Killing Custer

by JamesWelch (Author), PaulStekler (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1995

  $4.25

  General George Custer's ill-fated attack on a huge encampment of Plains Indians on 25th June, 1876, has gone down as one of the most disastrouos defeats in American military history. Much less understood is how disastroous the encounter was for the victors , the Sioux and the Cheyenne under the leadership of Sitting Bull. Within 15 years no American Indians resided outside reservations and their ancient culture lay in ruins. This text recreates the events from the Indian perspective, relating the pride and desperation of a people systematically stripped of their treaty rights, hounded from their ancestral hunting grounds and herded into wretched reservations. Their final showdown with thousands of warriors against Custer's small force was, therefore, not least a last stand , a final celebration of their waning power and freedom.

• Used

  Paperback
  1995

  $9.22

  General George Custer's 1876 attack on a huge encampment of Plains Indians has gone down as the most disastrous defeat in American history. Much less understood is how disastrous it was for the victors, the Sioux and Cheyenne under the leadership of Sitting Bull: within fifteen years all Native Americans were confined to reservations, their culture in ruins. James Welch poignantly resurrects their side of the story from beneath a mountain of myth and misinterpretation, relating in masterful prose the pride and desperation of a people stripped of treaty rights and hounded from ancestral hunting grounds into wretched reservations. Through this critical missing piece that tells the Indian side of the story, Killing Custer rethinks the meaning of the Little Bighorn for a multicultural society.