Archaeology, History, and Custer's Last Battle: The Little Big Horn Reexamined

by Richard A. Fox

Reconstructs the battle using archaeological techniques

Genres: History, Archaeology, 19th Century, Native American

416 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1993

Reviews

[Katherine Addison · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent book. It has a few flaws, most notably, Fox's writing style, which suffers vilely from the almost-right-word, and of course it's more than twenty years old, so for all I know it's been completely discredited.

I hope not, because Fox presents a clear, rational, and extensively substantiated argument about what happened in the Battle of the Little Bighorn and why Custer lost.

This book is also an excellent complement to Custer's Last Campaign: Mitch Boyer and the Little Bighorn Reconstructed. Where Gray takes you through the campaign leading up to the battle, Fox uses archaeology, specifically an analysis of bullets and shell casings found, plus a consideration of the US Cavalry's tactical manual (Cavalry Tactics, United States Army (1874)), the testimony of white eyewitnesses, and the testimony of Native American participants and observers, to take you through the battle. (He calls Gray out specifically on his failure to use Native American testimony to reconstruct the battle; I think Gray is very good at using Native American testimony when he can figure out how to measure time from white testimony, but without that yardstick, he doesn't seem to know how to proceed.)

Fox argues that Custer's battalion (Cos. C, E, F, I, and L, plus HQ staff, plus scouts and civilians) was on the offensive as it headed into Medicine Tail Coulee (the last time the battalion was seen alive by white men). Custer's orders were less about fighting the Sioux and Cheyenne and more about rounding them up and returning them to the reservations, so (Fox argues) when the battalion reached eyeshot of the village and saw that the women and children were fleeing west and north, he didn't attack, but pursued. The warriors were mostly off fighting Reno to the south, so Cos. C, I, and L staked out Calhoun Hill while Cos. E, F, and the HQ staff went north and west, looking for a good place to cross the river in pursuit.

What happened then is basically a demonstration of why guerillas can hold out against traditional armies for much longer than seems at all likely. Cos. C, I, and L stood still, L Co. defending against the known but not serious threat to their immediate south, while the Sioux and Cheyenne warriors infiltrated the coulees and ridges around them. When the soldiers realized that warriors had gotten uncomfortably close to the west, C Co. charged them, and that's where the whole thing starts to fall apart.

Fox is using a combat model he calls stability/disintegration, and he points out a number of factors that made Custer's battalion ripe for disintegration. The final straw was the fact that there were a lot more Native American warriors a lost closer than C Co. was prepared for. The company disintegrated and fell back to Calhoun Hill, at which point some officer (who was not Custer, since Custer was off northwest on Custer Hill looking for the women & children to capture) made a serious tactical blunder. He swung L Co. from holding a defensive line against the south to holding a defensive line against the west--while the threat from the south remained unresolved. (And it wasn't like there wasn't a whole third company, I Co., that could have been deployed.) L Co., under fire from both front and left flank, and with C Co. already panicked, themselves panicked in turn, and the panic spread like a fire. All three companies fled north, putting up little to no resistance against the Native Americans who were quick to close in. Fox's research suggests that very few of them made it to Custer Hill.

At Custer Hill, E and F Cos. scrambled back to defend, but they were already off balance, and they had (maybe 20) panicked survivors of the right wing of their battalion rushing up on them, and more and more Sioux and Cheyenne were being drawn away from Reno to attack Custer. The soldiers bunched up (which Fox says is the most natural and most fatal of reactions when tactical stability starts to disintegrate) and died. The last few survivors made a desperate flight west (trying to reach the river?) but were trapped in the aptly named Deep Ravine and killed.

The whole thing took less than two hours.

The book began as Fox's Ph.D. dissertation, and you can see the long cold fingers of his thesis committee in the attempts to "make a wider argument" and "explain why archaeology matters." Ignoring those bits will do you no harm, and otherwise this book provided more answers to the why and how of Little Bighorn than I thought I'd ever have.

[Charles Bakos · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Certainly deserving of at least 4 stars but this did take me almost a year and a half to finish. A great study of Custer’s Last Battle at Little Bighorn through and with the lens of archaeology. Combining the documentary and material evidences to paint a more holistic, unbiased, portrait of the battle was excellent. Debunks any myth that Custer had a dramatic fatalistic ‘Last Stand’.
Very dense read. About 400 pages with the notes included on a single battle that took merely a couple hours in total. Written in an academic tone, this book is not for everyone. If you want a general history of the battle look elsewhere. This is through and through a cutting-edge study where documentary and material sources uncovered through archaeology are employed to paint a heretofore “different” picture of the battle.
Great read.

[Joe Fitch · Rating 1 out of 5]

Fox deserves credit for using cutting edge (for the 1980's) forensic techniques in his archaeological investigation of the Little Bighorn Battlefield site. The problem is that there seems to be some huge gaps in the archaeological record here. The battlefield has undergone numerous cultural and natural transformations in it's 130+ year history beginning with looting directly after the battle up to present day. These gaps Fox fills with his own preconceived notions of battlefield psychology gained through the study of secondary and tertiary sources such as John Keegan. His either/or model of tactical stability and disintegration I feel is overly simplistic.
Where there is a paucity (seemingly his favorite word) of battlefield artifacts he sees panicked troops fleeing without firing their weapons. When there is anecdotal evidence for over 800 cartridge cases removed from a single area of the battlefield alone I don't think you can reasonably make those conclusions.
He accuses just about everyone else who has ever written about the battle of being prejudiced in some way, Either vilifying Custer and his troops or exonerating them. What he can't see is how is how his own views color the way in which he interprets the archaeological record and how he chooses which eyewitness accounts are true. Archaeology like any other scientific endeavor is not free from the bias of the investigator.
This is the first book that I have read on the battle and I entered into it with no hard preconceptions one way or the other. What I found is a book by someone who is trying very hard to be a avant garde iconoclast and show his cleverness. If you are interested in the history of this battle I would recommend borrowing a copy rather than buying one.

[Kristin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am not a Custer scholar - I’ve read a couple books and visited the battlefield a couple times. But I will say that this should not be anyone’s first book on this topic - you need some grounding in the overall picture first. I highly recommend Peter Panzeri’s Little Big Horn 1876, which draws on the research in this book. I got confused at points and looking at the maps in the Panzeri book helped a lot.

There is a lot on archaeological method detail at the beginning, which may not be everyone’s bag but I think explains how the author got his results. There is a lot of detail in general and I think some better/easier to read maps would help with understanding. I sometimes got turned around and had to reorient myself.

Having said that, this book does show very well how they took the archaeological finds and deduced the events of the battle from there. So it is a good deeper dive if you want to know more than the basics.

[Barney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ahhhhhh, George Armstrong Custer. As Al Swearingen said in Deadwood, "That arrogant cocksucker getting massacred just brought the Sioux one long term assfucking."

I have long been fascinated with Custer and his fight. My "uncle" (read: someone my folks pawned me off on when they did not want to deal with me) gave me books to read about him. Richard Fox's book is different than most of those, as he takes a different take on the Last Stand than many authors. His sources and methodology are authoritative, in some cases overwhelmingly so. Fox takes the first two sections of the book to lay out the archaeological evidence, then takes into account not only army accounts but also Indian accounts of the fight.

This runs him afoul of many Custerphiles. As Fox points out, it benefits the narrative of the 1870s and 1880s to believe in a Last Stand of white men before they were "overwhelmed." The only way the natives could win is through overwhelming numbers, which meshes with the white superiority idea of empire in the late 19th century. Of course, one person who indefatigably pushed the legend was Libby Custer, George's wife. Fox argues that the evidence does not support a "Last Stand" hypothesis. Having been to the field, I find this analysis correct. The command was strung out on a series of ridges overlooking the Little Bighorn River; the markers on the field are of questionable veracity.

Custer's bravery has never been questioned, nor should it be. He was a general who led from the front and was offensive minded. What makes this book fascinating is that many who read it think that Fox is questioning Custer's courage and that of his men. Well, if you are outnumbered some 3-1, in a defensive position that leaves much to be desired, in 90 degree heat, far from supplies, fighting an enemy that does not have the best reputation for treatment of prisoners or the dead, would you be scared? I would be crapping in my army issued pants. This is quite all right, and is a normal reaction. Custer was brave to a fault, but even he probably knew the command was in desperate straits.The evidence supplied by Fox more than proves this contention in this reporter's opinion.

This book is more about what Custer means. In the 1880s and 1890s the two things you could count on being in any tavern north of Tennessee were:
1. Drunks
2. The engraving of Custer's Last Stand by Anheuser Busch.

The Sioux, from Sitting Bull on down, were excited by the victory but knew that Swearingen's profane announcement would prove correct. Crazy Horse came into the reservation some 18 months later. It could be argued that the Custer Fight needed to happen; after all, it nearly happened to General Crook on the Rosebud the previous week in 1876. The Last Stand here was for the Sioux and their allies, not Custer.

In this text Fox painstakingly lays out his idea of the flow of battle based on the archaeological evidence. At times it is a difficult read, but it is never boring and will keep your attention. It is suggested that you read the endnotes while going through the text as they provide good info. If you are interested in Custer this book is quite a read; if you are not, you may be wondering "What the hell is this?"

[Socraticgadfly · Rating 5 out of 5]

NOT for lovers of a mythical Custer

Hint: It WASN'T a glorious, mythical "Last Stand" on Custer Hill.

Page 221: "There is neither archaeological nor historical evidence of a ... famous last stand and ... Monument Hill area did not even see the last of the fighting."

Many modern Little Bighorn historians give lip service to the idea of giving new attention to traditional Indian accounts of the battle or to the latest archaeological findings.

Well, Fox does more than lip service. He actually gives full attention to both areas.

As he's a professional archaeologist himself, the second half comes naturally, and occupies the first third of the book. His extensive study of cartridge and bullet remains from both 7th Cav and Indian groups is detailed in the first third of the book.

Then, he takes an open-minded look at Indian accounts, with proper skepticism toward inflated claims, when warranted, as well as proper claim toward facile dismissal of many of their claims, often used by partisans (usually Custer hagiographers) with axes to grind.

This takes up about half the book.

The final one-sixth can be characterized by the name of one chapter: "Fate, Blame and Strategy." Fox is clearly a neutralist, but your typical Custer hagiographer has already written him off as hopelessly biased in a few reviews here.

What actually happened is troopers that were poorly trained, had single-shot rifles great at long distance but behind the firepower of either Henry repeaters or bows and arrows at closer distance -- not to mention war clubs and such at closest distance, and who eventually panicked and bunched themselves around commanders -- Keough, then Custer -- while firing few shots. (Note: Fox shows the same happened with Fetterman's troops.)

No "cowardice." Fox says that's a false dilemma, cowardice vs. glory. Rather, it was combat shock. The troops were routed and panicked, to put it bluntly.

And,some troopers escaped Custer Hill and made a break for the river, only to get forced into Deep Ravine. That was where a less-than-glorious Last Stand occurred.

How much of the combat shock was Custer's fault, due to bad tactics, ignoring his scouts, etc.? Fox doesn't go into that detail, but I'd say around 25-33 percent myself. That said, this does remove the "Reno was drunk" or "Reno blew it" claims of Custer hagiagraphers from reality.

This is a great book; I've just given you the surface only of why.

[Charlie Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got two books on the Little Bighorn fight because I knew that, as the result of a grass fire, the battle field had been examined by archeologists in 1984 and 1985 using metal detectors and modern forensic techniques. Richard Fox, this author, has a bone to pick with historians. Barbara Tuchman would say that it is ok for an author to have a bias as long as that bias is not concealed from the reader (sorry, no footnote for this statement). Mr. Fox's agenda, vis a vis the historians, is pretty much in your face. However, I find myself believing Mr. Fox and discounting the positions of the historians with whom he takes issue. I very much like his analysis of the events. On the first page of chapter 16 Fox says, "insights here have their origins in the ground." In other words, when Fox speculates then the basis for his speculation lies in the archeological evidence extracted from the soil of the battlefield. Using forensic techniques, Fox, et al, trace the movements of individual troopers and Indians across the battlefield by the signature of the cartridge cases ejected from their carbines. Chapter five offers an interesting review of then-new cavalry tactics dictated by the introduction of breech-loading firearms. This provides a basis for his later analysis of the fight based on the forensic evidence.

This book will interest anyone that has pondered the Little Bighorn fight; beyond that it will interest those who are intrigued by the military problem that needed to be solved at Liggle Bighorn (for the government, the reservations; for the Indians, their nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle). Custer's arrogance and the native American irregulars' response to his military gambits deserve careful reading even if the scope of this battle is not on the scale of Gettysberg. Many people died in order to produce the evidence reviewed in this book, and the culture of Custer's antagonists would die within perhaps a decade. Lastly, it will interest anyone that can emphasize with the individual troopers of the Seventh Cavalry as they fought a fight that none survived.

[Jeff · Rating 1 out of 5]

The book is an interesting read, however his conclusions that there was no "Last Stand" due to lack of archaeological evidence is simply wrong (a simple research on Indian casualties in '06 showed that 200 warriors had been killed on the battlefield alone, which couldn't be the case if Custer's men had actually shown little resistance and lasted over 2 hours). The fact that this fight occurred over 100 years ago, a visitor center built, monuments and markers placed, not to mention scores of relic hunters picking the hill clean for years (until 1984), and changes in the topography have contaminated any evidence or lack thereof. No conclusions are possible according to what was or what was not found on that hill. Certainly not enough to prove his theories.
He does rely heavily on Indian oral accounts. However, I was disturbed by his continued excuse to discount every account that contradicted his own conclusions, claiming that they were merely telling their white interviewers what white America wanted to hear. He seems to only accept their statements as valid as long as they coincide with his theories.
Would I recommend this book? While I agree it is interesting, it simply cannot be considered a reliable version of what took place on that hill in 1876. There are better books available.

[Andy Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book for Custer lovers. Debunks the idea of a famous last stand using archaeology dug at the battlefield in the 80's. Great book on what really happened. Was Custer really alive on the hill at the last stand? Did the last stand even happen? Who is to blame for the loss? Did their guns jam?

[Mike Kershaw · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book that led me to restudy the Little Bighorn Battle. This book is full of technical detail but brings together the recent (1990s) archaeology of the battlefield and the doctrinal history of cavalry employment into a compelling reexamination of our nations most written about battle.

[Gary Geisler · Rating 1 out of 5]

My thoughts

Its a interesting book but written over the head of many.i spent as much time with the dictionary as reading the content .i have the same issues with this whole series of Custer books written by archeologists they are writing to peers not to public

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating.

[Vance J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this an absolutely outstanding book. I’ve wanted to learn more about this since I attended a lecture at Fort Leavenworth, KS, in the mid 90s on the archeology done on the Custer battlefield after the 1980s brush fire (maybe by the author?). Combining modern forensic techniques with the written record, the author brings together history and archeology to rewrite much of the popular “history” of the battle. I found it fascinating.