahoma during those years. Beside him all 10 years on the plains was his beloved brother, Captain Tom Custer, who earned the Congressional Medal of Honor twice (only three men in the Civil War earned the award twice, and Tom Custer was the only Army veteran to do so during that war) for bravery under fire during the Civil War.

On Sunday, June 25, 1876, George Custer joined his brothers Tom (the Medal of Honor winner, commanding "C" Company of the 7th Cavalry) and Boston (a civilian along for the ride), his 18-year-old nephew Armstrong Reed (son of the sister who had raised Custer as a boy in Michigan; another civilian along for the adventure), and his brother-in-law Lieutenant James Calhoun (married to Custer's sister, he commanded "L'" Company of the 7th Cavalry) for a ride to destiny.

Barely six weeks out of Fort Lincoln in North Dakota, Custer's 7th Cavalry found the largest concentration of American Indians ever assembled in one place on the Little Bighorn (sometimes called Little Big Horn) River in Montana. He divided his 12-company, 600-man regiment into four detachments and attacked. Custer's detachment (with his four relatives included) of five companies charged one end of the 3-mile long village.

In short order, Custer's other detachments were repulsed and united for a two-day stand on a hilltop four miles from Custer (these men were eventually rescued by other Army units which arrived on the scene).

Custer's detachment was surrounded and destroyed, every man in his five companies being killed (depending on your source, the Custer part of the fight lasted between 30-minutes and 2 hours, with more than 200 men killed fighting between 2,500 and 4,000 Indian warriors).

That's the Custer known to most American school kids when I was growing up --- the stuff of legends, standing tall with the American flag in one hand and a pistol blazing away in the other hand. It almost certainly didn't happen that way, but it makes for a grand piece of American imagery.

There are various camps in the study of Custer (who was the grand-nephew of George Washington, by the way). For one side, he was a soldier fighting an enemy designated by his government. For the other side, he was a vicious Indian-hater.

You get a sense of both sides in the book "Wild Life On The Plains and Horrors Of Indian Warfare," which includes Custer's autobiography (originally released as "My Life On The Plains" in 1874).

The book:

In 1874, two years before his death, a collection of his magazine articles was published as "My Life On The Plains." It is Custer's recollections of his life during the late 1860's as a soldier in the wild American West (like the writings of Caesar, our hero portrays himself as, well, heroic, but Captain Fred Benteen of Custer's regiment, not a Custer admirer, refers to the book in his writings as "My Lie On The Plains").

"My Life On The Plains" was reprinted as "Wild Life On The Plains and Horrors Of Indian Warfare" in 1891. It has been reprinted as such several times in the years since, including the 1969 edition by the Arno Press (a division of The New York Times) that I'm reviewing here.

Custer's original "My Life On The Plains" is available from several publishers by itself, if you prefer, but "Wild Life On The Plains and Horrors Of Indian Warfare" contains the complete text of "My Life On The Plains" and additional text by journalists of the early 1890's which makes the story of the Indian Wars a bit more current than Custer's original publication.

The hardcover, 592-page book features numerous sketches (no photos) which reveal another time and a different way of thinking. Some of the pictures are fascinating, some are thoughtful and some would be considered racist in modern times (such as Buffalo Bill Cody holding up the scalp of a dead Indian as a trophy as he stands with legs spread apart over the Indian's body).

The book is divided into two sections. The first section, which is Custer's "My Life On The Plains," is called "Wild Life On The Plains." The second section, written by unnamed journalists, is heavily biased toward a white person's perspective on the Indian Wars and is called "Horrors Of Indian Warfare."

Custer's writing:

In Custer's section, you have a man who may have been a great general during the Civil War writing very badly at times. Some detractors have said his wife wrote the book for him, but I've read the writings of Elizabeth Custer (such as the books "Boots And Saddles" and "Tenting On The Plains") and her writing is detailed, crisp and enjoyable from cover-to-cover.

I believe Custer wrote what is credited to him here. While intelligent, it is often a colorless, very military journal type of writing. Never boring, yet sometimes offering so much detail as to be unexciting. It's also next to impossible to figure out what Custer's feelings are toward the Indians he writes about, but strangely fascinating to read his comments that are both pro- and anti-Indian as you read the book (fascinated by the people, yet aware they are his enemy in war).

One minute Custer refers to the Indians as "bloodthirsty savages" when he finds the mutilated bodies of dead Army troopers on the prairie. Yet, Custer also seems to have been torn between a soldier's hatred of an "enemy" and an admiration for why that enemy was fighting him. He writes:

"If I were an Indian, I often think that I would greatly prefer to cast my lot among those of my people who adhered to the free open plains, rather than submit to the confined limits of a reservation, there to be the recipient of the blessed benefits of civilization, with its vices thrown in without stint or measure."

Custer doesn't deal with his early life or his career during the Civil War in his writings here.

What he tries to do, with some success, is portray the Indians he has encountered on the plains, from "peaceful nomads" to "bloodthirsty savages." He does so by telling the history of the Indians before the white man entered the picture, and then progressing through his own battles with the Indians.

Custer the historian is far less interesting than Custer the Indian-fighter. When Custer is writing about the military actions of his regiment is when the book is at its most enjoyable for the reader.

His detailed recounting of the so-called battle on the Washita River in Oklahoma is worth reading since it remains one of the few first-hand reports of the battle. It is biased, as any military report of the time would have been, toward the glorious actions of the troops in the "battle."

Fighting in Oklahoma:

From a military standpoint, Custer's combined cavalry-infantry force of 800-men (including Kansas "volunteers") performed their job superbly on the Washita River in Oklahoma, as Custer tells it.

Surrounding a sleeping Cheyenne Indian village in the dead of winter in November of 1868 after pursuing a renegade group of "hostiles" to the site of the village of Chief Black Kettle, Custer split his command into several attack detachments before attacking the village at dawn.

He had the regiment's band play "Garry Owen," the regiment's theme song, as the regiment charged with bugles sounding the attack and Indian dogs barking warnings to their owners as the soldiers advanced. It was so cold that November day in 1868 that Custer's band couldn't play more than a few notes before the spittle in their instruments froze.

In the end, at least 103 Indian men, women and children were killed in the assault, with dozens more taken prisoner. Custer had his men burn the village (after taking "trophies") and shoot the 875 Indian ponies the troops had captured.

Army casualties were "light" by Custer standards (during the Civil War, his commands had the highest percentage of casualties of any Union force), but a detachment of 19 men led by Major Joel Elliott blundered into an ambush that killed them all, something Custer barely discusses here.

Total troop losses were 21 killed and 12 wounded (including Custer's brother, Tom). He has surprisingly little remorse considering the deaths in the battle (perhaps hardened at Gettysburg, where 50,000 Americans were killed or wounded in three days of fighting in 1863), but he does tell with great sadness of the death of his dog, Blucher, who had been impaled by an Indian arrow during the battle. Custer was known as a great lover of animals, yet he was also a taxidermist (many of the animals he "stuffed" are in New York City museums).

As Custer sums the battle up, "The Indians suffered a telling defeat." It wasn't a major battle by any means, but it pleased Custer's superiors like General Phil Sheridan.

During the Washita battle, Custer admits, he was unaware of several more villages which existed within two to 10 miles of the one he had just destroyed --- villages now pouring out thousands of warriors (Cheyennes, Apaches, Comanches, Kiowas and Arrapahoes).

That Custer was seeing visions of death as these Indians moved towards his regiment is obvious, as he states:

"I could look nearly in all directions and see the warriors at a distance collected in groups on the tops of the highest hills, apparently waiting and watching for our next move."

Never a man to be overwhelmed by fear, Custer's next move was bold. He tells of organizing his command into three squadrons that supported each other's advance and skirmished with the Indians. Custer then made all the motions of marching toward the additional Indian villages, hoping that the warriors would withdraw to their villages to take their women and children to safety before fighting him.

This gamble worked for Custer on this day. As soon as the Indians withdrew, he turned his troops around and left the area. Weeks later he would return to find out what had become of Major Elliott and his 19 men (including Sergeant-Major Walter Kennedy), something he had failed to find out previously, and would finally find what was left of dead comrades.

Eight years later, similar mistakes and tactics at the Little Bighorn led to disaster when the Indians weren't intimidated and chose to attack Custer's men. At the Washita fight, Custer believed he had learned how to fight Indians, but he seems instead to have taught the Indians how to defeat him, something he apparently never thought of (what else can one make of a comment like "I could whip all the Indians on the plains with the 7th Cavalry"?).

Custer the historian:

Custer also offers a history of the Indian Wars from a soldier's perspective.

Custer tells of skirmishes his men were in. He tells of gaining the freedom of two white women being held hostage by the Indians --- his method involved threatening to hang Indian chiefs he had captured who belonged to the villages holding the women hostage. His tactic worked.

Custer recounts the destruction of Captain William Fetterman and 80 men at the hands of 2,000 Sioux and Cheyenne warriors in 1866. He seems stunned that only six of the men in Fetterman's unit were killed by bullets (at least two of them by suicide), while the rest were killed by arrows, hatchets and knives --- he seems to have considered Indian weapons inferior to the guns soldiers' carried, yet admits they were quite effective in battle.

Custer blames Fetterman's defeat not on a reckless officer who led a small force into a slaughter, but instead he blames the defeat on the fact that Fetterman's superior at Fort Phil Kearny in Wyoming "was furnished no more troops for a state of war than had been provided for a state of peace."

He even quotes a letter from General William Sherman which shows that the Army still couldn't figure out how 2,000 Indians could wipe out 80 trained soldiers (Sherman says, "I do not yet understand how the massacre of Fetterman's party could have been so complete;" 10 years later Sherman said virtually the same thing about the destruction of Custer's command).The 20-to-1 odds against the soldiers doesn't seem to have bothered Sherman as being a problem.

Custer guides the reader through events he was part of (such as finding the remains of troops killed in the so-called Kidder Massacre of 1867) and through events he had only heard of (he seems very impressed by Sandy Forsyth and 50 scouts holding off 2,000 Indians in the Beecher Island fight, something that seems to have told him that a small detachment of well-disciplined troops could hold off a much larger force of Indians if the soldiers didn't panic).

The story-teller:

He includes a few tales of a non-military nature, such as riding with his dogs on a buffalo hunt, admitting to recklessness in losing sight of his troops in the excitement. On this hunt, the buffalo he chased turned and charged his horse, causing Custer to accidently shoot his horse through the head.

As the dying horse fell, Custer tumbled to the ground, fearing the buffalo would attack him. To his surprise, the buffalo went away. Custer then walked for "three or four miles" hoping to find his troops but fearing he would find Indians instead.

Custer spied a group of riders coming toward him, not knowing if they were friends or foes. He writes:

"...my eye caught sight of an object which, high above the heads of the approaching riders, told me in unmistakeable terms that friends were approaching. It was the cavalry guidon (flag), and never was the sight of the stars and stripes more welcome."

Accuracy and emotion:

Custer himself makes errors in the book, such as referring to his adjutant, Lieutenant W. W. Cooke, as "Cook" throughout the book. Since this was a best friend of Custer's (who shared Custer's fate at the Little Bighorn), misspelling the man's last name is a bit odd, to say the least.

Custer barely mentions the love of his life, his wife, in the book. He avoids the discussion of the sights he sees in the west, apparently for some future book he never has the chance to write, telling us at the end of his book that he has left such things out so he could concentrate primarily on the Indian Wars.

At no time does Custer let emotions get in the way. He's very matter-of-fact in much of what he writes here, though he does show some excitement at times when telling of events he himself was a part of and seems to be reliving as he writes about them.

"Horrors Of Indian Warfare":

The companion piece to Custer's autobiography in "Wild LIfe On The Plains and Horrors Of Indian Warfare" is the second section of the book, or "Horrors Of Indian Warfare." This section was written by unidentified journalists, apparently in the early 1890's.

In this section, the rest of the Indian Wars are reported on, from Custer's death in 1876 through the 7th Cavalry's destruction of the Indian camp at Wounded Knee in 1890. These authors also offer commentary on major Wild West figures such as Buffalo Bill Cody and Wild Bill Hickock.

This section is full of tales one should approach with caution as to their factuality. One author claims to have spoken with Sitting Bull, an Indian leader at the Little Bighorn, about Custer's final moments in the battle. Sitting Bull supposedly says, "He killed a man when he fell. He laughed." When the writer asks the medicine man if he didn't mean that Custer "cried out," the old Indian replies, "No, he laughed; he had fired his last shot."

Recommendation:

Since it includes Custer's autobiography among its 592-pages, "Wild Life On The Plains And Horrors Of Indian Warfare" is a worthy addition to a history buff's libarary. This is a rare chance to gain insight not only into Custer's thinking, but also into what 19th Century Americans thought of the Indian Wars (Custer, like soldiers in many wars, complains that the newspapers in the east don't understand "the true nature" of the enemy the U. S. government has sent its soldiers to fight).

It's an interesting read: a bit stale at times, but still a well-told story. Custer, who learned to dress like the Indians he fought and to do the sign language of several tribes, was a serious student and admirer of the people he fought.

The Custer half of the book runs 330 of the book's 592 pages and is the part with the most interest for the reader, in my opinion (a chance to read Custer's thoughts and see things through his eyes, for better or worse). The rest of the book, to me, is just filler.

You might enjoy these related reviews:

"Custer's Fall" by David Humphreys Miller: http://www.epinions.com/content_349631581828

"Boots And Saddles, Or, Life In Dakota With General Custer" by Elizabeth Bacon Custer (the general's wife is the author): http://www.epinions.com/content_185859411588

My review of a wonderful book by Bill and Jan Moeller, "Custer: A Photographic Biography," in which the authors take you to the important sites of Custer's life via 125 full color photographs and a well-written biography: http://www.epinions.com/content_172491902596

"The Custer Myth" by W. A. Graham: http://www.epinions.com/content_123088506500

"The Little Bighorn Campaign" by Wayne Michael Sarf: http://www.epinions.com/content_115926404740

"Custer Victorious" by Professor Gregory J. W. Urwin, which concentrates on Custer's brilliant Civil War career: http://www.epinions.com/content_25624088196

"With Custer's Cavalry" by Katherine Gibson: http://www.epinions.com/content_95035625092

"Cavalier In Buckskin" by Robert Utley: http://www.epinions.com/content_64511708804

"The Mystery Of E Troop" by Gregory Michno: http://www.epinions.com/content_57614634628

"The Fetterman Massacre" by Dee Brown (in December 1866, Captain William Judd Fetterman led 80-men to their deaths at the hands of 2,000 Sioux and Cheyenne warriors in Wyoming): http://www.epinions.com/content_39432130180

"The Custer Reader," edited by Paul Hutton (various writers collected in a single volume, each tackling a different aspect of Custer's career): http://www.epinions.com/content_54692253316

"The Custer Album: A Pictorial Biography Of General George A. Custer" by Dr. L. A. Frost: http://www.epinions.com/book-review-2A66-2208941-389299D0-bd3

On the web:

The National Park Service website for the battlefield at the Washita River: http://www.nps.gov/waba/story.htm

George Custer Home Page: http://www.garryowen.com/

George Custer links: http://www.cia-g.com/~rockets/gacuster.htm

Tom Custer links: http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~pardos/TomCusterLinks.html

Sitting Bull links: http://www.sittingbull.org/

Crazy Horse links: http://www.crazyhorse.org/links.shtml

Special thanks:

To Epinions.Com members' hadassahchana (aka Cindy, her work appears at http://www.epinions.com/user-hadassahchana) and Mobiprof (his work appears at http://www.epinions.com/user-mobiprof) for their help in getting the name of the Washita River in Oklahoma past Epinions.Com's word filters (designed to keep profanity off the site, the filter was keeping me from using the name of a battlefield). Kudos to both of these kind folks for their much appreciated help here.

Mobiprof, in fact, has a whole editorial on the subject of getting past the Epinions' word filters at http://www.epinions.com/content_1610588292

Recommended: Yes