Seize the Sky

On Custer Hill the knot of fallen men graphically portrayed the drama of the last stand. Although Cooke and Tom Custer had been badly butchered, most in this group escaped severe mutilation. “The bodies were as recognizable as if they were in life,” Benteen wrote to his wife a few days later.

Although naked, “The General was not mutilated at all,” Lt. Godfrey later wrote. “He laid on his back, his upper arms on the ground, the hands folded or so placed as to cross the body above the stomach: his position was natural and one that we had seen hundreds of times while taking cat naps during halts on the march.”

—ROBERT M. UTLEY,

Cavalier in Buckskin

I believe anyone familiar with old-time Indians will prefer their version of a fight to that of other eye-witnesses. The Indian was by nature and training a very close observer, objective and unimaginative as few white men can be. Moreover, the Indian was a veteran who went on the warpath several times each year from early adolescence until he became too old to fight.… He was therefore cooler and more experienced, as a rule, than his white opponents.… War was his absorbing sport. His rating in the tribe depended upon his proven exploits in battle and he took good care to claim all honors to which he was entitled, and to demolish any false claims advanced by his comrades. Therefore in any kind of a fracas he had all the keen, clear-eyed alertness of a professional sportsman. And as long as he lived, whenever he had an opportunity, he recounted his exploits in battle publicly and in the presence of his rivals.

—STANLEY VESTAL

New Sources of Indian History