George Armstrong Custer
George Armstrong Custer, born on the 5th of December 1839, graduated from West Point in 1861 ranked 34th out of 34. In four years at the academy he piled up 726 demerits, one of the worst conduct records in its history. A roommate observed that Custer never let an unlearned lesson trouble him. A fellow cadet recalled him saying a class has only two places, the head and the foot. Custer had no wish to be the head. Even so, he later reached a higher rank than any other army officer in his class. He died on the 25th of June 1876 in Montana Territory, killed along with every soldier in the five companies he led. How did a cadet who tested every rule become a Union general so quickly? Why did his death become known as Custer's Last Stand, and who worked to make it so? And why does the verdict on his life remain divided, even 150 years later?
On the 24th of May 1862, Union officers were scouting a crossing of the Chickahominy River in Virginia when General John G. Barnard muttered that he wished he knew how deep it was. Custer overheard. He galloped into the middle of the river, turned to the astonished officers, and shouted, "McClellan, that's how deep it is, General!" Custer was then assigned to lead four companies of the 4th Michigan Infantry across that river. The attack captured 50 Confederate soldiers and the first Confederate battle flag of the war. General George B. McClellan called it a "very gallant affair" and congratulated Custer personally. As McClellan's aide, Custer began a lifelong pursuit of publicity.
Historian Tom Carhart defended Custer's famously flashy general's uniform as a matter of command rather than vanity. Critics often called it gaudy. Carhart argued that Custer wanted to be recognizable at a glance. In the middle of a charge, his men could look up and see him leading the way into danger. Carhart treated this as a question of unit morale.
Associated Press reporter Mark Kellogg was one of the journalists Custer invited to accompany his campaigns. Kellogg died at the Little Bighorn. Favorable newspaper reporting helped keep Custer's reputation high well into the later 20th century. William Eleroy Curtis, the first journalist to report gold in the Black Hills, praised him so warmly that Custer came to stand as a hero of the nation's manifest destiny.
On the morning of the 22nd of June 1876, his orderly John Burkman found Custer hunched over on a cot, still holding his pen after a night of writing. Custer often wrote through the night. His magazine articles on frontier life were gathered into the 1874 book My Life on the Plains. It is still valued as a primary source on relations between the United States and Native peoples.
Autie was the family nickname, but the press settled on The Boy General after his rapid promotion. Troopers on the Great Plains used other names. They called him Iron Butt and Hard Ass, with grudging admiration for his stamina in the saddle and his strict discipline. Ringlets was more derisive and referred to his long, curling blond hair, which he perfumed with cinnamon-scented oil. His wife wrote early in their marriage that he brushed his teeth after every meal and washed his hands so often that she laughed. He stood 5 feet 11 inches, could nap the moment he lay down, and could spring to his feet from lying flat on his back.
Emanuel Henry Custer, a farmer and blacksmith in New Rumley, Ohio, remembered a night when his son Autie, about four years old, had a tooth pulled. Emanuel described it in a letter dated the 3rd of February 1887. The boy was very afraid of blood. The forceps slipped and the doctor had to try twice, yet Autie never flinched. On the way home he skipped along and declared, "Father you and me can whip all the Whigs in Michigan." Emanuel was an outspoken Jacksonian Democrat who taught his children politics and toughness early. Custer and his younger brothers Thomas and Boston shared a lifelong love of practical jokes. His mother, who was devout, had named him after a minister named George Armstrong, hoping her son might join the clergy.
Elizabeth Clift Bacon had first caught Custer's eye when he was 10 years old. He was introduced to her in November 1862 in Monroe, Michigan, and she was not at first impressed. Her father, Judge Daniel Bacon, disapproved of a blacksmith's son as a match. He came around only after Custer had been promoted to brigadier general. The couple married on the 9th of February 1864-14 months after they formally met. Libbie, born in 1842, would live until 1933, and her widowhood would span six decades.
On the 29th of June 1863, Alfred Pleasonton consulted the army's new commander, George Meade, and began replacing political generals with officers ready to lead mounted attacks in person. He found three of them among his own aides: Wesley Merritt, Elon J. Farnsworth, and Custer. All three received immediate promotions. Custer became a brigadier general of volunteers, commanding the Michigan Cavalry Brigade, known as the Wolverines, in Judson Kilpatrick's division. He had no direct command experience. At 23 he was one of the youngest generals in the Union Army, and he set about shaping the brigade in his own aggressive image.
Near Hunterstown, Pennsylvania, on the 2nd of July 1863, Custer rode ahead alone and found Confederate cavalry under J.E.B. Stuart unaware that his troops were close. He hid his regiments on both sides of the road. Behind a low rise he placed the 1st and 5th Michigan Cavalry and his artillery. Then he baited the trap. He gathered A Troop of the 6th Michigan Cavalry, called out, "Come on boys, I'll lead you this time!" and galloped straight at the enemy. More than two hundred Confederate horsemen raced down the road after him. Custer lost half of his men and his horse went down, leaving him on foot. Private Norvell Francis Churchill of the 1st Michigan galloped up, shot Custer's nearest attacker, and pulled him up behind his saddle. The pursuing Confederates were cut down by rifle fire and then by canister from six cannons.
By mid-morning on the 3rd of July, Custer was at the crossing of Old Dutch Road and Hanover Road, two miles east of Gettysburg. Robert E. Lee had sent Stuart on a long flanking move with six thousand cavalrymen and mounted infantry. The plan was to strike the Union rear along Cemetery Ridge while a massive assault hit the front. Custer and his comrades faced roughly six thousand Confederates. Around noon they heard Stuart's cannon signal to Lee. The fight swung back and forth through the early afternoon, and both sides ran short of ammunition. When combat dissolved into hand-to-hand fighting, Custer led the fewer than 400 troopers of the 7th Michigan in a counterattack, shouting, "Come on, you Wolverines!" Their charge ended against a wood rail fence, where men and horses jammed together and were hit from both flanks. Custer pulled his men back to the protection of Pennington's artillery.
About three o'clock the artillery barrage to the west suddenly stopped. Stuart's entire force then advanced in a close column of squadrons, sabers drawn and glistening like silver in the sunlight. Directly in their path stood Custer and about 400 veteran troopers of the 1st Michigan Cavalry. Custer rode to the head of the regiment, drew his saber, and threw off his hat so the men could see his long yellow hair. Then he shouted, "Come on, you Wolverines!" and charged. Historian William E. Miller wrote that the collision was so sudden that many horses were turned end over end, crushing their riders. The 5th, 6th, and 7th Michigan struck the Confederate right flank, while troopers from the 1st New Jersey and 3rd Pennsylvania hit the left. Within twenty minutes Union artillery opened up on Pickett's men, and Stuart withdrew to Cress Ridge.
Custer's brigade lost 257 men at Gettysburg, the highest loss of any Union cavalry brigade. In his report he wrote, "I challenge the annals of warfare to produce a more brilliant or successful charge of cavalry." He received a Regular Army brevet promotion to major "For Gallant And Meritorious Services." Stuart did not survive the following year. He was mortally wounded at Yellow Tavern in 1864, in a battle where Custer's cavalry fought again.
At the Battle of Trevilian Station in 1864, the largest all-cavalry engagement of the war, Custer captured the divisional wagon train of Confederate General Wade Hampton's command. He was then cut off and suffered heavy losses before help arrived. His own division's wagons were overrun and his personal baggage was captured. Custer, by then commanding the 3rd Division under Philip Sheridan, went on to the Shenandoah Valley. There Sheridan's campaign deliberately targeted the civilian population in what is known as the Burning. Custer's Wolverines helped defeat Confederate Lieutenant General Jubal Early at the Third Battle of Winchester and effectively destroyed his army at Cedar Creek. In April 1865 Custer's actions at Waynesboro, Dinwiddie Court House, and Five Forks drew notice.
On the last day of Robert E. Lee's retreat toward Appomattox Court House, Custer's division blocked the road and received the first flag of truce from the Confederates. Custer was escorted through the lines to meet General James Longstreet, who later described Custer's flaxen locks flowing over his shoulders. Custer demanded unconditional surrender in the name of General Sheridan. Longstreet answered that he was not in command, and that even if he were, he would not deal with messages from Sheridan. Custer replied that more bloodshed would be a pity. Longstreet suggested that the truce be respected, since Lee had gone to meet Grant and the future of the armies was for them to settle.
Sheridan gave Custer the table on which the surrender was signed, as a present for Libbie, with a note praising Custer's gallantry. She treasured it. It now sits in the Smithsonian Institution. On the 15th of April 1865 Custer was promoted to major general of volunteers, making him the youngest major general in the Union Army at 25.
On the 25th of April 1865, after the war had officially ended, Custer sent his men to search near Clarksville, Virginia, for a large prize racehorse named Don Juan. They seized the horse and its written pedigree illegally. The animal was worth an estimated $10,000. Custer rode it in the grand review in Washington, D.C., on the 23rd of May, and the scared thoroughbred bolted, creating a sensation. The owner, Richard Gaines, wrote to General Grant, who ordered Custer to give the horse back. Custer did not. He hid the horse, won a race with it the next year, and then the horse suddenly died.
On the 3rd of June 1865, at Sheridan's request, Custer took command of a cavalry division and led it from Louisiana toward Texas as part of the Union occupation forces. The march in August lasted 18 days and was arduous. He reached Austin on the 4th of November. His volunteer cavalrymen, who had campaigned along the Gulf coast, wanted to be mustered out. They resented his discipline and considered him a vain dandy, and the friction approached mutiny. After the division was mustered out, some members of the 2nd Wisconsin Cavalry planned to ambush him. He was warned the night before, and the attempt failed.
In New York City in 1866, Custer weighed careers in railroads and mining. He was also offered the post of adjutant general to the army of Benito Juarez of Mexico, with $10,000 in gold. Grant and Secretary Stanton endorsed his request for a year's leave. Sheridan and Libbie disapproved, and Secretary of State William H. Seward opposed an American officer commanding foreign troops. Custer refused to resign from the Army to take the post. In September 1866 he joined President Andrew Johnson's train journey called the Swing Around the Circle. When a small group of Ohio men jeered the president, Custer told them, "I was born two miles and a half from here, but I am ashamed of you." Soon the Army offered him a new path. On the 28th of July 1866 he was appointed lieutenant colonel of the newly created 7th Cavalry Regiment.
On the 26th of June 1867, Lieutenant Lyman Kidder's party of ten troopers and one scout was massacred on its way to Fort Wallace. Kidder had been carrying dispatches from General Sherman to Custer, and the attackers were Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne. Days later Custer and a search party found the bodies. After that campaign Custer was arrested and suspended at Fort Leavenworth for leaving his post without permission to see his wife. Sheridan wanted him for a planned winter campaign against the Cheyenne, so Custer rejoined the 7th Cavalry on the 7th of October 1868, before the suspension had run its course.
On the 27th of November 1868, Custer led the 7th Cavalry in an attack on the Cheyenne camp of Chief Black Kettle at the Washita River. He reported killing 103 warriors, and 53 women and children were taken prisoner. Cheyenne estimates of their dead were far lower, at 11 warriors and 19 women and children. Custer had his men shoot most of the 875 Indian ponies they had captured. The battle was regarded as the first substantial American victory in the Southern Plains War, and it helped push a large portion of the Southern Cheyenne onto a reservation.
Mo-nah-se-tah was one of the 53 captives. Her father, the Cheyenne chief Little Rock, had been killed at the Washita. Captain Frederick Benteen, the chief of scouts Ben Clark, and Cheyenne oral tradition all said that Custer unofficially married her in the winter or early spring of 1868-69. She gave birth to a child in January 1869, and Cheyenne oral history says she bore a second in late 1869. Some historians believe Custer had become sterile after contracting a venereal disease at West Point, and that his brother Thomas was the father. The account also says Custer reportedly sexually assaulted her. In Cheyenne culture of the time the relationship was considered a marriage.
On the 4th of August 1873, near the Tongue River, the 7th Cavalry clashed with the Lakota for the first time. One man on each side was killed. Custer had been sent to the Dakota Territory that year to protect a railroad survey party. In 1874 he led an expedition into the Black Hills and announced the discovery of gold on French Creek, near present-day Custer, South Dakota. His announcement triggered the Black Hills Gold Rush. Among the towns that sprang up immediately was Deadwood, South Dakota, notorious for its lawlessness.
In 1875 the Grant administration tried to buy the Black Hills from the Sioux. The Sioux refused to sell. They were then ordered to report to reservations by the end of January 1876, which mid-winter conditions made impossible. The administration labeled them hostiles and tasked the Army with bringing them in. The plan was a three-pronged campaign in the spring. Custer's column would march west from Fort Abraham Lincoln, near present-day Mandan, North Dakota. Colonel John Gibbon would march east from Fort Ellis, near present-day Bozeman, Montana, and General George Crook would march north from Fort Fetterman, near present-day Douglas, Wyoming.
On the 15th of March 1876, Custer was summoned to Washington to testify before Representative Hiester Clymer's congressional committee. His 7th Cavalry had been scheduled to leave Fort Abraham Lincoln on the 6th of April. The committee was investigating alleged corruption involving Secretary of War William W. Belknap, who had resigned on the 2nd of March, along with President Grant's brother Orville. The allegation was that Belknap had sold the lucrative trading monopolies at frontier army posts, where soldiers were required to buy their goods. Custer had seen the high prices at Fort Lincoln for himself.
Custer did not want to go. He feared he would miss the coming campaign and asked to answer questions in writing, but Clymer insisted. He testified on the 29th of March and the 4th of April, trying to follow what he called a moderate and prudent course. Even so, he made a quantity of unsubstantiated accusations against Belknap. He also attacked Orville Grant on unproven grounds of extorting money for influence. Democratic newspapers loudly praised him, and Republicans sharply criticized him. Custer also wrote anonymous articles for The New York Herald exposing trader post kickback rings and implying that Belknap was behind them. Historian Stephen E. Ambrose speculated that around this time someone suggested Custer might become the Democratic candidate in the 1876 presidential election.
After Belknap was impeached and the case went to the Senate, Custer asked the impeachment managers to release him from further testimony. A request from his superior, Brigadier General Alfred Terry, helped get him excused. President Grant intervened and ordered another officer to take Custer's place in the campaign. Terry protested that he had no available officers of the right rank. Sheridan and Sherman both wanted Custer in command but had to support Grant. Sherman advised Custer to meet Grant personally before leaving Washington. Three times Custer asked for a meeting, and three times he was refused.
On the 2nd of May, Custer gave up and took a train to Chicago, planning to rejoin his regiment. A furious Grant ordered Sheridan to arrest him for leaving Washington without permission. On the 3rd of May a member of Sheridan's staff arrested him as he arrived. The arrest sparked public outrage. The New York Herald called Grant the "modern Caesar." Grant relented but insisted that Terry, not Custer, personally command the expedition.
Terry met Custer in St. Paul, Minnesota, on the 6th of May. Terry later recalled that Custer "with tears in his eyes, begged for my aid. How could I resist it?" Both men telegraphed Grant asking that Custer be allowed to lead his regiment with Terry in command, and Sheridan endorsed the effort. Grant was already under pressure. His administration feared that if the Sioux campaign failed without Custer, Grant would be blamed for ignoring his senior officers. On the 8th of May, Custer was told he would lead the expedition, but only under Terry's direct supervision. Elated, he told Terry's chief engineer, Captain Ludlow, that he would "cut loose" from Terry and operate independently.
In the spring and summer of 1876, the Hunkpapa Lakota holy man Sitting Bull called together the largest gathering of Plains Indians yet seen, at Ash Creek in Montana. It later moved to the Little Bighorn River. Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho people camped there. The valley lay in the heart of Crow treaty territory under the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851, and the Lakota were there without the Crow tribe's consent. The Crow sided with the Army. Colonel Samuel D. Sturgis, the regiment's commander, was on detached duty in St. Louis, which left Lieutenant Colonel Custer in command. The 7th Cavalry left Fort Abraham Lincoln on the 17th of May 1876.
Around the 15th of June, Major Marcus Reno discovered the trail of a large village on the Rosebud River. On the 22nd of June Custer's whole regiment was detached to follow it. On the 25th of June, Custer's Crow scouts identified a large encampment in the valley near the Little Bighorn River. Custer had meant to attack the next day. Because his presence had become known, he decided to attack at once. He divided his force into three battalions, one led by Reno, one by Captain Frederick Benteen, and one by himself. Captain Thomas M. McDougall and Company B stayed with the pack train.
Reno charged the southern end of the village but halted some 500 to 600 yards short of the camp. He had his men dismount and form a skirmish line. Mounted Lakota and Cheyenne warriors counterattacked in force against his exposed left flank, and Reno's men took cover in the trees along the river. They then made a bloody retreat up the bluffs. This opening action cost Reno a quarter of his command. Meanwhile Custer rode north, hidden by bluffs, perhaps planning a hammer-and-anvil maneuver against the north end of the camp.
According to George Bird Grinnell's account, based on Cheyenne survivors, part of Custer's command tried to ford the river at the north end of the camp. Indian sharpshooters in the brush on the west bank drove them off. Hundreds of warriors pursued the soldiers onto a ridge north of the camp. Crazy Horse's warriors outflanked Custer and prevented him from digging in. Traditional white accounts credit Gall with the attack that drove Custer up onto the ridge, but Indian witnesses have disputed that. The soldiers appear to have deployed by company, with every fourth man holding horses, which cost Custer a quarter of his firepower. When Crazy Horse and White Bull led the charge that broke the center of the line, order may have collapsed in Calhoun's command. Myles Keogh's men seem to have fought and died where they stood. According to some Lakota accounts, panicked soldiers threw down their weapons and ran toward a knoll where Custer, other officers, and about 40 men made a stand.
Custer had 208 officers and men under his direct command. Reno had another 142, Benteen just over 100, and McDougall's rearguard 50. First Lieutenant Edward Gustave Mathey brought 84 soldiers with the pack train. Estimates of the Lakota-Cheyenne force vary widely. Historian Gregory Michno settles on about 1,000 based on Lakota testimony. Utley and Fox place it at 1,800 to 2,000, and Ambrose, Gray, and Scott propose 3,000 or more. As Custer's five companies fell, warriors stripped the dead of firearms and ammunition. Return fire from the cavalry steadily decreased while the fire from the Indians grew. The surviving troopers apparently shot their remaining horses to use as breastworks for a last stand on the knoll. The warriors closed in and killed every man.
The common image of Custer at the Last Stand, in a buckskin coat with long, curly blond hair, is wrong. A scout named Soldier, an Arikara, said Custer took off his buckskin coat and tied it behind his saddle because of the heat. His hair was thinning, and before leaving Fort Lincoln he and a similarly balding Lieutenant Varnum had the clippers run over their heads. He rode a horse named Vic into the last battle. His staghounds Tuck and Bleuch stayed behind with his orderly Burkman, who lived until 1925.
Shave Elk later said that the Indians did not suspect they were fighting Custer and did not recognize him alive or dead. Wooden Leg said no one could recognize any enemy at that distance. Antelope said none knew Custer was there until they learned of it later at the agencies. Several people claimed to have killed him, including White Bull of the Miniconjous, Rain-in-the-Face, Flat Lip, and Brave Bear. In June 2005, Northern Cheyenne storytellers said their oral tradition credits Buffalo Calf Road Woman, a heroine of the Battle of the Rosebud. They said she struck Custer with a club-like instrument and knocked him off his horse before he died. In the 1920s, two elderly Cheyenne women who were relatives of Mo-nah-se-tah told oral historians they had recognized Custer's body. They said they stopped a Sioux warrior from desecrating it and pushed sewing awls into his ears so he could hear better in the afterlife, because he had broken his promise to Stone Forehead never to fight Native Americans again.
Terry's column arrived two days later and found most of the soldiers' bodies stripped, scalped, and mutilated. Custer had two bullet wounds, one in the left temple and one just below the heart. Benteen, who inspected the body, thought the fatal injuries had not come from .45 caliber ammunition. Custer and his brother Tom were wrapped in canvas and blankets and buried in a shallow grave covered with a travois basket held down by rocks. When soldiers returned a year later, animals had scavenged the grave and scattered the bones. Not more than a double handful of small bones were picked up. Custer was reburied with full military honors at West Point Cemetery on the 10th of October 1877. The battlefield was designated a National Cemetery in 1886.
Boots and Saddles, Tenting on the Plains, and Following the Guidon were among several books Libbie Custer published about her late husband. Her widowhood lasted six decades, and she lobbied energetically for his memory. Together with the secrecy of the Official Record of the 1879 Court of Inquiry, which was not released until 1951, her books helped build what became known as the Custer myth. Frederick Whittaker, Custer's first biographer, rushed his reverential book out in the year of Custer's death.
The brewery Anheuser-Busch commissioned a painting of Custer's Last Stand as part of an advertising campaign. It ordered reprints, had them framed, and hung them in many American saloons. That left lasting impressions of the battle, and of the brewery's products, on bar patrons. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote an adoring poem that was erroneous in places. President Theodore Roosevelt's lavish praise pleased the widow. In 1953, W.A. Graham wrote in The Custer Myth that without the blaze of glory around his tragic end, Custer would be just another name among Civil War cavalry leaders.
In the New York Herald on the 2nd of September 1876, Grant called Custer's Massacre "a sacrifice of troops, brought on by Custer himself, that was wholly unnecessary - wholly unnecessary." Sheridan took a more moderately critical view. General Nelson Miles praised Custer as a fallen hero betrayed by the incompetence of his subordinates. Miles noted the difficulty of winning a fight with "seven-twelfths of the command remaining out of the engagement when within sound of his rifle shots."
The blame for the disaster continues to be argued. Major Reno's halt and flight to the timber after a single casualty, and Captain Benteen's allegedly slow arrival, are both cited as factors. Critics also point to choices Custer made earlier. On the 21st of June at Powder River he refused Terry's offer of four more companies of the 2nd Cavalry, saying he "could whip any Indian village on the Plains." He left Gatling guns behind and had his troops box up their sabers. On the day of the battle he divided his roughly 600-man command against his scouts' warnings. Historian Charles K. Hofling and other defenders say the Gatling guns would have been slow and cumbersome across the rough country, and that speed mattered more. Supporters also say splitting forces was a standard tactic. In the 2022 anthology The Worst Military Leaders in History, military historian David Mills rates Custer among the worst and calls him lucky rather than good.
In his 1969 book Custer Died for Your Sins, the Standing Rock Sioux theologian Vine Deloria Jr. condemned Custer's violations of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, which established the Black Hills as unceded territory of the Sioux and Arapaho. In a 1996 Los Angeles Times interview, Deloria called Custer the "Eichmann of the Plains." Critics also point to the Washita attack, which killed Cheyenne non-combatants including mothers, children, and elders. They note that Custer was following the orders of Generals Sherman and Sheridan for total war on Indigenous nations. Critics who count the 1874 gold expedition and the 1876 fight among the treaty violations call the final battle the Battle of Greasy Grass.
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Common questions
Who was George Armstrong Custer?
George Armstrong Custer was a United States Army officer and cavalry commander in the American Civil War and the American Indian Wars. He was born on the 5th of December 1839 and died on the 25th of June 1876 at the Little Bighorn.
Where did George Armstrong Custer rank in his West Point class?
Custer graduated from West Point in 1861 ranked 34th out of 34 graduates. He collected 726 demerits in four years, one of the worst conduct records in the academy's history.
What did George Armstrong Custer do at Gettysburg?
Custer commanded the Michigan Cavalry Brigade, the Wolverines, on the third day of Gettysburg. He charged into J.E.B. Stuart's advancing Confederate column at East Cavalry Field, and Stuart withdrew to Cress Ridge. Custer's brigade lost 257 men, the highest loss of any Union cavalry brigade.
How did George Armstrong Custer die at the Little Bighorn?
Custer was killed on the 25th of June 1876 with every soldier in the five companies he led. Several people claimed to have killed him, and his body had a bullet wound below the heart and one in the left temple.
Why was George Armstrong Custer arrested in May 1876?
Custer was arrested on the 3rd of May 1876 in Chicago on President Grant's order for leaving Washington without permission. He had testified against Secretary of War William W. Belknap, and the public outcry led Grant to relent, though Alfred Terry took command of the expedition.
Why is George Armstrong Custer a controversial figure?
Critics blame Custer for tactical errors at the Little Bighorn and for violating the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, including his 1874 gold expedition. They also cite the 1868 Washita River attack that killed Cheyenne non-combatants. Defenders note his personal courage and the standard use of split forces.
All sources
101 references cited across the entry
- 2George Armstrong Custer: Changing Views of an American LegendLouis Kraft — September 1, 2006
- 4George Armstrong CusterNovember 4, 2009
- 7Custer in the 1850 US census, North Township, Harrison County, Ohio.
- 8Wittenberg, 2001a p. 74Wittenberg, 2001a
- 9General George Custer Biography, US 7th CavalryCuster Lives!
- 10Donovan (2011) p. 22Donovan — 2011
- 12Custer and the Civil WarMarch 21, 2018
- 14Custer and the Man Who Saved imMike Connell
- 16MagazineThat Time When Custer Stole a HorseNovember 2015
- 17The Custer Clan, a hunting party in 1875, seated under tentDavid Francis Barry
- 19The Story of the Battle of the WashitaNational Park Service (USA) — November 1999
- 201868 Fort Laramie Treaty. The Cheyenne were not part of this treaty and had no designated agency. The reservation was for the Lakota and Arapaho.
- 22Seventh Regiment of Cavalry – Center of Military HistoryU.S. Army Center of Military History
- 23Goodrich (1997) p. 242Goodrich — 1997
- 24Grinnell (1956) p. 351Grinnell — 1956
- 25Retrobituaries: Buffalo Calf Road Woman, Custer's Final FoeJune 22, 2017
- 26Northern Cheyenne break vow of silenceMartin J. Kidston — Helenair.com — June 28, 2005
- 27NewsHow Little Bighorn was wonPowers, Thomas — November 2010
- 29NewsWilliam Eleroy CurtisThe Brooklyn Daily Eagle — October 6, 1911
- 31Supportersstevenwkohlhagen.com
- 32Patricia Ward Biederman, "Symposium Will Take a Closer Look at Custer," Los Angeles Times, August 8, 1996.
- 35Powwow Trail Blog2016-12-09
- 37Fort Custer National CemeteryUnited States Department of Veterans Affairs
- 40Bunker, John Gorley, Liberty Ships: The Ugly Ducklings of World War II, p. 240, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland, 1972.
- 42BookAmerican icons: an encyclopedia of the people, places, and things that have shaped our cultureMichael C.C. Adams — Greenwood Press — 2006
- 43BookCrazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American WarriorsStephen E. Ambrose — New American Library — 1986
- 44BookTouched by Fire: The Life, Death, and Mythic Afterlife of George Armstrong CusterLouise Barnett — Henry Holt and Company, Inc. — 1996
- 45BookCuster's Indian BattlesCharles Francis Bates — Privately printed — 1936
- 46BookTroopers with Custer: Historic Incidents of the Battle of the Little BighornE. A. Brininstool — Stackpole Books — 1994
- 47BookBury my Heart at Wounded KneeDee Brown — Holt, Rinehart & Winston — 1970
- 48BookCuster in '76: Walter Camp's Notes on the Custer FightWalter Mason Camp — Brigham Young University Press — 1976
- 49BookLost Triumph: Lee's Real Plan at Gettysburg and Why It FailedTom Carhart — G. P. Putnam & Sons — 2005
- 50BookSon Of The Morning StarEvan S. Connell — North Point Press — 1984
- 51BookVarnum: The Last of Custer's LieutenantsT. M. Coughlin Coughlin — Privately printed — 1980
- 52BookBoots and Saddles: Or, Life in Dakota with General CusterElizabeth Bacon Custer — Harper & Brothers — 1885
- 53BookTenting on the Plains, or General Custer in Kansas and TexasElizabeth Bacon Custer — Charles L. Webster and Company — 1887
- 54BookCuster Died for Your Sins: An Indian ManifestoVine Jr. Deloria — Avon — 1970
- 55BookCuster and the Little Bighorn: The Man, The Mystery, The MythJim Donovan — Crestline — 2011
- 56BookAn Indigenous Peoples' History of the United StatesRoxanne Dunbar-Ortiz — Beacon Press — 2014
- 57BookWolves for the Blue Soldiers: Indian Scouts and Auxiliaries with the United States Army, 1860–90Thomas W. Dunlay — University of Nebraska Press — 1982
- 58BookWith Custer's CavalryKatherine Gibson Fougera — University of Nebraska Press — 1986
- 59BookGeneral Custer's LibbieLawrence A. Frost — Superior Publishing Co. — 1976
- 60BookThe Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1864Gary W. Gallagher — University of North Carolina Press — 2006
- 61BookScalp Dance: Indian Warfare on the High Plains, 1865–1879Thomas Goodrich — Stackpole Books — 1997
- 62BookThe Custer Myth: A Source Book of CusterianaWilliam Alexander Graham et al. — Stackpole Company — 1953
- 63BookWashita: The U.S. Army and the Southern Cheyenne, 1867–1869Jerome A. Greene — University of Oklahoma Press — 2004
- 64BookThe Fighting CheyennesGeorge Bird Grinnell — University of Oklahoma Press — 1956
- 65BookThe Diaries of John HuntonHeritage Books — 2005
- 66BookThe Custer Battle Casualties: Burials, Exhumations, and ReintermentsRichard Hardoff — Upton and Sons — 2002
- 67BookThe Burning: Sheridan's Devastation of the Shenandoah ValleyJohn L. Heatwole — Rockbridge Publishing — 1998
- 68BookCuster and the Little Big Horn: a psychobiographical inquiryCharles K. Hofling — Wayne State University Press — 1985
- 69BookParading Through History: the Making of the Crow Nation in America, 1805–1935Frederick E. Hoxie — Cambridge University Press — 1995
- 70BookEncyclopedia of the American Indian MovementBruce E. Johansen — Greenwood — 2013
- 71BookIndian Affairs. Laws and TreatiesGovernment Printing Office — 1904
- 72JournalNotes: May 17 to June 9, 1876, of the Little Bighorn ExpeditionMark Kellogg — 1923
- 73BookPersonal Recollections of a Cavalryman With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil WarJames Harvey Kidd — The Sentinel Press — 1908
- 74BookFrom Manassas to Appomattox: Memoirs of the Civil War in AmericaJames Longstreet — J.B. Lippincott — 1908
- 75BookThe Day the World Ended at Little Bighorn: A Lakota HistoryJoseph M. III Marshall — Viking Press — 2007
- 76BookIn the Spirit of Crazy HorsePeter Matthiessen — Viking — 1991
- 77BookThe Custer Story: The Life and Intimate Letters of General Custer and his Wife ElizabethDevin-Adair — 1950
- 78BookLakota Noon: The Indian Narrative of Custer's DefeatGregory F. Michno — Mountain Press Publishing Company — 1997
- 79BookPersonal recollections and observations of General Nelson A. Miles embracing a brief view of the Civil War, or, From New England to the Golden Gate : and the story of his Indian campaigns, with comments on the exploration, development and progress of our great western empireNelson A. Miles — University of Nebraska Press — 1992
- 80BookCuster's Fall: The Indian Side of the StoryDavid Humphreys Miller — University of Nebraska Press — 1985
- 81BookBattles and Leaders of the Civil WarWilliam E. Miller — The Century Company — 1888
- 82BookThe Worst Military Leaders in HistoryDavid Mills — Reaktion Books — 2022
- 83JournalCheyenne and Lakota Women at the Battle of the Little BighornLeila Monaghan — Autumn 2017
- 84BookThe Old West: SoldiersDavid Nevin — Time-Life Books — 1973
- 85BookPassing Into Legend: the Death of CusterThomas O'Neill — Arrow and Trooper — 1991
- 86BookThe Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little BighornNathaniel Philbrick — Viking — 2010
- 87BookBlack pioneers: images of the Black experience on the North American frontierJohn W. Ravage — University of Utah Press — 1997
- 88BookThe Right flank at GettysburgWilliam Brooke Rawle — McLaughlin Brothers — 1878
- 89JournalIt is Best to Go Strong-Armed: Army Occupation of Texas, 1865–66William L. Richter — Summer 1985
- 90BookLast in their Class: Custer, Pickett and the Goats of West PointJames S. Robbins — Encounter Books — 2006
- 91BookCuster: lessons in leadershipDuane Schultz — St. Martin's Press — 2010
- 92BookThe Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800–1890Richard Slotkin — Atheneum — 1985
- 93BookMore Little Bighorn Mysteries: issues concerning the approach to and conduct of the Battle of the Little BighornVern Smalley — Little Buffalo Press — 2005
- 94BookCuster's LuckEdgar I. Stewart — University of Oklahoma Press — 1980
- 95BookThe Generals Of Gettysburg: Appraisal Of The Leaders Of America's Greatest BattleLarry Tagg — Savas Publishing — 1998
- 96BookCuster Victorious: The Civil War Battles of General George Armstrong CusterGregory J. W. Urwin — University of Nebraska Press — 1983
- 97BookCavalier in Buckskin: George Armstrong Custer and the Western Military FrontierRobert M. Utley — University of Oklahoma Press — 2001
- 98BookOld NeutrimentGlendolin D. Wagner — University of Nebraska Press — 1989
- 99BookKilling Custer: The Battle of Little Bighorn and the Fate of the Plains IndiansJames Welch et al. — W.W. Norton & Company — 2007
- 100BookThe Custer DispatchesSunflower University Press — 1987
- 101BookCuster: The Controversial Life of George Armstrong CusterJeffry D. Wert — Simon & Schuster — 1996
- 102BookI Fought with Custer: The Story of Sergeant Windolph, Last Survivor of the Battle of the Little Big Horn as told to Frazier and Robert HuntCharles Windolph et al. — University of Nebraska Press — 1987
- 103BookAt Custer's Side: The Civil War Writings of James Harvey KiddKent State University Press — 2001