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They Died with Custer: Soldiers' Bones from the Battle of the Little Bighorn by Douglas D. Scott
Dead men tell no tales, and the soldiers who rode and died with George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn have been silent statistics for more than a hundred years. By blending historical sources, archaeological evidence, and painstaking analysis of the skeletal remains, Douglas D. Scott, P. Willey, and Melissa A. Connor reconstruct biographies of many of the individual soldiers, identifying age, height, possible race, state of health, and the specific way each died. They also link reactions to the battle over the years to shifts in American views regarding the appropriate treatment of the dead.
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First published January 1, 1998
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August 28, 2020
“Decapitation is mentioned in many of the historic accounts by burial crew members… In addition to the standard, generic comments on decapitation…some observers said soldiers’ trunks were found but their heads were missing…[Lieutenant James] Sturgis’s shirt was found with the buttons buttoned, suggesting decapitation, at least as interpreted by his sister…”
- Douglas D. Scott, P. Willey, and Melissa Connor, They Died With Custer
If you have an abiding interest in the bones of dead men, then I have a book for you. Even if you do not, I invite you to stick around for the commentary.
The bones in question belong to the troopers of the United States Seventh Cavalry, who lost their lives on June 25-26, 1876, along the Little Big Horn River in present-day Montana. The battle they fought against the American Indian forces comprised of Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors has become one of the most famous in all of military history. Though it was a relatively small action, with casualty counts dwarfed by countless other clashes, it has captured the imagination of generations, and inspired a vast literature dedicated to determining how famed commander George Armstrong Custer, hero of the American Civil War, managed to die on a lonely, windswept hill – along with a significant portion of his regiment – just days before the nation’s centennial celebration.
It is the lingering immortality of the Little Big Horn that has given this battle its own ecosystem. Part of that ecosystem is comprised by They Died with Custer, a scholarly monograph jointly authored by archeologists Douglas Scott and Melissa Connor, and anthropologist P. Willey (a name that sounds made-up by a grade-schooler, but which is how Professor Willey wants to be credited).
By way of background, the Little Big Horn has two features that have combined to create an irresistible mystery for historical detectives, who have flocked to the killing grounds since the gun smoke first cleared.
The first feature is that Custer’s troopers – instead of being interred in mass graves – were initially buried (often hastily, and poorly) right where they fell. Ultimately, markers were placed at these spots, making this the only battlefield in the world that marks where each soldier fell (the Indians carried their casualties away). Of course, the Custer battlefield was subject to a series of burials, and reburials, and this resulted in inaccurate placement of many of the white stone markers. Still, even accounting for some error, the stones represent the final resting place of some 200 cavalrymen, as well as providing an insight into their final disposition.
The second feature of the Little Big Horn is that in 1983, a tobacco-fiend in a passing automobile tossed his cigarette out the window and started a wildfire that scorched the battlefield. With the grass turned to ash, the National Park Service decided this might be a good time to undertake an archaeological survey of the grounds. The authors of They Died With Custer all participated in this exercise, which collected and marked artifacts, exhumed various remains still on the field (most bodies have long since been removed to the nearby National Cemetery), and produced a number of reports and books.
The work done by the authors and others has added considerably to our knowledge of this 19th century clash. For instance, by mapping the retrieval of cartridge cases and spent bullets, we now have a good idea – especially when corroborated by Indian accounts – of where soldiers and Indians were firing from, and the positions they were firing at. As Richard Allan Fox details in Archaeology, History, and Custer’s Last Battle, this data presents a pretty good picture of the deadly transition that Custer’s five companies underwent, from unified fighting force to disintegration.
They Died With Custer, unfortunately, does not add nearly as much. It is, as I have been at pains to point out, about bones. The bones were exhumed as part of a sampling of markers on the Little Big Horn battlefield, in which the remains of thirty-four individuals were measured, examined, photographed, chemically analyzed, and x-rayed, before being properly reburied. In some instances, where an intact skull was located, molds and casts were made, in an effort to identify the individual by comparing the mold to extant photographs.
From this data set, and using regimental records, the authors provide a snapshot of Custer’s Seventh Cavalry on the day that much of it was destroyed. We learn that the average height of a cavalryman was five feet, seven inches; that nearly 17% of the soldiers were under the age of twenty-one, with an average age of 25.5 years; and that 43% of the soldiers were immigrants born outside the United States. They were also, perhaps unsurprisingly, in really poor health. Extended time on horseback played hell with their hips, and their dental hygiene was – to put it lightly – rather atrocious.
The grimmest section of They Died With Custer details the perimortem injuries suffered by the soldiers. There are gunshot wounds, blunt force traumas, and even an arrowhead still buried in one man’s backbone. There is also evidence of postmortem mutilations in the form of decapitation and castration.
While this is morbidly fascinating, most of They Died With Custer is dry as Montana dirt. The authors make some faint attempts to be readable, and even make a few archaeologist jokes along the way. In discussing emasculation, for instance, they make sure to refer to it as “the unkindest cut.” For the most part, though, this is an academic treatise that has been lifted from a scientific report and put between two hard covers. The pages are full of charts, graphs, tables, and photos, which is good, but also contains end-of-sentence parenthetical citations, which is obnoxious (you can do footnotes, endnotes, or no notes, but for the love of literary aesthetics, never use end-of-sentence parentheticals).
This is not a book designed for a general readership. It is of value only to people already obsessed with the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Even those committed students, however, might find that this is a long run for a short slide. While demonstrating that the soldiers were young, prematurely breaking-down, and never brushed their teeth, the authors do not attempt to tie this into any larger theory of the battle. It is relatively useless trivia, presented in scientific detail.
The authors, I should note, used their work on the Little Big Horn battlefield to hone their skills as forensic archaeologists. They later put these skills to practical use by assisting in the exhumations of bodies in modern war zones, including El Salvador and the former Yugoslavia. In that way, the authors have made contributions to human rights that far exceed the academic value of what they accomplished at the Little Big Horn.
Very little time is spent on this aspect of their careers, though the authors mention it in passing. That’s too bad. In the end, They Died With Custer remains resolutely about bones, and not much else.
- Douglas D. Scott, P. Willey, and Melissa Connor, They Died With Custer
If you have an abiding interest in the bones of dead men, then I have a book for you. Even if you do not, I invite you to stick around for the commentary.
The bones in question belong to the troopers of the United States Seventh Cavalry, who lost their lives on June 25-26, 1876, along the Little Big Horn River in present-day Montana. The battle they fought against the American Indian forces comprised of Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors has become one of the most famous in all of military history. Though it was a relatively small action, with casualty counts dwarfed by countless other clashes, it has captured the imagination of generations, and inspired a vast literature dedicated to determining how famed commander George Armstrong Custer, hero of the American Civil War, managed to die on a lonely, windswept hill – along with a significant portion of his regiment – just days before the nation’s centennial celebration.
It is the lingering immortality of the Little Big Horn that has given this battle its own ecosystem. Part of that ecosystem is comprised by They Died with Custer, a scholarly monograph jointly authored by archeologists Douglas Scott and Melissa Connor, and anthropologist P. Willey (a name that sounds made-up by a grade-schooler, but which is how Professor Willey wants to be credited).
By way of background, the Little Big Horn has two features that have combined to create an irresistible mystery for historical detectives, who have flocked to the killing grounds since the gun smoke first cleared.
The first feature is that Custer’s troopers – instead of being interred in mass graves – were initially buried (often hastily, and poorly) right where they fell. Ultimately, markers were placed at these spots, making this the only battlefield in the world that marks where each soldier fell (the Indians carried their casualties away). Of course, the Custer battlefield was subject to a series of burials, and reburials, and this resulted in inaccurate placement of many of the white stone markers. Still, even accounting for some error, the stones represent the final resting place of some 200 cavalrymen, as well as providing an insight into their final disposition.
The second feature of the Little Big Horn is that in 1983, a tobacco-fiend in a passing automobile tossed his cigarette out the window and started a wildfire that scorched the battlefield. With the grass turned to ash, the National Park Service decided this might be a good time to undertake an archaeological survey of the grounds. The authors of They Died With Custer all participated in this exercise, which collected and marked artifacts, exhumed various remains still on the field (most bodies have long since been removed to the nearby National Cemetery), and produced a number of reports and books.
The work done by the authors and others has added considerably to our knowledge of this 19th century clash. For instance, by mapping the retrieval of cartridge cases and spent bullets, we now have a good idea – especially when corroborated by Indian accounts – of where soldiers and Indians were firing from, and the positions they were firing at. As Richard Allan Fox details in Archaeology, History, and Custer’s Last Battle, this data presents a pretty good picture of the deadly transition that Custer’s five companies underwent, from unified fighting force to disintegration.
They Died With Custer, unfortunately, does not add nearly as much. It is, as I have been at pains to point out, about bones. The bones were exhumed as part of a sampling of markers on the Little Big Horn battlefield, in which the remains of thirty-four individuals were measured, examined, photographed, chemically analyzed, and x-rayed, before being properly reburied. In some instances, where an intact skull was located, molds and casts were made, in an effort to identify the individual by comparing the mold to extant photographs.
From this data set, and using regimental records, the authors provide a snapshot of Custer’s Seventh Cavalry on the day that much of it was destroyed. We learn that the average height of a cavalryman was five feet, seven inches; that nearly 17% of the soldiers were under the age of twenty-one, with an average age of 25.5 years; and that 43% of the soldiers were immigrants born outside the United States. They were also, perhaps unsurprisingly, in really poor health. Extended time on horseback played hell with their hips, and their dental hygiene was – to put it lightly – rather atrocious.
The grimmest section of They Died With Custer details the perimortem injuries suffered by the soldiers. There are gunshot wounds, blunt force traumas, and even an arrowhead still buried in one man’s backbone. There is also evidence of postmortem mutilations in the form of decapitation and castration.
While this is morbidly fascinating, most of They Died With Custer is dry as Montana dirt. The authors make some faint attempts to be readable, and even make a few archaeologist jokes along the way. In discussing emasculation, for instance, they make sure to refer to it as “the unkindest cut.” For the most part, though, this is an academic treatise that has been lifted from a scientific report and put between two hard covers. The pages are full of charts, graphs, tables, and photos, which is good, but also contains end-of-sentence parenthetical citations, which is obnoxious (you can do footnotes, endnotes, or no notes, but for the love of literary aesthetics, never use end-of-sentence parentheticals).
This is not a book designed for a general readership. It is of value only to people already obsessed with the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Even those committed students, however, might find that this is a long run for a short slide. While demonstrating that the soldiers were young, prematurely breaking-down, and never brushed their teeth, the authors do not attempt to tie this into any larger theory of the battle. It is relatively useless trivia, presented in scientific detail.
The authors, I should note, used their work on the Little Big Horn battlefield to hone their skills as forensic archaeologists. They later put these skills to practical use by assisting in the exhumations of bodies in modern war zones, including El Salvador and the former Yugoslavia. In that way, the authors have made contributions to human rights that far exceed the academic value of what they accomplished at the Little Big Horn.
Very little time is spent on this aspect of their careers, though the authors mention it in passing. That’s too bad. In the end, They Died With Custer remains resolutely about bones, and not much else.
December 9, 2020
This one isn't for everybody. This is a very scholarly presentation written for the many people out there who just can't let the dead of the Little Bighorn rest in peace. It's hard to say exactly why this battle has stayed in the imagination for so long...it's not like the indigenous peoples had never won a battle before. There were many such fights, and in some of those the white casualties exceeded the number of the soldiers slain at Little Bighorn (or Greasy Grass, if you were on the winning team). Perhaps the fascination is with the flamboyant Custer, dashing hero of the Civil War, having at last been defeated by a technologically inferior foe. Poor old Custer doesn't get much favorable press these days, and it's undoubtedly true that he was egotistical and a bit of a tyrant, but I think he gets a bad rap a lot of the time.
Let's face it, Custer's tactics were sound enough, and would have been devastatingly effective on most Indian encampments at the time. His mistake was in not listening to his scouts who were telling him that there were just too many in the camp for the 7th to handle. One can only imagine his dismay when he found that he was not only outnumbered but also outgunned. The battle was over quickly and the mutilated corpses of cavalrymen were left to rot on the field for a couple of days until quick burial details attempted to deal with the remains. Over the years they were buried and reburied, or at least some were. Body parts were removed by animals for food and humans for souvenirs.
Years later, along comes this forensic team to try to make sense of it all. An attempt was made to match bone fragments to individual soldiers by comparing data retrieved from skeleton fragments to cavalry enlistment papers and other documents. Much was learned of the habits and personal characteristics of of the dead soldiers, and in a few cases the team was actually able to make tentative identification of individual remains.
I'll be honest, if you're a Little Bighorn buff like I am, this stuff is fascinating. But even with my level of interest, the book dragged a bit, as I suppose it had to. These were serious people doing a serious job, but it doesn't make for particularly exciting reading.
Let's face it, Custer's tactics were sound enough, and would have been devastatingly effective on most Indian encampments at the time. His mistake was in not listening to his scouts who were telling him that there were just too many in the camp for the 7th to handle. One can only imagine his dismay when he found that he was not only outnumbered but also outgunned. The battle was over quickly and the mutilated corpses of cavalrymen were left to rot on the field for a couple of days until quick burial details attempted to deal with the remains. Over the years they were buried and reburied, or at least some were. Body parts were removed by animals for food and humans for souvenirs.
Years later, along comes this forensic team to try to make sense of it all. An attempt was made to match bone fragments to individual soldiers by comparing data retrieved from skeleton fragments to cavalry enlistment papers and other documents. Much was learned of the habits and personal characteristics of of the dead soldiers, and in a few cases the team was actually able to make tentative identification of individual remains.
I'll be honest, if you're a Little Bighorn buff like I am, this stuff is fascinating. But even with my level of interest, the book dragged a bit, as I suppose it had to. These were serious people doing a serious job, but it doesn't make for particularly exciting reading.
July 26, 2019
This is s good read for folks that are devoted to reading about the mystery of Custer's last battle. The author does a great job of clearing some of the fog surrounding one of the most covered battles in history.
March 13, 2013
"They Died With Custer" isn't a history of the 1876 campaign, it's a forensic study of the skeletal remains retrieved from the battleground. Given that the retrieved remains amount to no more than 2.4% of the total possible, the findings are interesting but tentative. It's pretty clear that soldiers were significantly smaller and significantly less well nourished than soldiers are today. As Scott concludes, "Many had bad teeth, bad backs, poor nutrition, and the telltale marks of their violent deaths were all too evident" (349). They lived a rough life and their lives ended badly. And needlessly, though that issue isn't addressed.
December 1, 2019
This is a book about bones. Specifically, the bones of the men who died at the Little Bighorn in 1876. The authors, an archaeologist and two forensic scientists, are able to deduce quite a lot from the bones recovered during archaeologist excavations or discovered randomly on the battlefield. They identify five men (the identifications ranging from "well, it's a good guess" to 99.9% certainty), and they can tell a great deal about the troopers as a group: chronic lower back problems from horseback riding, terrible teeth, a variety of healed injuries that probably had to do with horses. (One of the archaeological studies quoted referred to "large mammal accidents," which I find charming.)
This book is full of tables and graphs and statistics and is drier than its punchy title would suggest. I found it fascinating, but . . . fair warning.
This book is full of tables and graphs and statistics and is drier than its punchy title would suggest. I found it fascinating, but . . . fair warning.
August 31, 2025
An interesting examination of the Custer dead. The attempts to identify the dead veer heavily into speculation though. There is some reliance placed on the use of photographic superimposition; the authors note a 9% error rate with the mandible present (which is not the case for most of the Custer sample) but the track record with the Custer skulls is poor - the photograph "matched" for Mitch Boyer in a study published before this work was written has since been determined to most likely have been of a Native American musician unrelated to Boyer or the battle, and the 2002 edition of the present book includes a brief added bit indicated that the supposed identification of George Lell (mainly via superimposition) was disproved after the original publication through means of a DNA test.
July 4, 2007
Great technical findings about the men that died at the Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876.
May 13, 2013
Another version of the Battle of the Little Bighorn where George Armstrong Custer was defeated. Presents mainly the army side of the story.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews