| Edward A. Crane |
| The Second French Empire (1905) D. Appleton & Co. |
| Dr. Edward Crane was a writer and editor who, during the American
Civil War assisted Dr.
Thomas Evans.. Evans was noted for his exhibit of hospital tents, railroad
hospital cars, surgical instruments, etc. He had already seen first-hand
the gruesome results of modern warfare during the Crimean War and the French-Italian
conflict of 1859, and his visit to Grant’s headquarters allowed him to
study a subject close to his heart: "provisions made for the care of the
sick and wounded." That, and the two months he spent in Philadelphia afterwards
gathering information about the latest developments in hygiene, led to
a book detailing the work of the sanitary commission (a volunteer citizens’
association that supplemented the work of the Army Medical Bureau). It
was followed by another book, Sanitary Institutions during the Austro-Prussian-Italian
Conflict of 1866. Both would impress important readers in Europe, and would,
despite resistance from bureaucracies, lead to changes in the treatment
of wounded soldiers.
With the help of Dr. Edward Crane, his friend and literary editor, Evans
assembled, at his own expense, the various inventions that had saved tens
of thousands of lives during the Civil War, and had them shipped to the
Paris Exposition. The Grand Prix d’Honneur was presented by the emperor,
and Evans himself received a special prize for his design of a light, well-ventilated
"flying ambulance." One ranking physician from the French Army wrote that
the various articles of the exhibition "all bear the stamp of the enlightened
patriotism and the importance which the Americans attach to the preservation
of human life and the alleviation of the inevitable evils of war." Evams
wrote The Fall of the Second French Empire
|
| Leo Crane | ||
Indians of the Enchanted Desert Southwest Indian history
Navajo & Hopi Indians (Little/Brown, 1925)
  
  
Other:
|
||
 
Leo Crane was the Indian Agent at Keams Canyon for the Hopi and Navajo Tribes, starting in 1911. He then served as the agent for the Pueblo Tribes of New Mexico, and was later transferred to the Crow Creek Reservation, Sou th Dakota. He also worked at the Colorado River Tribes Agency. In the 1950's he worked as guide and ranger at the Boulder Canyon Dam. He authored two books on the southwest: Indians of the Enchanted Desert and Desert Drums: The Pueb lo Indians of New Mexico, 1540-1928. |
| F. Marion Crawford - (August 2, 1854 – April 9, 1909) |
| Don
Orsino 1907 G & D ~ 446 pages (1st. 1891, MACMILLAN AND CO.)
Full Books e-Edition  
OTHER: Cecilia ~ 1902 A story of modern Rome Via Crucis   |
 Francis Marion
Crawford
(1854-1909)was one of the most famous authors in the English-speaking
world at the time of his death in 1909. He wrote over forty novels. Many
of them were the types of disposable romances popular at the time, but
he also wrote some stories of the horror and occult. These are generally
the ones for which he is now remembered. He was the son of the famous American
sculptor Thomas Crawford. His mother, Louise Ward, was a sister of Julia
Ward Howe, who wrote the words to the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Both
his parents belonged to prominent Boston families, buth chose to live in
Italy. FMC was born and grew up in Italy, setting of many of his
books. He attended St Paul's School in NH, Harvard, Heidelberg University
in Germany, and the University of Rome, in his native Italy. He was cultured,
cosmopolitan, widely travelled and rich. Much to the horror of his Boston
relations, he became a Roman Catholic. Beginning with his novel Mr Isaacs
(1882), a big success, he produced some forty books: while it was running
through the press Crawford began a more carefully composed novel, "Dr.
Claudius" (1883), which more than repeated the success of "Mr. Isaacs".
His third novel, "A Roman Singer", ran serially in the "Atlantic
Monthly" and was published in 1884. It was this third novel which opened
out to Crawford his true field, the description of Italian life and character
with its many cosmopolitan, and especially its American and English,
affiliations. He was the author of some forty novels and one play,
"Francesca da Rimini", and his publications commanded a larger sale than
those of any contemporary writer of fiction in England or in the
United States: "Zoroaster" (1885); "A Tale of a Lonely Parish" (1886);
"Saracinesca" (1887); "Marzio's Crucifix" (1887); "Paul Patoff" (1887);
"Greifenstein" (1889); "Sant'
Ilario" (1889); "A Cigarette Maker's Romance" (1890); "The Witch of
Prague" (1891); "Don Orsino" (1892); "Pietro Ghisleri" (1893); "The Ralstons"
(1895); "Corleone" (1897); "Via Crucis" (1899); "In the Palace of
the King" (1900); "Marietta, A Maid of Venice" (1901); "The Heart
of Rome" (1903); "Whosoever Shall Offend" (1904); "Soprano, A Portrait"
(1905); "Fair Margaret" (1905); "The Primadonna" (1907); and "The Diva's
Ruby" (1908).
Crawford did not confine his attention to fiction. History, biography,
and description are represented in his: "Constantinople" (1895);
"Ave, Roma Immortalis" (1898); "The Rulers of the South" (1900) -- renamed
"Sicily, Calabria and Malta" (1904); "The Life of Pope Leo XIII" (1904);
and "Gleanings From Venetian History" (1905). In 1904 he published
an essay entitled "The Novel: What it is", in which he gives his views
upon the art of which he was a master. He was unquestionably America's
most successful and widely read Victorian writer. His early death, and
the marked change in tastes following World War I, meant that he was more
or less forgotten after 1920 or so. American letters in the XX Century
were dominated by left-wing ethnic modernists, interested in the "wretched
refuse of the teaming shore". They had no use for this genteel brahmin,
with his polished tales of Upper Class American expatriates in Venice and
Constantinople, his romantic religious interests, his princely villa in
Sorrento (near Naples, where he died in 1909.)
Wikipedia Entry Gutenberg Editions |
| John Carey Cremony 1815 – August 24, 1879 |
Life Among the Apaches ~ 1868 ~San Francisco: A. Roman
and Company ~ 322 pages
    
A first-hand account of John C. Cremony's personal adventures with Apache indians in the latter part of the 19th century, in particular the Chiricahua Apaches. Although this effort's original purpose was to induce more effective military suppression of the Apaches (it was first published in 1868), it has all of the fast-paced action and excitement of a novel and the authenticity of an ethnographic and historical document. It is informative about Apache beliefs, tribal life, and fighting tactics. www.erbzine.com/craft/lifeamongapaches_cremony.pdf Alternate Online Edition in PDF: http://www.pdflibrary.com/Samples/AMERICAN_INDIANS/1582183864.pdf
|
 John Carey
Cremony: Interpreter to the U.S. Boundary Commission, Under the
Hon. John R. Bartlett, in 1849, '50, and '51, and late major of Californian
Volunteer Cavalry, Operating in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Western
Arkansas. Cremony wrote absorbing eyewitness descriptions of pre-reservation
Apache life and culture, in particular the Chiricahua Apaches. Through
his years in the military, Cremony fought in the war with Mexico and participated
in many Indian campaigns in the southwest deserts. In 1848 he served as
Spanish interpreter for the U. S. Boundary Commission where he learned
to speak Apache and subsequently wrote a glossary and grammar of the language.
Although he wrote this book with the intent to encourage more effective
military suppression of the intimidating Apaches, this historical document
has all of the fast-paced action and excitement of a Wild West novel. Of
particular note are his accounts of the life of Mangas Coloradas -- a man
far more important to history than Cremony. An important classic of general
and Native American history.
Cremony's book inspired many a Hollywood screenwriter, and for years his words have been taken as gospel. Scholars have since shown that Cremony was habitually inflating his own importance and his knowledge of Apache ways and history. Of particular note are his highly fictionalized accounts of the life of Mangas Coloradas -- a man far more important to history than Cremony. But this work remains an extremely telling document of a time and place -- and all the strange attitudes that made up "white" perceptions. It is a refreshingly open and objective look at the Apache culture before the reservations. Cremony wrote the first dictionary of the Apache language and earned their grudging respect. He shows admiration for their amazing courage, endurance, and skills of warfare and survival. But, since this was written a century before the political correctness Victorianism we now are censored by, Cremony is able to share his concerns about their interesting work ethic (it is dishonorable for a man to work besides hunting and stealing) and their cruelty. Cremony makes some polite comments about the extreme attractiveness of some of the Apache women which suggests, at a minimum, an emotional involvement -- which adds a touching romantic side to this well written account. Major John C. Cremony was a Boston newspaperman who enrolled in the Massachusetts Volunteers in 1846, serving as a lieutenant. He served as a Spanish language interpreter for the U.S. Boundary Commission which laid out the Mexican and United States Border between 1849-1852. He went on to serve as Captain in Company B, 2nd Regiment California Volunteer Cavalry a unit of California Volunteers, with the California Column in New Mexico Territory. He eventually achieved the rank of Major in 1864 and commanded the 1st Battalion of Native Cavalry, California Volunteers until 1866. He was the first editor of San Francisco's Weekly Sunday Times newspaper. Despite fighting them, Cremony was an admirer of the Apache people,
and was the author of Life Among the Apaches, published in 1869.
A first-hand balanced perspective on the Native American tribe. He was
the first white man to become fluent in the Apache language, learning it
in his role as an interpreter, and publishing the first written compilation
of their language as a glossary for the army
|
| Freeman Wills Croft June 1, 1879 Dublin - April 11, 1957 Worthing | ||
| Pit
Prop Syndicate 1922
Online eText: http://www.bookrags.com/books/ptprp/ http://textual.net/access.gutenberg/Freeman.Wills.Croft  
The Pit Prop Syndicate Chapters Online eText Edition: http://www.blackmask.com/olbooks/pitpropdex.htm
Series: Many tites featuring Inspector Joseph French, of Scotland Yard, in London, England: 1925-1957 "One of the Humdrum School. Features plodding, methodical Insp. French. Complex, mechanical plots written by a civil and railway engineer, and it shows." Bibliography |
||
  eBooks Library |
| Ruth Cross 1887-1981 |
The Golden Cocoon 1924 AL Burt (1st Harper & Brothers 1924)
 "Full of thrilling
scenes and romance. The highs and lows, poverty and plenty and the hights
and depths of human emotion" "The Golden Cocoon paints a grim picture of
life in the cottonfields and an even grimmer one of the faculty at the
University of Texas, "a backwash of incompetents whom life had rejected."
This routine Warner Brothers melodrama was based on the novel by Ruth Cross. Country girl Molly Shannon (Helene Chadwick) wins a college scholarship which was offered by Judge Gregory Cochran (Huntley Gordon). While attending the school, she falls in love with one of the professors, Renfro (Richard Tucker), but on the eve of their wedding, he deserts her. She wanders miserably through the night until she passes out in front of a notorious road house. Before she is taken in, she is seen by Bancroft (Frank Campeau), a politician. Molly's ordeal comes back to haunt her much later, after she and Cochran marry. Bancroft wants to use Molly's presence at the road house to stop Cochran from running for office. To save her husband, Molly disappears and pretends to have committed suicide. Just before the election, Renfro shows up and finds Molly. He is shot in a struggle -- but before he dies, he insists that Molly is completely innocent of any wrongdoing. Cochran's career is saved and he and Molly are reunited. ~ All Movie Guide |
| Mattie Ruth Cross (1887-1981), novelist, the oldest of four children of Dr. Walter D. and Willie Alta (Cole) Cross, was born in Sylvan, Texas, on December 25, 1887. After moving around the South while her father, a former high school principal, finished his medical education, Ruth returned with her family to Sylvan, in rural Lamar County, where she attended local schools. Strongly influenced by her mother, a music teacher versed in Greek and Latin, Ruth excelled in her studies and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Texas. She had enrolled in college in 1904 and worked her way through by teaching in small Texas and Oklahoma towns. When an eye malady impaired Ruth's vision, her mother traveled to Austin to assist with her coursework. After her mother died, Ruth depended upon friends to read and take notes for her. She was awarded a B.A. in creative writing in 1911 and then taught in Longview, emphasizing oral work in her Latin and German classes in order to spare her eyes. Writing fiction, however, remained her first ambition. After studying for a summer at the University of Chicago, she subsidized her creative efforts with stints as a housekeeper, travel companion, interior decorator, and real-estate broker in New York, Nevada, and California. Undeterred by almost a decade of rejection, she began selling her "cotton field" tales to Holland's magazine. Her literary career then bloomed quickly. In 1922 Louis B. Mayer based a movie on her short story "A Question of Honor." Two years later Harper published her first novel, The Golden Cocoon, which was greeted by favorable reviews and printed in five editions. After paying Cross $25,000 for the movie rights, Warner Brothers in 1925 filmed this saga of a farm girl from the Black Hills who survives heartbreak as the governor's mistress and then leaves her glamorous life in Austin to struggle as a writer in New York City. Flushed with the additional success of a one-act play on the Keith vaudeville circuit, Ruth Cross in 1924 married George W. Palmer, a horticulturist and financier. Together they bought and renovated Edendale, a forty-acre farm estate outside Winsted, Connecticut, home to fellow Texas writers Dorothy Scarborough,qv Annie Laurie Williams, and Maurice Crain. Over the next two decades, Cross published five novels: The Unknown Goddess (1926), Enchantment (1930), The Big Road (1931), Soldier of Good Fortune (1936), and Back Door to Happiness (1937). She also wrote two works of nonfiction, Eden on a Country Hill (1938) and Wake Up and Garden (1942), and numerous stories and articles for magazines. Always enthusiastic about her fruits and flowers, she contributed to Heinz's "Magazine of the Air" on WABC radio and broadcast an original program called "Your Garden and Home." Just before her husband's death in 1947, Cross sold Edendale. She lived for a few years in New York City and then moved to Winnfield, Louisiana, her mother's hometown, to be near the families of her sister and brother. In 1975 she donated her papers to Northwestern State University at Natchitoches, which a year later published her final book, The Beautiful and the Doomed. Although her first novel established Cross as a writer of note, her subsequent books did not live up to its promise. Drawing on memories of her childhood, she set many of her tales in "Law's Chapel," a fictional counterpart of Sylvan, and critics commended her realism and local color in both The Golden Cocoon and The Big Road. When her characters left Texas for Broadway and the big cities, however, her "riotous imagination" tinged the plot with melodrama in such books as Enchantment. But even when Cross was out of the critical eye, she continued to write; at the age of eighty-eight she was planning a novel about her psychic experiences. She died in Winnfield on September 30, 1981. |
| Wilbur F. Crummer (45th Regiment, Illinois Volunteer). |
| With Grant at Fort Donelson, Shilo and Vicksburg;
And an Appreciation of General U.S. Grant. Oak Park, Il: E.C. Crummer and
Company, 1915. Flyleaf inscription: “To Edgar Rice Burroughs, compliments
of the author Wilbur R. Crummer, Oak Park, Ils, June 20, 1917.”
"…….All around us lay the dead and dying, amid the groans and cries of the wounded. Our surgeons came up quickly, and, taking possession of a farmhouse, converted it into a hospital, and we began to carry ours and the enemy's wounded to the surgeons. There they lay, the blue and the gray intermingled; the same rich, young American blood flowing out in little rivulets of crimson; each thinking he was in the right………The blue and the gray took their turn before the surgeon's knife…….with no anesthetic to soothe the agony, but, gritting their teeth, they bore the pain of the knife and saw, while arms and legs were being severed from their bodies. There was just one case that was no exception……..He was a fine looking officer and colonel of some Louisiana regiment of the Confederate army. He had been shot through the leg and was making a great ado about it. Dr. Kittoe, of our regiment, examined it and said it must be amputated; the poor fellow cried and howled: "Oh I never can go home to my wife on one leg……." "Well," said the gruff old surgeon, "that, or not go home at all," The colonel final said yes, and in a few minutes he was in a condition (if he got well) to wear a wooden leg when he went home." |
| Wilbur Crummer: 45th Illinois Infantry
William Crummer was a native a Galena, Illinois, and an Union enlisted man during the Civil War.In 1915, he published his book, With Grant at Donelson, Shiloh and Vicksburg. |
| Edward Cummings 1894-1962 |
Marmaduke of Tennessee ~ A.C. McClurg and Co: Chicago - 1914
OTHER: "The Coward" March 1904 ~ McClure's Magazine with illustrations by George Gibbs.   |
Almost certain not THE e.e. cummings BUT...
 Edward
Cummings ??(doubtful that e.e. is the same Cummings) was born into
the family of a Unitarian minister in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1894,
near the turn of the century; yet a child, he started writing romantically
colored poems. Having completed five years at Harvard where Greek and English
literature had been his specialities, he moved to New York and spent several
months seriously at work as a cubist painter. In the early days* of the
First World War he went to France to join an American ambulance corps.
A month or two in Paris taught him to speak fluent French; partly because
of the fact he could easily communicate to the French and seemed to know
more than officers of his rank were allowed to, he found himself imprisoned
on suspicion of being a spy at the end of 1917. Out of his experience in
World War I came his first book, The Enormous Room, a classic among war
books, illustrated by his own drawings. Cummings’ whole career is marked
by creative surprise. Throughout his life he was interested in a variety
of literary and art forms. Examples extend to plays, a ballet, and a collection
of pictures, done in charcoal, ink, oil, pencil, and water color. He painted
all of his life, and once referred to himself as “an author of pictures,
a draftsman of words”.Nevertheless, when he died in 1962, Cummings was
called by the critics as, “next to Robert Frost, the most popular contemporary
poet in the nation”. Today many of his most enthusiastic admirers are among
the young. |
| Alice Turner Curtis |
Grandpa's Little Girls
 
Other  The Little
Maid of Ticonderoga by Alice Turner Curtis. Hardback, 1920
216 pages
Little Maid of Narragansett Bay 1915 A Little Maid of Old Connecticut A Little Maid of Maryland A Little Maid of Massachusetts Colony Little Maid of Mohawk Valley Yankee Girl at Fort Sumter Online eText: http://manybooks.net/titles/curtisaletext04ykgfs10.html |
| James Oliver Curwood |
| A Gentleman of Courage G&D 1924
Back to God's Country 1920. Thirteen short stories of adventure in the Canadian Northwest & Arctic Circle. The title story is an amazing hero-tale easily comparable to Jack London -- for the hero is a Great Dane brought to the Frazer River by a Chinese gold prospector, & the dog, Wapi, fought against unbeatable odds to defend the honor of a woman he had decided was his mistress. "The Match" & a few others are Mounties tales. "The Case of Beauvois" is a macabre tale of murder. "The Mouse" is about just such a pet kept in a sourdough's pocket. All these stories set in "the white wilderness of moaning storm" are simply outstanding. God's Country and the Woman Isobel The Alaskan The Ancient Highway The Black Hunter New York: Cosmopolitan Book Co. 1926. First Edition. Arthur E. Becher dj art and illustrations. Adventurous novel of 18th Century Quebec The Courage of Marge O'Doone The Danger Trail The Flaming Forest Grosset & Dunlap 1921. dustwrapper art shows a brooding portrait of wilderness tragedy. This was the third of Curwood's brilliant trilogy, preceded by River's End and The Valley of Silent Men, adventure-filled tales of the Canadian Mounties. About a Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman, abducted by a band of outlaws, was originally published by Rinehart & Company in 1921. The Golden Snare New York: Grosset and Dunlap. (1921). Photo-play Edition. Illustrated with scenes from the First National picture starring Lewis Stone and Ruth Renick. The Grizzly King A Romance of the Wild. NY: Grosset & Dunlap, 1918, 1925 Doubleday Page frontispiece by Frank B. Hoffman, showing the great bear Thor's encounter with a procupine. The tale of the Rockies & of a bear & its hunter, Langdon. Something of a companion-piece to Kazan. The Hunted Woman The River's End The Valley of Silent Men 1920 Farrar & Rinehart 1st edition A Mountie from his deathbed confesses to a crime in order to protect the actual killer -- then recovers & must face the possibility he may hang. The resulting struggle for life & honor provides one of the great classic adventures of the Royal Mounted Police in the Canadian Northwest & the far-frozen North    
  
ALSO
|
 James
Oliver Curwood lived most of his life in Owosso, Michigan,
where he was born on June 12, 1878. His first novel was The Courage
of Captain Plum (1908) and he published one or two novels each year
thereafter, until his death on August 13, 1927. Owosso residents honor
his name to this day, & Curwood Castle is the town's main tourist attraction.
The Castle, shown in the center illustration (2-b), was built in 1922,
in which decade Curwood became one of America's best selling & most
highly paid authors. This was the decade of his lasting classics The Valley
of Silent Men (1920) & The Flaming Forest (1921). Would that every
worthy writer could earn a castle for their labors! He & his wife Ethel
were outdoors fanatics and active conservationists. She assisted uncredited
on several of his manuscripts & wrote a substantial portion of Green
Timber (1930) unfinished at the time of her husband's death. Green Timber
was a tale of settlers in the wilderness of his native Michigan, but the
majority of his books were about the far north of Canada. These were rough
& tumble adventures, of which readers in the Lower 48 could not get
enough. Curwood loved Canada & made many wilderness excursions
into the most rugged regions, even wintering among Inuits under the harshest
conditions. Today most Americans are pretty ignorant of Canada's grand
history, but in Curwood's heyday American children were as apt to play
at being red-coated Mounties as they were at being cowboys --and the Romance
of the frozen North was closely identified with this thrilling American
writer.
Wikipedia Bio Curwood Appearances in Magazines and Newspapers Why I Write Nature Stories Thor, Lord of the Jungles (Selig Polyscope Co., Nov. 1, 1913) The screenplay/story is attributed to popular writer James Oliver Curwood. It is described elsewhere as an early 'jungle movie' but there doesn't appear to be any extant copy or plot summary. None of Curwood's published works that would fit the description, though perhaps the story might have been published in a magazine -- then again, perhaps it was a direct-to-screenplay work, as Curwood seems to have been involved in writing for early films. Interestingly the Selig company had its headquarters in Chicago, and the first Tarzan movie (1918) was filmed at the Selig Zoo Park in California. Possibly "Thor..." might have been an early attempt to cash in on the popularity of Tarzan of the Apes. Click for full images     
  |
| General George Armstrong Custer (1839-1876) | ||||
| My Life on the Plains - 1881 Sheldon & Co.
Online eText Edition: http://www.kancoll.org/books/custerg/   Custer's
Chapter 1 Intro:
"It is but a few years ago that every schoolboy, supposed to possess the rudiments of a knowledge of the geography of the United States, could give the boundaries and a general description of the Great American Desert. As to the boundary the knowledge seemed to be quite explicit: on the north bounded by the Upper Missouri, on the east by the Lower Missouri and Mississippi, on the south by Texas, and on the west by the Rocky Mountains. . . . " |
||||
George Armstrong Custer (1839-1876): Flamboyant in life, George Armstrong Custer has remained one of the best-known figures in American history and popular mythology long after his death at the hands of Lakota and Cheyenne warriors at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Custer was born in New Rumley, Ohio, and spent much of his childhood with a half-sister in Monroe, Michigan. Immediately after high school he enrolled in West Point, where he utterly failed to distinguish himself in any positive way. Several days after graduating last in his class, he failed in his duty as officer of the guard to stop a fight between two cadets. He was court-martialed and saved from punishment only by the huge need for officers with the outbreak of the Civil War. Custer did unexpectedly well in the Civil War. He fought in the First Battle of Bull Run, and served with panache and distinction in the Virginia and Gettysburg campaigns. Although his units suffered enormously high casualty rates -- even by the standards of the bloody Civil War -- his fearless aggression in battle earned him the respect of his commanding generals and increasingly put him in the public eye. His cavalry units played a critical role in forcing the retreat of Confederate General Robert E. Lee's forces; in gratitude, General Philip Sheridan purchased and made a gift of the Appomatox surrender table to Custer and his wife, Elizabeth Bacon Custer. In July of 1866 Custer was appointed lieutenant-colonel of the Seventh Cavalry. The next year he led the cavalry in a muddled campaign against the Southern Cheyenne. In late 1867 Custer was court-martialed and suspended from duty for a year for being absent from duty during the campaign. Custer maintained that he was simply being made a scapegoat for a failed campaign, and his old friend General Phil Sheridan agreed, calling Custer back to duty in 1868. In the eyes of the army, Custer redeemed himself by his November 1868 attack on Black Kettle's band on the banks of the Washita River. Custer was sent to the Northern Plains in 1873, where he soon participated in a few small skirmishes with the Lakota in the Yellowstone area. The following year, he lead a 1,200 person expedition to the Black Hills, whose possession the United States had guaranteed the Lakota just six years before. In 1876, Custer was scheduled to lead part of the anti-Lakota expedition, along with Generals John Gibbon and George Crook. He almost didn't make it, however, because his March testimony about Indian Service corruption so infuriated President Ulysses S. Grant that he relieved Custer of his command and replaced him with General Alfred Terry. Popular disgust, however, forced Grant to reverse his decision. Custer went West to meet his destiny. The original United States plan for defeating the Lakota called for the three forces under the command of Crook, Gibbon, and Custer to trap the bulk of the Lakota and Cheyenne population between them and deal them a crushing defeat. Custer, however, advanced much more quickly than he had been ordered to do, and neared what he thought was a large Indian village on the morning of June 25, 1876. Custer's rapid advance had put him far ahead of Gibbon's slower-moving infantry brigades, and unbeknownst to him, General Crook's forces had been turned back by Crazy Horse and his band at Rosebud Creek. On the verge of what seemed to him a certain and glorious victory for both the United States and himself, Custer ordered an immediate attack on the Indian village. Contemptuous of Indian military prowess, he split his forces into three parts to ensure that fewer Indians would escape. The attack was one the greatest fiascos of the United States Army, as thousands of Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors forced Custer's unit back onto a long, dusty ridge parallel to the Little Bighorn, surrounded them, and killed all 210 of them. Custer's blunders cost him his life but gained him everlasting fame. His defeat at the Little Bighorn made the life of what would have been an obscure 19th century military figure into the subject of countless songs, books and paintings. His widow, Elizabeth Bacon Custer, did what she could to further his reputation, writing laudatory accounts of his life that portrayed him as not only a military genius but also a refined and cultivated man, a patron of the arts, and a budding statesman. Countless paintings of "Custer's Last Stand" were made, including one mass-distributed by the Anheuser-Busch brewing company. All of these paintings -- as did the misnomer "the Custer massacre" -- depicted Custer as a gallant victim, surrounded by bloodthirsty savages intent upon his annihilation. Forgotten were the facts that he had started the battle by attacking the Indian village, and that most of Indians present were forced to surrender within a year of their greatest battlefield triumph. Web Refs: George Custer Homepage |
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