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"BATTLE OF THE LITTLE BIGHORN, THE"   Term Paper ID:19178 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: (Mari Sandoz). Critical review of work on misjudgments of U.S. military leadership in defeat at hands of Amer. Indians.... More...

7 Pages / 1575 Words 1 sources, 9 Citations, APA Format $28.00 Return to List of Papers

Paper Abstract: (Mari Sandoz). Critical review of work on misjudgments of U.S. military leadership in defeat at hands of Amer. Indians. Paper Introduction: The purpose of this research is to examine The Battle of the Little Bighorn by Mari Sandoz, with a view toward exploring a twentieth-century interpretation of the pattern of misjudgment and what might generously be called hubris that informed the command structure of the United States Army division that encountered a massive Native American division at the Little Bighorn River in 1876. The plan of the research will be to set forth the context in which the book examines the details of the battle, and then to discuss the political social, cultural, and historiographical background and environment in which the modern understanding of the battle may be most profitably explored. Throughout, as appropriate, reference will be made to the point of view that Sandoz brings to judging events and circumstances of the incident itself and its myriad implications. Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Thecontent of that fantasy is worth noting. Reno and Captain Frederick W. The President was certainly aware that Custer was involved in the New York Herald articles denouncing Belknap and the whole Administration, some perhaps actually written by the ambitious Custer during this presidential election year, when it seemed that practically any Democrat might be elected. Lincoln:University of Nebraska Press, A Bison Book.----------------------- 3 In other words, Custer had sought to manipulate public opinion in hisfavor by means of fraud, and it backfired. Essentially, Sandoz's thesis is that Custerwanted to be drafted as the Democratic presidential candidate for theelection of 1876, and that he hoped to use a well-timed Indian-war victoryas the principal vehicle to achieve that purpose. They were embarrassed by this because they liked the big-nosed, broad-mustached young officer. Benteen arereviewed early in the narrative, as well as the expertise (if not thefawning loyalty) of Crow and Ree scouts. Sandoz's method of structuring this argument is to begin her narrative the daybefore the battle and to identify the principal actors in the commandstructure of Custer's 7th Cavalry. . As General of the Army he was well aware that Terry had already been appointed to head the expedition (pp. . 54-5). A victory telegram read at the Convention the morning of the 28th would do it, so he must succeed by sundown this evening, even if the defeat were only a small camp, only the "half a dozen Sioux lodges" that he had told the Ree scout would make him the Great Father, the President (pp. The purpose of this research is to examine The Battle of the LittleBighorn by Mari Sandoz, with a view toward exploring a twentieth-centuryinterpretation of the pattern of misjudgment and what might generously becalled hubris that informed the command structure of the United States Armydivision that encountered a massive Native American division at the LittleBighorn River in 1876. What could have been the capstone to a career as an Indian fighterwas a referendum on it, not because of the result of the campaign butbecause Custer began the march from Yellowstone with a need to do somecatching up on his career. 182). The method was one of military force,and it was based on the intent of the white population to exploit land ornatural resources previously under Indian control. 29). 173). One informal psychological term forthis pattern of thought and behavior is delusions of grandeur. Throughout, as appropriate, reference will be made tothe point of view that Sandoz brings to judging events and circumstances ofthe incident itself and its myriad implications. Sandoz takes the view that the massacre of George Armstrong Custer's7th Cavalry was the result of his overweening concern with reputation andfulfillment of ambition. 176). Psychohistorical musings aside, however, Custer might have paid moreattention to the basics of military strategy and less to notions ofmilitary outcome. She describes Custer's juvenileattitude toward his exploits of the past and prospects for the future as a"sense of destiny that often appears in youths intolerant of discipline andrestraint" (p. The reason, however, was not that he simply wanted tobuild on sundry military exploits during and after the Civil War (althoughthat was part of it) but that he wanted to rebuild a professionalreputation tarnished by actions that were themselves geared towardamplifying a professional reputation whose holder had large politicalambitions. Sandoz mentions in the overview commentary thatcloses the book that unlike Canada, which "took over her entire regionwithout one battle with her Indians by the simple expedient of keeping hertreaties . Terry's orderswere to prohibit the press from going along on the scout; Custer broughtalong a journalist. The battle of the Little Bighorn. . Caught in the act ofembarrassing politically powerful persons, he was obliged to redeem hiscareer with the competent execution of a possibly difficult command.Sandoz supports this idea with reference to Custer's specific case, byciting similar cases in which military men who had overstepped their areasof expertise, either by corruption or naive appreciation of the real innsof power. But a combination of arrogance and short-sightedness, aggravated not merely by a wish to redeem past politicalmistakes but by an evident wish to make a leap beyond political redemptionand toward the ultimate political glory. 181). Terry's orders were for Custer to scout and report;Custer appears to have left with the 7th Cavalry with a view toward findingand defeating an Indian force sufficiently surrounded by publicity toresult in Custer's being drafted as a presidential candidate. 5 ). This is an important technique for thereason that Custer's last stand, occurring though it did because ofCuster's incompetence, was not the only battle at the Little Bighorn, andthe historical testimony of the other commanders in the detail turns out tohave been an important means of piecing together the facts of the battle.Thus the parts of the scouting detail commanded by and the personalitiesand careers of Major Marcus A. He engaged in such actions among the political elite,but also among more seasoned, more experienced veterans of Indiancampaigns. The Indian nations were an afterthought, at leastin the United States. Standardmilitary strategy in the field--aside from following orders to scout andreport--would have required Custer to attack the mass of Indians encampednear the Little Bighorn with a fully staffed, fully armed force; as Sandozspins the tale, Custer appears to have deliberately split his commandforces in a way calculated to have the effect of providing him with thelabel of hero and so make the presidential candidacy, scheduled to bedecided within a week of the mission, a fait accompli. Sandoz explains thatCuster, accompanied by much publicity, fanfare, and flamboyance of personalstyle, embarked on a scouting party at the order of General Alfred H.Terry, who was later to follow with a battleready force. Sandoz's last comment about the commonsense Indian point of view ofCuster's action and procedure in the heat of battle illustrates that Custerwas as much victim as perpetrator of an individual political fantasy. The principal fact about Custer's foray from the Yellowstone Rivertoward the Little Bighorn is that the expedition, while critical to U.S.government policy of making war on the Plains Indians, was not an offensiveoperation but a scouting party. And it was a good time now for a military victory, only nine days to the Fourth of July and the national centennial, a hundred years since the Declaration of Independence was signed. Sandoz's view is that the primary responsibility for misunderstandingand underestimating the military situation on one hand and ineptlymanipulating it in order to create a political situation on the other mustlie solely and completely with Custer. Sandoz ends by calling thisattitude on the part of Custer "a sort of desperate destiny," a self-proclaimed sense of greatness that was documented in "stories of theIndians and the white men of the Plains, or Custer's own writings." Indeed,Custer himself had made solemn promises to Indians that he would keep "whenhe was made the Great Father, the President, if he could win even a littlevictory over a few Sioux" (p. A pattern of disobeying orders, extraordinarily presumptuousmisreading of political circumstances and power, programmatic disregard ofsensible military intelligence or strategy, and an arrogant disregard ofordinary tactics, informed by vaulting ambition and little enough evidencethat he had any real ability for governance or command--all of these wereattributes that Custer brought to the Little Bighorn in 1876, according toSandoz. The plan of the research will be to set forth thecontext in which the book examines the details of the battle, and then todiscuss the political social, cultural, and historiographical backgroundand environment in which the modern understanding of the battle may be mostprofitably explored. Sheattributes any inconsistencies in eyewitness accounts, however, tomiscommunication and ordinary differences in perception: "One wonders if itwas not more temporary war deafness on the part of one group and a refusalto understand the actual power of the Indian on the other--between the Renomen who had faced that power and were concerned with bare survival andthose who came up after the bloody fight on the bottoms and the river andbluffs was about done, and understood nothing of the situation" (p. Such a protest had never been made, for had he ever expressed or intimated the sentiments attributed to him. Sandoz details the way in which Custer's platoon rode into an Indianambush, discounting criticisms of Indian accounts of the battle that arebased on inconsistencies in relation of the facts of the case by citing thepattern of inconsistency found in white men's accounts as well. Besides, Grant must have known that Custer himself stood accused, by hearsay, of graft and attempts at graft through post traders all the way from Texas to Fort Lincoln and beyond. In the background of his fantasies of easy victory andpolitical glory was a larger national fantasy that encompassed the whiteman's burden, manifest destiny, and what the modern period has widelyacknowledged as racism. At Grant's angry demand for an explanation, Sherman wrote a long disclaimer of the whole story. He believed the army possessed hundreds who were competent to lead the attack on the Indians. . According to the World's account, the Secretary of War and General Sherman had gone to the President to protest his treatment of the colonel, Sherman saying that Custer was the only man fit to lead the expedition against the Indians. He said it confidently as he had told a luncheon given for him by an associate of Jay Gould that his 7th Cavalry could whip all the Indians on the Plains. 18-19). But Custer appears to have had a selectivememory of the consequences of his actions, as the profound implication ofself-absorption on his part indicates. Sandoz connects Custer's relentless pursuit of a fightin the field to his single-minded pursuit of a political career, a point towhich we shall return. How good (or more exactly bad) a politician hemight have been is rather obvious inasmuch as his egocentric mode ofbehavior demonstrates. Custer had given public testimony that had accused the Grantadministration and high military officials of graft, to his career cost. That had been Custer's career pattern, and it hadserved him both well and ill. Whatever Custer's motivation for putting privategoals before the exigencies of a military situation, the fact is thatCuster ignored evidence of superior enemy numbers as well as fundamentalmilitary procedures. More infuriating however, to the President than Custer's charges of graft and rake-offs against the already disgraced and departed Belknap were the accusations, also hearsay, against half a dozen prominent army men and Grant's own brother, in addition to other charges against Lewis Merrill, major of the regiment, and even Sturgis, colonel of the 7th Cavalry. He then proceeded to split hisrelatively large force into three smaller forces, commanded by himself,Benteen, and Reno, respectively, making them each extremely vulnerable toattack by the massive and motivated Sioux force gathered across the river.The reason for this series of field commands can be traced to Custer'sambition as well: "Custer's division of his small force into three parts isinexplicable, unless one assumes that it was of overwhelming importancethat neither Benteen nor Reno share in any victory" (p. 18 ).Meanwhile, Custer had ignored credible field reports of massive numbers ofenemy Sioux ready to engage in battle. It was an excellent time to defeat the warring Sioux, and today the best time of all, with the Democratic Convention opening the day after tomorrow . As Sandoz reports, Custer hadsought to make a reputation in no small way by declaring himself andpositioning himself publicly as an Indian fighter, full of confidence,verve, and abandon. Thus one may be forgiven in retrospect forconsidering that the slaughter of Custer's men, shocking as it may havebeen, should not have particularly been a surprise. References Sandoz, Mari. He had endurance, and was not working to get himself ahead (p. On the other hand, the political rationalization ofthe United States vis-a-vis Indian nations in residence was notdemonstrably more morally correct than the rationalization of Custerhimself. "The Indians are very, very many" Varnum was told, but with the low, flat tone used to one known to be totally deaf, whether deaf to their warning by his choice or that of his commander. It was a time of graft, insubordination, and disobedience (p. In one sense, as Sandoz notes, Custer's attitude was typical ofthe attitude of Indian-fighter commanders in the postwar period.Nevertheless, early in, narrative, it becomes clear that Custer hadsomething to prove. The United States broke most of her treaties before the inkon the Indian's X was dry" (p. Leaving aside the question of Custer's political ambition on onehand, or the need to salvage a self-inflicted wound on his reputation onthe other, Sandoz's presentation of Custer's incompetence in the fieldprovides compelling commentary on the obduracy of commanders with somepower and no sense. (1966). That Custer paid forhis mistake with his own life is, in this view, incidental to the fact thatmany others paid as well. One civilian always up close was Mark Kellogg, to catch every word and report it to Bennett of the New York Herald, long a backer of the bold commander of the 7th Cavalry who had proved an even bolder commander of the pen, not only for the Herald, but, some said, as the author of the May 9 New York World attack on Grant for his treatment of Custer. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.