268: Little Big Man with Gregory J.W. Urwin

00:01:46:15 – 00:02:23:13
Dan LeFebvre
Overall, if you were to give the movie Little Big Man a letter grade for historical accuracy, what would it get?

00:02:23:15 – 00:02:55:15
Gregory J.W. Urwin
It would not be a high grade. For historical accuracy, the film does a tremendous job of puncturing a lot of the mythology that surrounded white Americans view of the West. It’s based on a satiric novel, and that it carries on with that spirit, just, you know, giving us the behind the scenes view of what a lot of these people were really like or what these types were really like.

00:02:55:15 – 00:03:21:15
Gregory J.W. Urwin
So from that point of view, I think it was a tremendous, tremendous service for people interested in Western history. Just have to be we had to avoid getting pulled in by some of the false particulars. Also, the film does a good job, I think, of capturing life among the shot. Yeah. From a historical point of view, I think that it’s its strongest contribution.

00:03:21:18 – 00:03:43:18
Dan LeFebvre
Right up front. I do want to clarify, you mentioned the novel, a novel from 1964 by Thomas Berger of the same name. And I want to clarify the historical accuracy of the main character, Jack Crabbe. He’s played by Dustin Hoffman in the movie. It’s the entire movie is told from the perspective of Jack, and he’s over 100 years old as he recounts stories from his life.

00:03:43:20 – 00:04:03:14
Dan LeFebvre
Little Big Man is Jack’s name when he lived with the Indians. And the whole movie has a feel of kind of a biographical movie about Jack. But of course, it is based on a novel. So the impression I got while watching the movie was Jack is probably this fictional person used as an excuse to piece together all a lot of different people and events from history that are real.

00:04:03:21 – 00:04:07:12
Dan LeFebvre
Do we know if Jack Crabbe was based on a real person?

00:04:07:15 – 00:04:40:14
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Well, that’s an excellent question. I’m the sole watch survivor of the little big hole. No, the Jack Crabbe. He sees a fictional device that allows us to navigate through a lot of the battles. Was part of Western, Western expansion. So, no, there’s there’s no Jack Crabbe. But there should have been. He’s a great narrator, Delightful in many ways.

00:04:40:16 – 00:05:07:01
Gregory J.W. Urwin
There were a lot of people who claimed to have survived the battle of the little Bighorn, and they were quickly proven to be frauds. One who wasn’t was was a fellow named Frank Finkel, who was kind of an enlisted man in the seventh Calvary who somehow escaped and ended up arriving more dead than alive in a homestead somewhere out in Montana, territory inhabited by two white guys.

00:05:07:04 – 00:05:45:09
Gregory J.W. Urwin
One of them was sickly and died, and Frank stayed on working the spread and his story in many ways was was kind of low key. Some of what he said was plausible. And he has this following, but I don’t think Frank was there either. Probably the last member of Custer’s immediate command to get out of the battle was a Crow Scout, the Perley, and he was the one who brought the news to the supply boat that was supporting the United States troops in the Yellowstone chapter of the far West that Custer and his his troopers had been exterminate by the Lakota.

00:05:45:09 – 00:06:14:10
Gregory J.W. Urwin
And the Cheyenne problem was he didn’t speak English. And the people that he first contacted, the white people at first contact didn’t speak crow and through pantomime and sign language, got the essential story out. But then when newspaper reporters got their hands on it, they sensationalized it. They have Curly next to Custer at the last moments of the last stand, saying, Here’s a soup blanket, Wrap this around yourself and we’ll get you out of the battle.

00:06:14:12 – 00:06:37:09
Gregory J.W. Urwin
We’ll save your life. And Custer says, No, Curly, you take the black. Our troops, just the colonel never said. But it got out. And for a long time he was thought to be a frog. Well, when people and stories got down to the raw stuff of what he said, they parted company with Custer before Custer went down. Madison, Joe Cooley watched the battle from a distance, and then he he chop up his leg.

00:06:37:11 – 00:06:41:29
Gregory J.W. Urwin
So an Indian should get that credit rather than a fictional white guy.

00:06:42:01 – 00:06:50:29
Dan LeFebvre
I remember you just mention his name, the guy who potentially claims to have have escaped. But if he just stayed on somewhere, wouldn’t that then be deserting?

00:06:51:00 – 00:06:56:14
Gregory J.W. Urwin
The story was kept under wraps for a long time because of that fear that they’d be charged with. Okay.

00:06:56:16 – 00:06:58:23
Dan LeFebvre
Okay. So you use that as.

00:06:58:25 – 00:07:07:00
Gregory J.W. Urwin
A that was my excuse for not saying anything. You know, there was no one around. The court rejected it. So we’re going to be frank, right?

00:07:07:03 – 00:07:22:12
Dan LeFebvre
Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we’ll we’ll talk about some of the other characters that are we know are real like like General Custer. But what about some of the other characters that we see in the movie, like Old Lodge, Gaines Younger Bear or Mrs. Hendrick or any of the main characters in the movie based on real people?

00:07:22:15 – 00:08:03:07
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Well, all Hodgkins and younger Bear are Cheyenne archetypes, you know. Well, they embody certain certain aspects of that culture in that society. Mrs. Pendry, she is the arch Victorian hypocrite, a woman who professes great faith in Jesus and adherence to his teachings that are just symbol of Christian uprightness and purity. But her husband doesn’t satisfy her sexually, and she goes seeking that satisfaction somewhere else and ends up becoming and becoming a whore, becoming a prostitute.

00:08:03:09 – 00:08:23:28
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Because if the director is saying that’s what these women who put themself on, put themselves on pedestals really are, it’s kind of misogynistic view. But but she serves serves that purpose to, you know, more or less say well white society that at that time you had a lot of have a lot of holes.

00:08:24:00 – 00:08:49:12
Dan LeFebvre
Yes. Well, early on in the movie, while Jack is a child, he and his sister are the only survivors of an attack by a band of Pawnee. His whole family’s gone. And then a Cheyenne brave named Shadow. That comes insights, finds the two kids, takes them back to his village. And there’s a brief bit of dialog where Jack says he didn’t know the difference between Pawnee and Cheyenne at the time.

00:08:49:15 – 00:09:04:24
Dan LeFebvre
And this is kind of a common theme throughout the entire movie with the Pawnee and Cheyenne nations fighting against each other. But we don’t get a lot of explanation about that in the movie. Can you fill in some historical context around the relationship between the Pawnee and Cheyenne nations at the time?

00:09:04:26 – 00:09:42:19
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Yeah. There’s just not the only time a Hollywood hit would use the Pawnee as the Indian villains. Dances with Wolves does the same thing. Pawnee of the bad Indians, preying on the wonderful Lakota, or Sue. The Pawnee were among several central plains tribes who, in the early well throughout the 18th century, began feeling pressure from migrating peoples coming out of the Great Lakes area, the Lakota and the Dakota two branches of the show family, the Cheyenne.

00:09:42:21 – 00:10:12:08
Gregory J.W. Urwin
These people invaded Pawnee territory and depopulated the party. At the beginning of the 18th century, the Pawnee had about 60,000 people. By 1860, that number had been reduced to 4000 by attacks from these various aggressive newcomers. Ah, and also exposure to white diseases and things like that. And the Pawnee. In order to survive, they become allies of another powerful group entering the plains.

00:10:12:10 – 00:10:39:05
Gregory J.W. Urwin
White Americans and the party will now serve their new allies quite well during the 1860s, 1970s that they served as scouts for the Army, two white brothers rank only certain north for what was known as the Pawnee Battalion. And these guys, I mean, they had a score show, but they were extremely good at finding and fighting other Indians.

00:10:39:05 – 00:10:59:11
Gregory J.W. Urwin
I think because of this association with the U.S. Army, they’re going to be cast as the bad guys and they’re going to do something improbable. They’re going to attack and destroy a white wagon train. No, that’s not what they would do. Anybody coming to train. But no, they’re not going to wage war. And once they need the whites in order to survive.

00:10:59:13 – 00:11:12:16
Dan LeFebvre
That, again, goes back to, I guess, what we were just talking about with Jack Crabbe and using him as a character there. So of course they have to get him living with the Cheyenne somehow. And if the enemy of the Cheyenne in the movie are Pawnee.

00:11:12:18 – 00:11:43:09
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Cheyenne and the Pawnee were arch enemy, they engaged in a number of bloody battles. One time, the Pawnee decisively defeated the Cheyenne and captured a bundle of arrows. The Madison arrows. These were relics sacred to the Cheyenne supposedly embodied their connection with God and the Shire had to lay off them for a while. But this gave this young man an extra reason to go after the Pawnee because, in effect, they had to file their.

00:11:43:12 – 00:11:45:02
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Their spiritual relics.

00:11:45:04 – 00:12:09:26
Dan LeFebvre
In the movie. After Jack goes, he goes after he leaves the Cheyenne, he goes to live in a nearby town. There’s a quote from the Reverend Hendrick character as the husband of missing Patrick we talked about earlier and we’re quote from the movie here. He says, The Indians know nothing of God and moral rights. The human flesh fornicate adulterer eyes, massaging eyes and communed constantly with minions of the devil.

00:12:09:26 – 00:12:27:14
Dan LeFebvre
It must be our task, nay, our Christian duty to beat the misery out of. And then he gets cut off before he goes on. But I got the sense that he’s kind of verbalizing something that many others at the time believed. Is that how white settlers saw the Indian nations in the timeline of the movie?

00:12:27:17 – 00:12:52:12
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Well, a lot of them probably, or at least elements of that we see the catalog of white whites eat Indians. And like his wife, he’s an archetype, Joe. He represents kind of a Calvinist strain, you know, the strict religious strain, the militant Christian strain in American society. And so these people, they don’t know Jesus. So they must be spawns from the devil.

00:12:52:12 – 00:13:08:18
Gregory J.W. Urwin
And that just, of course, give whites justification, gives whites justification for taking their land and killing them if if they resist. And once they stop resisting, you know, Christian izing them at gunpoint or less, that kind of thing.

00:13:08:21 – 00:13:11:01
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, you will believe this or else basically.

00:13:11:07 – 00:13:25:10
Gregory J.W. Urwin
No, no. Well, we’ll take your children. We’ll send them to school in the east, cut their hair, teach them English, completely alienate them from you. And as for the rest of you, back on the reservation, if you want to keep eating, you’ve got to cooperate.

00:13:25:13 – 00:13:32:19
Dan LeFebvre
Was that was that sort of pressure something that was really put on the Indian nations then?

00:13:32:21 – 00:14:00:13
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Oh, yeah. Especially after the resistance ended. And I think that’s probably the cruelest thing that the United States and the American society did to the native peoples, because it wasn’t enough that we are going to strip you of your lifestyle, that we are going to confine you to limited spaces that really we do not consider worthy of white settlement, but we are going to transform you into white people.

00:14:00:13 – 00:14:27:17
Gregory J.W. Urwin
We are going to strip you of your identity. We’re going to tell you that everything you believed is wrong. You can’t have that anymore. You know, it’s not enough being defeated in war. It’s bad enough being confined. But, you know, to have that mind game played on you, that helps to account for a lot of the demoralization that affected native peoples writing stuff that some of them.

00:14:27:19 – 00:14:39:21
Gregory J.W. Urwin
So I consider that the greatest cry was kind of a spiritual genocide rather than actual wiping out a people. In some ways you are wiping out a people.

00:14:39:24 – 00:14:57:28
Dan LeFebvre
One of the more colorful characters that we see in the movie is Mr. Allardyce. Ti Meriwether He’s so over the top. Every time we see the movie, he’s missing more things. He is missing it. I think it was his left hand. He’s got Peg leg missing eye. And of course, Jack works with him as a snake oil salesman.

00:14:58:00 – 00:15:08:14
Dan LeFebvre
Almost literally. At one point there was a we see that Meriwether had snake in the magic elixir that he was selling. How common were these snake oil salesman in the American Old West?

00:15:08:16 – 00:15:34:18
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Well, not just in the West, the medicine man, the snake oil salesman, where his traveling medicine show was something of a staple throughout rural America. Thankfully, the more subtle they are, these people would travel around, they would put on some sort of shawl, whether they had assistant in blackface, dance, the minstrel story or magic tricks or whatever, anything to gather a crowd.

00:15:34:21 – 00:16:09:19
Gregory J.W. Urwin
And you go on your sales pitch. So it’s kind of like American television. There’s entertainment for us and the stuff that they sold, of course. Well, consumer beware, because it could poison or, you know, you either make you sick, maybe even make you blind or kill you. This enterprise or these enterprises became so notorious that a lot of people wouldn’t purchase over-the-counter medicines from regular stores.

00:16:09:21 – 00:16:36:20
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Now, you wouldn’t take something that wasn’t prescribed by a doctor that you trusted and pharmacist that you trusted. It wasn’t to tell the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 something that was pushed by Theodore Roosevelt, part of his agenda of progressive reforms, but also something that was supported by the big pharmaceutical companies because they wanted customers to trust their products.

00:16:36:22 – 00:16:57:27
Gregory J.W. Urwin
But it wasn’t until then when the federal government began to regulate drugs, remedies, etc., and that people began to feel safe about what they were ingesting and had better reason to feel safe, too. So this kind of stuff was going on all throughout. These kinds of shows are going on all throughout the 19th century.

00:16:57:29 – 00:17:19:00
Dan LeFebvre
I didn’t even think about that, how that would affect the trust of things that you get from other places as well. What might be a reputable store in town or wherever. You might not think it’s as reputable because this other person said they were reputable too. Of course, they leave town after they left to you. You buy from them so it doesn’t matter.

00:17:19:03 – 00:17:26:08
Gregory J.W. Urwin
The surest thing or the surest way to make big business they have is to make it worth their while.

00:17:26:11 – 00:17:30:10
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. Yeah. They repeat customers.

00:17:30:12 – 00:17:31:20
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Of course. Of course.

00:17:31:23 – 00:17:48:19
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. We talked about a lot of the fictional characters, but if we go back to the movie, one of the most famous historical figures that Jack Crabbe runs into is Wild Bill Hickok, and that Jack is going through his gunfighter phase of his life at the time when we first see him. And at this point we see Hitchcock.

00:17:48:21 – 00:18:07:00
Dan LeFebvre
He’s sitting with his back against a bench so he can watch everyone. He seems very jumpy and then it kind of seems to be for good reason. He goes to the bar to get another bottle and while his back is turned, someone tries to kill him. But Hitchcock is faster draw. He kills that man. And then later on in the movie, Jack runs into Hitchcock again.

00:18:07:03 – 00:18:27:27
Dan LeFebvre
This time he asks Jack to deliver something to a woman that Hitchcock had an affair with so his wife doesn’t find out. And then after the chat, just as Jack is leaving the saloon, there’s a gunshot. He turns around, sees that Hitchcock is shot, he dies. Soon thereafter, the young man who shot Hitchcock is yelling that Hitchcock killed his dad, took seven years, but finally got him.

00:18:27:29 – 00:18:40:25
Dan LeFebvre
So there’s a brief summary, of course, of the two major scenes where we see Wild Bill Hickok in the movie was the Wild Bill Hickok that we see in the movie. Anything like The Real Man.

00:18:40:27 – 00:19:08:07
Gregory J.W. Urwin
James Butler, Wild Bill Hickok. I think the depiction in the film, it resonates with the truth. Jeff Corey all plays wild. Bill is older than Wild. Bill was at the time that Hitchcock was killed, but he’s got the look, right? Yeah. Hitchcock became kind of a paradigm for the celebrity guns player. Part of that he brought out himself.

00:19:08:07 – 00:19:33:21
Gregory J.W. Urwin
He exaggerated some of his exploits, but there were plenty of other people who were willing to exaggerate them to die. Novelists, unscrupulous journalists, etc.. So unless it was a guy who had to watch his back literally and develop the custom when he liked to gamble, when he sat down at a poker gamble, he wanted to see that to the door so no one could come up behind him and murder him.

00:19:33:24 – 00:19:57:18
Gregory J.W. Urwin
I don’t know if he was as jumpy every time he was a noise, toy, pistol, etc.. Well, you know, a cop conveys the desperate side of his lifestyle. And this is a theme that gets well. Doug Pat did a movie, I believe, in the fifties and was called The Gunfighter, and he’s in the same predicament in the John Wayne’s last movie.

00:19:57:18 – 00:19:58:06
Gregory J.W. Urwin
The shortest.

00:19:58:13 – 00:19:59:24
Dan LeFebvre
The shortest.

00:19:59:26 – 00:20:21:16
Gregory J.W. Urwin
He’s a celebrity gunfighter. And there are people who want to prove that they are better, better man than he is. We’re out, out to kill him. So Hitchcock to be as careful about his own safety. But he had a facility for making friends. There are people who are really loyal to him, who are who admired him or enjoyed his company.

00:20:21:18 – 00:20:46:09
Gregory J.W. Urwin
And some of that comes out in his mentoring of Jack Trap, you know, doesn’t treat him as a competitor or someone I’ve got to eliminate before he tries to kill me. And I like that aspect of it. Hitchcock You know, a whole variety of occupations. Soldier Civil War Scout I Scouts for Custer in 1867. Later scouts from the U.S. Calvary, the Black Buffalo Soldiers.

00:20:46:12 – 00:21:13:14
Gregory J.W. Urwin
And it’s believed, you know, look shadow rustling but he’s a lawman in a variety of places most most famously Abilene, Kansas. He likes to gamble. He staged a couple of his own little Wild West show, those traveling shows, he becomes an actor. Buffalo Bill Cody in Texas, Jack Hondo, hire him for a show that they’re staging in the East.

00:21:13:14 – 00:21:37:28
Gregory J.W. Urwin
It turns out it turns out you and I can’t hide behind props when we’re supposed to be on stage. Once you shot out a spotlight with a pistol that was supposed to only be our out with blanks, we remember that. Alec Baldwin There were stories to that. You know, the show was about fighter scouts foiling villainous Indians, that he would fire the blanks.

00:21:37:28 – 00:22:09:21
Gregory J.W. Urwin
You must pistol during a fight. Scenes too close to the legs of the Indian extras witch burning. So he’s a yeah, he’s he’s a man of many parts. He’s killed in Deadwood, recorded territory during the gold rush there in the latter part of the 1870s. Not by someone avenging slain father Jack McCall was involved in a poker game with Hitchcock and some other fellows.

00:22:09:21 – 00:22:32:02
Gregory J.W. Urwin
And he was drunk and he was losing badly, Hitchcock said. You know, why don’t you just leave the table, cut your losses, here’s some money, buy yourself some breakfast. And supposedly that act of charity humiliated McCall, so he’d come back the next day. And Hitchcock was sat down to a game, asked people to move so he could sit with his back to the wall.

00:22:32:02 – 00:22:47:08
Gregory J.W. Urwin
And they did it. And so he’s exposed that. And Mark McCall comes up behind him and shoots him on the head. Cost. I tried twice. The first time he gets up, the second time they sentence him to death and he’s hanged.

00:22:47:11 – 00:23:07:10
Dan LeFebvre
That’s fascinating because, I mean, it sounds almost different scenario, of course, but almost similar to what we see with Jack Crabbe in the movie, because Jack Crabbe is he kind of becomes a drunk and is in the middle of the mud and stuff. And then it’s Hitchcock that sees him, gives him some money to go clean up and, and then come back.

00:23:07:10 – 00:23:30:18
Dan LeFebvre
And that’s leading into the sequence you just talked about in that saloon. You delivering a message to this woman and then with, with Hitchcock dying. But it sounds like maybe there were some elements that they pulled from the Real story in that humiliation aspect. But then it turned it was not obviously humiliating for Jack Crabbe, the hero in the movie, but it I see some correlations there.

00:23:30:18 – 00:23:32:21
Dan LeFebvre
I’m not sure if the filmmakers did that.

00:23:32:24 – 00:23:37:23
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Back to work now. Well, I could see Hitchcock doing that in real life.

00:23:37:25 – 00:23:59:23
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, you mentioned him a little bit ago and another major historical figure that Jack meets in the movie is General George Armstrong Custer. And he clearly makes an immediate impression on Jack the way that Richard Mulligan plays Custer in the movie. He just he just seems very vain. For example, I can give some examples of how the movie does it.

00:23:59:23 – 00:24:19:20
Dan LeFebvre
What see how accurate that is. But Jack asks Custer for a job as a scout. Custer goes on. He’s talking to one of the other soldiers there. He talks about how he can tell a man’s occupation just by looking at him. And Jack’s no scout. He’s a mule. SKINNER So he hires Jack as a mule. SKINNER Which, of course, is ridiculous.

00:24:19:20 – 00:24:36:07
Dan LeFebvre
It’s not something that Jack has done. There are numerous times throughout the movie where the men around Custer just seem to be. Yes, men because of Custer’s vanity like how he gets on to the major under his command. I don’t know if they ever say who the major is. He’s just cast as major.

00:24:36:09 – 00:24:41:19
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Just major. That’s not that. That’s a given. Oppenheimer. That actor. Just major.

00:24:41:24 – 00:25:02:17
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, he just major. Which again, kind of leads to okay. Custer and then everybody else, right? And the Major enters Comanche descent something and then Custer is like, stop trying to cause a reversal of a Custer decision. He’s referring to himself in the third person. There’s even a brief scene I noticed where Custer pauses to look at himself in the mirror before continuing on.

00:25:02:20 – 00:25:07:01
Dan LeFebvre
Was Custer really as vain as the movie makes him out to be?

00:25:07:04 – 00:25:36:01
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Well, the Mulligan characterization, which is just all right, is there, too. He he does what the director and the script want him to do is the epitome of bombast. Yeah. Now he’s a guy who thinks highly of himself. He’s reached a position of high authority, God knows how. And I just think he does everything and can do no wrong and whatever he wants is right.

00:25:36:03 – 00:26:13:00
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Well, you know, there’s something that I think in almost all of us, but it’s highly exaggerated in this case. Was Custer very well. He certainly cared about his appearance. There were certain images at certain points of his life that he wanted to project and adopt in a unique cost to our costumes during the Civil War. Our Schlegel Lines men know where he was, but also he wanted to look like a dashing Hoosier or the epitome of the dashing light counterman.

00:26:13:02 – 00:26:49:11
Gregory J.W. Urwin
As I mentioned earlier, when he got out West, he dropped the regulation uniform, at least when he was on campaign and tried to dress like a frontier scout in Buckskin Satin Doll, kind of fill that natty bumper or a leather stocking or deer slayer role while he was chasing, chasing his various Indian prey as an officer of the seventh Calvary Regiment, which he commanded from 1866 to 1876, was highly polarized.

00:26:49:13 – 00:27:09:22
Gregory J.W. Urwin
There was a click of officers who were quite loyal to Custer, and he enjoyed their company. To be sure, I included his brother Tom, two time recipient of the Medal of Honor. So he was no slouch as a soldier. His brother in law, James James Calhoun, old Civil War friend George Gates. So we’re authors I’m not gonna mention.

00:27:09:29 – 00:27:37:21
Gregory J.W. Urwin
And then there was a click of officers who despised him. One in particular, Captain Frederick Banting, liked to go out of his way, argue with Custer to throw shade on Custer. If he could. He would continue to do that after Custer’s death. Custer Kaliyev I developed a command behavior where he didn’t ask for advice. He had officers up call.

00:27:37:21 – 00:27:59:23
Gregory J.W. Urwin
He would say, Here’s what we’re doing. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, and make sure that your troops comply. And where was the last ready to get on the trail where we’ll be at the end of the column, choking that one else’s dust, etc., etc.. Just before the Little Bighorn, he had an officer call and he did ask for advice.

00:27:59:25 – 00:28:21:21
Gregory J.W. Urwin
And it took everybody by surprise. An officer named Edward Godfrey, kind of like Custer said. He’d never done that before. That’s like old school to reverse the Custer decision, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know that. That those words never, never passed his lips. Now, I know, I know. John. Carl, come out of this regiment, gentlemen, And this is what we’re going to try to buck.

00:28:21:21 – 00:28:49:27
Gregory J.W. Urwin
That’s at least too strong. You could be up for insubordination, but you know, he was. He was certainly self-confident. He had made a reputation as the Indian fighter at the Battle of Washington, which I’m sure we’ll talk about in detail in a little bit. He outfought the shoe in two skirmishes along the Yellowstone River in 1873, which I think convinced to me could handle most people under any circumstances.

00:28:50:00 – 00:29:09:16
Gregory J.W. Urwin
And they ended up doing the unexpected at the Little Bighorn. So they caught him making mistakes and they made the most of that. I mean, there were reasons to dislike custard as he was considered, etc. but this idea of his, it was constantly trumping when he was on your pay grew as Herald is wearing a rough field dress at South Drop.

00:29:09:18 – 00:29:16:08
Gregory J.W. Urwin
He would wait till he got home to shave and clean up and then posed for the photographs by which so many people judge.

00:29:16:10 – 00:29:41:04
Dan LeFebvre
Which makes sense. You go out and I mean you’re not going to have the comforts of home, not, you know, the comforts of home that we think of now are very different than even the comforts of home that they had back then. But on on on campaign or be it will be different. You mentioned what Custer was wearing, and correct me if I’m wrong, but what you’re currently wearing is a Custer replica, correct?

00:29:41:06 – 00:30:11:00
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Yeah, There’s a reproduction of the the over shirt that Custer wore when he was campaigning on the northern Plains in 1873, 1874 and 1876. There was originally known as Hellboy. Sure had a big front Calvary two colors and it was loose fitting, had a big pocket to carry extra tackle as this people called it, etc. You know, it’s durable and it was just popular, popular wear in the West.

00:30:11:00 – 00:30:31:08
Gregory J.W. Urwin
A number of Custer’s officers wore shirts like that. So this would have been under his his buckskin jacket, what she remembered at the Little Bighorn. It was a hot day. And the last troopers who lived, who saw him said he had tied to the back of his saddle and was in his shirt sleeves when he entered medicine.

00:30:31:08 – 00:30:37:06
Dan LeFebvre
Dale Cooley Yeah, he may have dressed differently, but that’s not necessarily unique to him.

00:30:37:08 – 00:30:57:14
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Now. Other officers wore buckskin to his brother Tom or other people outside of the Custer Circle. Buckskin was durable. Instead of messing up your regulation uniform, when you’re out for three or four months while on an extended campout, that that just seem to be more practical to a lot of these.

00:30:57:17 – 00:31:03:26
Dan LeFebvre
And I guess there’s a form and function and there’s a time for form and there’s a time for a function with functionality where, you.

00:31:03:28 – 00:31:10:02
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Know, there’s a certain style to a joke. Now look at me. I’m Davy Crockett, and I’m Daniel Boone. Great way Hunter.

00:31:10:04 – 00:31:35:04
Dan LeFebvre
You mentioned the Mosquito River and according to the movie, the Cheyenne are given a tract of land by the Witchita River. They’re supposed to be safe there, at least according to the movie. But then, before long, we see soldiers coming, some on horses, some on foot. And the soldiers are led by Custer. He makes a point in the movie to remind his men that they’re not to shoot the women unless, of course, they refuse to surrender.

00:31:35:06 – 00:31:49:29
Dan LeFebvre
But there doesn’t seem to be any attempt of capturing anyone. We see soldiers rushing through the Cheyenne Village burning teepees, killing everyone, men, women and children. To put it bluntly, it just looks like a massacre. Did that really happen?

00:31:50:02 – 00:32:15:20
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Well, one thing to keep in mind, this movie is released in 1970 at the height of the Vietnam War, and Arthur Penn uses the battle of the washed up and thinly disguised way of condemning the U.S. Army for the atrocities committed in the about. When you look at the washed up, you’re looking at the My Lai massacre. Ah, Jack craps wife.

00:32:15:22 – 00:32:39:24
Gregory J.W. Urwin
They cast an Asian actress to play her. She’s not a Native American. You know, they’re saying about these Indians living on land that was there for all eternity, as long as the grass shall grow and wherever forward, etc., they treaty of Medicine Lodge, which was concluded in 1867, the year before, a Washington tragedy that staked out a Cheyenne reservation.

00:32:39:27 – 00:33:03:18
Gregory J.W. Urwin
But to wash it era it was not within those parameters. The Indians didn’t like the land that the whites said, This is your new home. So in the wintertime, as was their want, they would come together in large numbers to live off the pemmican, the dried buffalo meat that they had gathered during the warmer weather and just kind of hold up.

00:33:03:20 – 00:33:33:15
Gregory J.W. Urwin
It was time to socialize with friends. The village that jack crab inhabited and stayed in the movie was headed by achievement and Black Cattle was one of a series of elections of Shire and Kiowa Arapaho in the Washington Valley. A black kettle was reputed to be a peace chief, which I think was true. But, you know, he had his own idea of what peace was this the movie conveys.

00:33:33:18 – 00:33:54:02
Gregory J.W. Urwin
The Indian society was not highly structured. It tolerate a great deal of individuality and you could be a peace chief and tell you young men do not war on the whites. And some of your men would listen and some of your young men would not. And there were raids going on in western Kansas in the months preceding this battle.

00:33:54:02 – 00:34:22:10
Gregory J.W. Urwin
In fact, Custer’s Osage Scouts, these were Indians who were fighting on the side of the other on Sun Watch. Now, one thing to remember is that Custer fought against Indians, but he also fought for Indians, Indians who’d been oppressed by the Indians who were his target of the day. But the Osage Scouts traced the trail of a war part coming out of Western to Black Kettle’s camp.

00:34:22:13 – 00:34:46:18
Gregory J.W. Urwin
That’s what brought Custer’s seventh Calvary to that area. Now let’s turn to our policy to kill Indian women and children, males. You know, even when it wasn’t said explicitly, no one expected you to bring back male prisoners. And this would include boys who were old enough to bear arms. But, you know, women and children, you know, the stresses of Victorian chivalry.

00:34:46:20 – 00:35:16:18
Gregory J.W. Urwin
But when you attack an urban area, as the American military has done as recently as Iraq and bullets are flying through an urban area, a lot of noncombatants could be killed, especially if they’re living in Buffalo Skin Lodge, which are not bulletproof. Also, you attack an urban area and this would be the same thing if Indians attacked a white settlement or white homestead.

00:35:16:20 – 00:35:38:03
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Some of the well-known and people we might consider. KURTZ would pick up weapons in their own defense. So you are charging a shooting swirling through and bullets are fly and you see somebody moving and you’re not sure if they have a weapon or not. Just like police today were in their hot pursuit. You shoot first and you ask questions later.

00:35:38:05 – 00:36:00:03
Gregory J.W. Urwin
There was some probably some cowry troopers who acted with bad luck. They had seen friends who were killed or mutilated by the Indians, or they just shared that General prejudice their society against Indians and felt, well, you know, if you’re Indians are are the less problems I’ll be for US rights in the West. And there are other issues either taking fire or I’m afraid that they might.

00:36:00:06 – 00:36:33:14
Gregory J.W. Urwin
The outside scouts were deliberately killing every Cheyenne they could get. They could cut they could get their hands off, including women and children who obviously were, you know, defenseless. Custer Well, and Ravi and more than 35 shy. And women and children will be spared. Nobody carried back to his base. Custer will stop the promiscuous murder of noncombatants. But a large number were killed, Massacred?

00:36:33:17 – 00:36:58:18
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Yeah. No, you know, there were massacre there. There are certainly massacre moments in the battle of the washed up. I don’t like a lot of things that happened in history. The nuance gets lost when it’s put out and show it’s good guy versus bad guy. One part of the Washington sequence that outraged a lot of white Americans, well, really, first there was Custer’s order to kill the Indian pony hurt.

00:36:58:20 – 00:37:31:09
Gregory J.W. Urwin
A lot of animal lovers were upset by that. I can understand that. But that was a sound military decision. A pony was an Indian man. It was a source of wealth, a source of standing, but also which is means of mobility for making war, and also for gathering food, hunting, buffalo. You take away the enemy’s ponies and they have no choice but to turn themselves in and live off white charity on their reservation.

00:37:31:09 – 00:37:59:03
Gregory J.W. Urwin
I made as much sense as destroying German tanks. And after I mean, it it’s. It’s harsh. Not fun to look at. And if Custer tried to bring her those ponies back to camps, supply his base in what is today, Oklahoma young Indian men, they would have stolen most of them back on the marsh. So that was one of their major skills, stealing horses from from rival tribes and from.

00:37:59:05 – 00:38:13:14
Gregory J.W. Urwin
So it made the most sense to just eliminate those ponies, except for the ones who used to Mount Indian women and show for the return trip to his base. But again, you know, you leave out certain facts on a different kind of picture emerges.

00:38:13:16 – 00:38:38:09
Dan LeFebvre
One thing with the way the movie portrays it, because it follows Jack Crabbe and he’s in the camp there when it gets attacked, we don’t see things from Custer’s side. So did Custer know you said there were there were scouts that traced a Warrior Party to that camp. Did Custer know that he. He was what he was going into?

00:38:38:10 – 00:38:49:18
Dan LeFebvre
Was he kind of following that or what? What was his mindset into it? Because you mentioned, you know, massacre moments. And it sounds to me like maybe things kind of got out of hand beyond what he was expecting.

00:38:49:21 – 00:39:22:12
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Often do in combat OP as Excellent question. The hardest thing about fighting Plains Indians was finding them or catching them because their horses were better adapted to life on the plains. They were quicker lost ponies that than the average white horse. They could live entirely on grass. Calvary horses could graze on grasp, and they also needed a pretty steady diet, folks, which meant you got to haul along large quantities of oats, which would slow you down, try to chase.

00:39:22:12 – 00:39:45:25
Gregory J.W. Urwin
And it’s what with a wagon train that’s like while trying to run a 400 meters meters, a ball and chain, they find the village, the Osage say, Yeah, there’s a village, Custer goes, I was in Osage and they could smell, they could smell the campfires, etc. And Custer says, Okay, let’s attack. He doesn’t make a careful reconnaissance. He tried doing that in 1867, surrounding an idiot camp.

00:39:45:27 – 00:40:06:13
Gregory J.W. Urwin
And when he went in in the morning, they were all gone, had infiltrated out. So you don’t give them a chance to sound the alarm. You don’t give them a chance to run. You just hit and you kind of shorten out afterwards. And so he hits this camp, you know, and they will find Howdy from Plundered Kansas Homesteads.

00:40:06:16 – 00:40:27:13
Gregory J.W. Urwin
There’s a white woman captive, Clara Blinn, and her young son Willie in the village. They won’t find them at the time, but when they come back to the wash and afterwards they will find that both have been murdered by their Indian captors rather than let them be retaken by the white soldiers. But there’s something else that Custer doesn’t know about.

00:40:27:16 – 00:41:01:25
Gregory J.W. Urwin
That camp he attacks is just one in a string of villages along the Washougal. Now those Indians hear the sound of Copperhead. They turn out and they’re preparing to attack us. And that’s one reason why Custer ends up being glad that he took those prisoners, because, in effect, they become human shields. They able to march out of the Washington Valley without sustaining heavier casualties and perhaps without experience in the Little Bighorn.

00:41:01:27 – 00:41:19:18
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Eight years earlier, they know he was in a tight, tight spot. They realize that he doesn’t sell more Indians, and so charging them is like, well, let’s get get back to our wagon train where the ammunition has on that. Now, what’s extricate the command from this tight situation? They can claim a victory. Yeah.

00:41:19:20 – 00:41:46:12
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, yeah. Which is very different than where the movie portrays it. The general idea that I got after the movie, of course, it doesn’t say a lot about Custer’s mindset other than he just seems to be very vain, which we’ve already talked about. But the impression that I got was that that attack gave him coffee, then later on that it would be easy to do The washer.

00:41:46:12 – 00:42:19:23
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Washington was the first major post-Civil War victory that the U.S. Army scored against the Plains Indians in 1866. The Lakota and their allies wiped out 80 soldiers outside Field County in the Fetterman massacre, and the Army ended up evacuating its posts along the Bozeman trail into Montana and letting them know martial control. That was it was really the only real defeat that the Army experienced in its long wars with the native peoples.

00:42:19:23 – 00:42:42:10
Gregory J.W. Urwin
I mean, there were certain battles that lost, but in fact, they gave up. They said, let’s make peace. You guys could keep this Bozeman trail area. But that really hurt the Army’s reputation. It hurt the Army’s morale and Custer scores since this victory, a surprise attack, and that propels him to the rank of the country’s foremost Indian fight.

00:42:42:12 – 00:43:08:02
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Now he’s just getting better. He becomes this the symbol of the Indian fighting army? Well, he was a celebrity coming out of the Civil War. A celebrity revived newspaperman in one interview here and follow him whenever he goes out on the prowl. Well, later, when things got settled down on the southern plains, all kinds of celebrities, including British nobility, come out to hunt Buffalo with General Custer.

00:43:08:02 – 00:43:33:10
Gregory J.W. Urwin
You know, he kind of has some dude ranch going, hosting these different people. Eventually, he will host the Grand Duke elections of Russia, brought in the future czar in one of these up. I know it’s kind of an early version of the Wild West show because Buffalo Bill Cody is also there and he gets Indian friends to come and perform dances and various ceremonies to show up to entertain the Grand Duke.

00:43:33:10 – 00:44:00:07
Gregory J.W. Urwin
And then they go out and coach him so it could actually show Buffalo and things like that. So, yeah, boosting Custer’s confidence, boosting his standing, not every Army commander could go out and find Indians now because when they were on guard, they were extremely hard to catch. Weather was different when they didn’t expect anyone to be crazy enough to come out on the Great Plains after them in, the thick snow.

00:44:00:07 – 00:44:28:00
Gregory J.W. Urwin
But the army was willing to impose discomfort and probably even frostbite on a lot of its troopers to deliver some successful strikes. And that tactic of going after the Indians in the winter, that will be repeated by the army on the southern plains and also on the northern Lights, the first battle of the Great Sioux was fought on March 17th, 1876, against the band Powder River, I think mostly Cheyenne.

00:44:28:03 – 00:44:37:18
Gregory J.W. Urwin
And after that Little Bighorn. They’ll continue after the Indians and continue chasing them through the winter of 1876 1877.

00:44:37:21 – 00:45:10:03
Dan LeFebvre
It sounds like after the Ouachita attack there, if the movie were focusing more on Custer and having just him being as vain, the things that after happened afterwards increasing his reputation and such, I could I could just picture it in my mind how that character, that caricature version of Custer in the movie, would love seeing people from other other nations around around the world coming to see him and, you know, boost his ego.

00:45:10:03 – 00:45:15:14
Dan LeFebvre
And I could just see his picture that maybe is a sequel to the movie or something.

00:45:15:17 – 00:45:41:24
Gregory J.W. Urwin
I should mention, though, you know, after the watershed, there were still Indian bands, Kiowa and other Cheyenne, who were on the loose and Custer was sent after them. And he overtook two of these groups and he chose to negotiate instead of attacking them, he chose to use diplomacy to get them to return to their agencies. I said, You know, we found you.

00:45:41:24 – 00:46:05:24
Gregory J.W. Urwin
And if you don’t behave or attack you and in one case you played hardball. He kidnaped three chiefs and threatened to hang them. And last, there are people turned over to white female captives and promised to return to the agency. But it wasn’t like, oh, there’s some Indians that I want to kill, which is that the the the impression you get from little pig that I knew What?

00:46:05:26 – 00:46:36:15
Gregory J.W. Urwin
No, you just do what it takes. But it’s not like he wants to kill every ending you like a lot of you. Some is one of the few white commanders on the plains who know You know, most of the Indians who worked with the whites didn’t speak English. Contrary what we see in the movies, Custer learned Indian sign language so he could communicate directly with the scouts, didn’t have to go through middle interpreters and sometimes weren’t as good and as they were supposed to be.

00:46:36:18 – 00:47:02:06
Gregory J.W. Urwin
He’s one of the few white commanders who had himself photographed with the Indian scouts. George Cooke was another exception, but he liked hanging around with them. He liked learning their their ways or folkways and etc.. Shot Drummond as a white Victorian. He thought himself superior to that. But there were certain elements of their life that he respected being a hunter himself and were great hunters.

00:47:02:08 – 00:47:33:27
Gregory J.W. Urwin
They were great trackers. And in his autobiography, My Life on the Plains, which he published in 1874, right, paraphrased. But he would say, If I was an Indian, I would far rather resist live a free life, then submit to reservation life for all. The vices of white society are thrown in without our measure. So again, movies deal on stereotypes, and stereotypes sometimes aren’t as interesting as the history.

00:47:34:02 – 00:47:47:26
Dan LeFebvre
It sounds like he being in the army, you know, he has his orders of what he needs to do and had no issue with carrying that out. But it sounds like he understood the resistance, like you’re there defending their homes.

00:47:47:29 – 00:48:08:12
Gregory J.W. Urwin
There was a lot of sympathy among white Army officers for that. And also, we don’t want to agitate. These people can sleep. They might get in a lucky shot to win the battle. We might get killed or we will have an unpleasant time, several months, trying to chase them down. So, you know, a lot of these unfair policies, treaty violations, etc., seemed to off.

00:48:08:12 – 00:48:18:21
Gregory J.W. Urwin
A lot of these are steamed up a lot of these a lot of these officers. But again, they didn’t give up. Their commission was and they did the job that they were ordered to do.

00:48:18:23 – 00:48:39:07
Dan LeFebvre
Well, as I was watching the movie to prep for our chat, there was a line of dialog about Custer that I knew I had to ask you about. It comes from the older Jack Crabbe, who’s telling his story and this is a quote, the movie directly here. It says, In my belief, Custer’s hate for the Indians and his ambition had combined on him.

00:48:39:09 – 00:48:57:12
Dan LeFebvre
He figured he needed one more dramatic victory over the Indians to be nominated for president of the United States. That is a true historical fact. That’s the quote. The quote says, That is a true historical fact, since we’re comparing movie with the history, I knew I had to ask, is that a true historical fact?

00:48:57:14 – 00:49:45:02
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Jack, my friend, you’re a full faced liar. It’s a widespread perception. It was something that appeared in a couple of books that were published in the 1950s and 1960s. But this idea that somehow Custer hoped to win a big Indian battle in the summer of 1876 in time to snare the Democratic Party presidential nomination, I mean, he had no idea when he marched down Fort Abraham Lincoln on May 17th, 1876, when and if he would find Indians, if he could win this victory, you know, in time to register with the politicos back east.

00:49:45:04 – 00:50:16:05
Gregory J.W. Urwin
But something else, you know, then, as now, presidential nominations, just don’t fall on somebody. You have got to establish an organization or a machine of people who are going to be, you know, doing the grassroots work, at least among convention delegates, trying to prep them for, you know, going along with the nomination of your guy. You guys have veritable army of politicians and jobbers who are doing that.

00:50:16:05 – 00:50:40:24
Gregory J.W. Urwin
And there’s been no evidence that’s ever surfaced that Custer had such a machine in place. No letters, no diaries, no, no. Even snide, subtle remarks in the newspapers. Also, you know, Indian victories by this point in time, you know, a lot of people in the East, a lot of white people in the east, where there’s been no Indian threat for quite some time.

00:50:40:25 – 00:51:06:11
Gregory J.W. Urwin
You’ve developed a supplement for native peoples and tend to view the army as the bad guys attacking these poor wronged folks. So, you know, Custer said, I want a big Indian doctor let people use, well, you know. WEST Yeah. You know, Indians, we see them as a threat or they’re in the way of us developing certain economic resources we want to develop.

00:51:06:13 – 00:51:39:25
Gregory J.W. Urwin
But much of the West has not been organized in the states, its territories. They’re not in the Electoral College, you know. So, yeah, again, this is a great line and it’s a great draft. And it gives us another reason to say Custer got what was coming to him at the Little Bighorn, but that was never mentioned. He was hoping, you know, like a lot of Army officers that if he did well, he’d get promoted to be thinner.

00:51:39:28 – 00:52:15:04
Gregory J.W. Urwin
He he was dabbling in Democratic politics during the American Civil War. He was very careful to stay on right side of the ruling Republican administration. But where you construction comes along and Andrew Johnson stands in the way of Republican reconstruction policies, Custer thinks, well, you know, the president well, he’s going to win as well. Custer aligns with Johnson, whose policies are approved by the Democrats, Johnson, of course, doesn’t unless the Senate grad becomes president.

00:52:15:04 – 00:52:47:25
Gregory J.W. Urwin
1868 Custer’s in the Doghouse with Republic, You ingrate. We cultivated your career. So you know, he hangs with Democrats. He’d been a Democrat before the Civil War, so there was a natural proclivity there. Democrats who are eager to hear about perhaps Republican corruption in the West, the buying and selling of posts, summer ships, the seven elevens that were established on military posts, things like that.

00:52:47:28 – 00:53:14:22
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Custer will tell that when he doubts and he may have been hoping that if they won in 1876. GRANT Well, what Grant Rutherford behaved that they would’ve looked after him one way or the other. But he’s in trouble now. Politically, Grant doesn’t like him. Grant tries to remove him from command right before the little ha. So he needs a victory and is indicated so militarily.

00:53:14:24 – 00:53:33:17
Gregory J.W. Urwin
And also he was offered. You know, if you have a successful pay, we can pay you to travel around the country delivering lectures on your great victory. So he does have an agenda there. Besides his doing his duty.

00:53:33:20 – 00:53:56:21
Dan LeFebvre
You did mention Grant President Grant’s Ulysses S Grant, and that is something that the movie kind of mentions here and there. And we get the idea that Custer does not like Grant’s. They go he goes off on this rant of how he became president. And then, of course, as we were just talking about the impression the movie gives as well, Custer wanted to be president, but Grant got to be president.

00:53:56:21 – 00:54:07:25
Dan LeFebvre
They both served in the Civil War and and Grant got it. But Custer didn’t. And so there’s this some sort of a bad blood between them. Was there actually some sort of rift between the two?

00:54:07:26 – 00:54:44:23
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Yeah, the relationship is interesting. I mean, they both serve together in the Custer was in the Eastern theater throughout the war from 1861, 1865, when Grant comes out as commanding general and he takes personal command of the Potomac, Custer is part of the Army. Custer contributed to several of Grant’s victories and also victories won by a detachment from the Army, the Potomac, the Army, the Shenandoah Custer is is the commander who gets in front of me at Appomattox Courthouse and delays Lee long enough for the rest of the Union Army to come up to force his surrender.

00:54:44:25 – 00:55:18:13
Gregory J.W. Urwin
But we never really liked him. I don’t. I don’t exactly know why. Maybe because he was too successful at too young age, maybe because of his flamboyant his flamboyant character, the ostentatious costuming that that may have convinced Grant he was a vain papa J. I mean, Phil Sheridan, who Grant loved was was was Custer’s. Custer’s patron and took care of Custer after the war.

00:55:18:16 – 00:55:49:04
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Well, you know, Custer after Andrew Johnson’s political star faded out in 1868, he was in a situation he’s the Army’s most famous Indian, finally doesn’t get promoted in Lieutenant colonel in 1866 shall die Lieutenant Colonel George later. And that may have bred some bitterness. I had to be careful what I said publicly, because you could be quoted calling the commander in chief a drunkard, etc., and that would get you in trouble.

00:55:49:06 – 00:56:18:21
Gregory J.W. Urwin
But in 1876, the Democrats control Congress. They are investigating corruption in the grant administration and they are investigating the War Department and the Indian bureau. And Custer knows some things about them. And he will testify before a congressional committee in Washington. Most of what he says his role is your side, but he gives us evidence and it makes a splash in the and this is just before his to return to the west to participate in the Great Shoot war.

00:56:18:23 – 00:56:42:08
Gregory J.W. Urwin
And Gretsch says, oh, no, you docs, you’re not going This creates a tremendous fear I a number of army officers will go to Grant say Custer is indispensable that Scott can find Indians whether you like it or not. The Democratic press pile on Grant and Grant relents. He says, Well, Custer can go, but not as commander of the Dakota column.

00:56:42:08 – 00:57:14:01
Gregory J.W. Urwin
He’s going to have to serve under his department Commander, Brigadier General Alfred H. Terry. So he’s got to be on a leash like I think. So I’m sure Custer wasn’t too happy about that. But the outbursts that Richard Mulligan voices, no one ever hear hear him say something like that. He’s he’s treading on eggshells as it is, although he’s headstrong, his superiors told him Phil Sheridan shark or is General Sherman was head of the Army.

00:57:14:03 – 00:57:39:25
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Tell Custer to take no reporters with Custer had a nice rapport with the press, and they help to build his reputation from the Civil War on. He takes a reporter with him, Mark Kellogg from the Bismarck Tribune, who is syndicated in New York newspaper. So you can’t paint Custer as an innocent. He’s a wheeler dealer like the politicians are.

00:57:39:27 – 00:57:52:23
Dan LeFebvre
I was going to say, it sounds like he had the the politics, the game of politics. He knew how to work the press and he knew how to make himself look good in the eyes of.

00:57:52:25 – 00:57:56:06
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Stations trying to protect his future military career.

00:57:56:11 – 00:58:15:08
Dan LeFebvre
Yes. Yes. That president of the United States. But yes. No. The big battle at the end of the movie, the Battle of the Little Bighorn. You’ve mentioned a few times now and since the story in the movie is told from Jack Crab’s point of view, there’s quite a lot of focus put on Jack’s involvement in Custer’s decision whether or not to go down to a place called Madison.

00:58:15:08 – 00:58:39:18
Dan LeFebvre
Taylor Cooley. And there’s another display of Custer’s vanity here. To paraphrase the conversation, the major cast, his major suggests they send a scout team down first. Custer No, that would be a reversal of a Custer decision. We know he doesn’t like doing that. So plus, he says that would ruin the element of surprise majors like surprise. They know we’re here.

00:58:39:20 – 00:58:58:28
Dan LeFebvre
Customers, Custer says. Yes, but they don’t know that I intend to attack them without mercy. That’s a surprise. Nature’s like. That’s not a surprise. I’m, of course. But then Custer goes on to use Jack as a way to make his decision, which really seems to be a decision that he’s already made. He’s just looking for someone else to back them up.

00:58:59:00 – 00:59:01:00
Gregory J.W. Urwin
In his words, not duress.

00:59:01:00 – 00:59:21:21
Dan LeFebvre
He says Yes, yes. And which right away I was thinking, okay, this can’t be how it happened, because it I mean, it’s military and commanding officer and we’ll get to the battle in a moment. But again, I’m just assuming that is not what really happened. Can you share the true story of what really happened leading up to the battle?

00:59:21:23 – 00:59:49:09
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Yeah, Custer rendezvoused with a column of troops coming out of Montana on the Yellowstone River, and there’s a council of war aboard that. That’s supply steamer I mentioned before West. On June 21st, 1876, one of Custer’s subordinates, Major Marcus. And you read Let’s get the major and they come across an Indian leaving about half the regiment on a scout.

00:59:49:11 – 01:00:19:24
Gregory J.W. Urwin
And using that intelligence, Custer is set to follow that trail and try to find those Indians. The other half of the army troops that are there are going to circle around to the west on to the north of Custer. And hopefully the two columns can kind of converge and one or the other or on the Indians, they’re going to be caught between two columns of the runaway for the one coming from the South under Custer.

01:00:19:24 – 01:00:48:08
Gregory J.W. Urwin
They run the other one and vice versa. That can’t say so. They set out and each Custer marches on his route. It’s the Indian Trail, and he finds that there are all kinds of Indians joining it. It’s getting wider and wider and wider. Custer’s And okay, this is the one this is not some small band off on. I saw this, this, this is worth following and worth visiting.

01:00:48:10 – 01:01:09:01
Gregory J.W. Urwin
And he will follow it into the valley of the Little Bighorn on the night of the 24th of June, his scouts will go out to a tour position called Crow’s Nest, kind of an overlook. And now they will determine the location of the village. They’ll bring Custer out there early morning. I try not to, he says. I don’t see anything.

01:01:09:01 – 01:01:33:22
Gregory J.W. Urwin
But he believes, though, and his plan is to try to get as close as he can to that village without alarming its occupants the 20 shots and hit that door on the 26th Joe, just like he did at the wash. It hit them while they’re still asleep, you know, while the reactions are going to be slow and score, score, victory.

01:01:33:25 – 01:01:57:12
Gregory J.W. Urwin
But he hears that that he’s been spotted. Some Yule Skinner did not get a job, just Custer’s subsisting off a mule train because you could move faster over rough country with mules carrying our supplies rather wagons than a box of hardtack had fallen off and troopers are shot back to retrieve. It may find a couple of Indians prying it open.

01:01:57:12 – 01:02:27:23
Gregory J.W. Urwin
They far to generous to off. They just naturally assume they’re heading for the village. What they did it the course of action but discovered we got to move it now before this camp disperses. And they’re gone. And he’s moving down into the valley along a stream called tributary called Wolf Creek. And when he gets fairly close, one of his interpreters, our fellow named Fred Girard, who’s on arrives off to the side, yells, There go your Indians general rutting like the devil.

01:02:27:26 – 01:02:53:11
Gregory J.W. Urwin
And I may spot about 40 Indian warriors just striking away from the column. If they’re going to get to the village, they’ll go there in condition and have a good large system. So Custer decides that regardless of that, I’ve got to attack these. And he orders Major Marcus Reno to take three of the regiments, 12 companies across the river, and attack the camp from the South Custer says, I will support you with the whole outfit.

01:02:53:13 – 01:03:18:20
Gregory J.W. Urwin
He also sends the captain, Frederick Gage, and he let three companies veering further south and make sure there are no Indians getting away in that direction. He wants them all as he gets closer with the five troops, the five companies not under his immediate command, he gets intelligence, except this village is extending north, I think is the best way to support Reno is to go up north, find some break in the collapse.

01:03:18:22 – 01:03:44:06
Gregory J.W. Urwin
A coulee leading down into the river valley and attack the Indians on the fly. So that’s what he does. All of this is based on the expectation these Indians are pulling sticks, packing up, and they’re getting ready to run. You know, this is based on his past experience as an Indian farmer. But doggone it, these Indians don’t do what’s expected.

01:03:44:09 – 01:04:12:05
Gregory J.W. Urwin
They don’t conform to the pattern. By this point, the Lakota and their allies, as they’ve been so squeezed, they’ve been so pushed around that they feel, you know, our days of living free are coming to an end. And if that’s the case, we’d rather die free than die as paupers at the mercy of the whites. The battle cry wasn’t the usual.

01:04:12:05 – 01:04:20:06
Gregory J.W. Urwin
You know, if you run into a large group of white soldiers, run away to fight again another day, it’s okay. Hey, it is a good day to die.

01:04:20:08 – 01:04:23:21
Dan LeFebvre
Which we see. We hear that in the movie. It’s a good day to die.

01:04:23:24 – 01:04:55:16
Gregory J.W. Urwin
To die. Really? Yeah. And so Custer? No Major Reno or was an honor. 20 guys he’s attacking from the South, all these Indians from boiling out because they’re a couple of thousand warriors in that camp and they’re ready for a fight. They want a Fort Reno decides to retire this one. Timber I fight to smother. But the Indian pressure so great that he panics, head, races away, drives his troops to follow him and try to gain some bluffs hills on the other side, a little bighorn river in it’s chasing them.

01:04:55:16 – 01:05:15:29
Gregory J.W. Urwin
They make choppers command pieces. They they kill about a third of his men. Customers know that’s the last thing you saw. Reno. Reno was in the valley fighting the Indians in the open. And Custer continues north. He’s looking for a break in those bluffs, and he finds medicine. Joe Cooley. And he’ll send two companies down there of his spot.

01:05:16:01 – 01:05:41:18
Gregory J.W. Urwin
And they’re met with Indian resistance and they’ll fall back. And he decides this is not a good place to cross the river. I’m going to go further north and it’ll take those two companies, only three behind, kind of hold the way open for four Major Reno and Captain Benton to reach after he decided to make this attack. He said, no, I know to to bed teen column from his scout to the south.

01:05:41:21 – 01:06:09:25
Gregory J.W. Urwin
What roughly dead team take village come quick you know, bring packs. Meaning bring the ammunition packs be quick. So he wants reinforcements in. He knows he needs more men. He knows he needs reinforcements. But at the same time, he’s trying to keep the initiative by splitting his command first into three parts, B.A., Reno at its own command, and then by taking two troops away from the other three and going further north.

01:06:09:27 – 01:06:33:14
Gregory J.W. Urwin
He makes it possible for the Indians in Reno that chew him up. Reno runs away. He’s no longer a threat. They turn on Custer. He’s the existential threat. He’s within range of their women and children, and they go after him. They wipe out the three companies that he left behind. He gets the last hill with his two erratic companies and tries to make a stand, and they’ll weather him down.

01:06:33:17 – 01:06:56:21
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Most of the ants get off their horses because it’s stupid to ride around in a circle, let people search and we take cover and they’re firing arrows and bullets and they whittle down the number of whites who charge very little fire coming from the circle of dead white horses. And then they go away and then they kill whoever is still left to resist and kill every wounded who are still alive.

01:06:56:21 – 01:07:16:13
Gregory J.W. Urwin
And that brings the battle a battle to a close. Custer dies on that last night. When did he go down? At the beginning. This final phase of the battle at the end. We’ll never well, never know. But yeah. So the movie doesn’t show that at all. Custer takes the entire side of the Calvary and they go down to cool it.

01:07:16:15 – 01:07:39:05
Gregory J.W. Urwin
So Indians are waiting for them not to fight, but his decoys and they go running away. And Custer started going into the village, which is his primary objective, because again, if he captures women and children, we could use them as hostages to get the warriors no more or less stop resisting. He goes chasing these decoys and he gets ambushed.

01:07:39:08 – 01:08:07:03
Gregory J.W. Urwin
And that was a common belief that somehow the Indians ambushed Custer rather than reacting to his mistakes, taking advantage of his mistakes, somehow they’d set a trap for him. Another thing about the presentation of Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn is that it epitomizes what I call reverse racism. That you only learned, officer, that Indians could beat is an evil, foolish man.

01:08:07:06 – 01:08:32:18
Gregory J.W. Urwin
They can’t take out a competent officer and beat him in an open fight. Only it’s get defeated by the Indian. And that really isn’t fair to call and say, Yeah, they found a worthy phone. I made mistakes. But that’s what you know. When you’re fighting a worthy forward, it gives you an opening. Then you take it and you, you attack without mercy.

01:08:32:25 – 01:08:36:05
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Especially since you’ll feel your wife and your wives and children.

01:08:36:08 – 01:09:01:23
Dan LeFebvre
Well, you’re talking about Custer. Using his plan of attack was kind of based on his experience fighting Indians previously. Do we know if the Indians who were fighting him had experience that they were using in their strategy to to fight against Custer, to take advantage of those mistakes, to realize that they were mistakes to take advantage of?

01:09:01:25 – 01:09:25:23
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Well, so a lot of the fighting men, except for the youngest head experience, can’t be attached to the warrior. There were foolish Southern Cheyenne, some of those people in the north afterwards. So there were Washington veterans at the battle of the little big heart chop. Well, some people see this as a kind of, you know, some form of divine right intervention or divine retribution.

01:09:25:25 – 01:09:56:11
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Certainly, there there’s great irony there. But these Armenians, you know, fighting other Indians and fighting whites, and when they’re involved in the combat situation, and then you see the enemy doing something that makes them vulnerable. They’ll take advantage of it. I mean, they were organized in military units, but there were certain certain leaders who commanded respect like Crazy Horse, like all like to me at night drove and they’d say, look, look, the soldiers, we’re on this side of this ridge.

01:09:56:11 – 01:10:22:16
Gregory J.W. Urwin
And then their held horses, their fight firing in the other direction. Well, they’re idiots, but stampede their horses and they would be helpless. And all the guys say it’s a good idea and strong. So that crazy horse, the three troops that Custer left behind by using Indian testimony and tie motion studies and archeological evidence, it appears that he made a danger.

01:10:22:18 – 01:10:45:19
Gregory J.W. Urwin
He rode through the whites and came back without getting a scratch. He said, I can do it. You could do Let’s go now and that helped to destroy those three those three companies at that the southern end of of Custer’s Rich. And there were other other Indian leaders who would do the same, just like a squad leader in World War Two would set up.

01:10:45:19 – 01:11:06:11
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Follow me one Indian, a shy, a leader who did that lane white map was killed. Well, it was by white bullets or by friendly fire. But he exposed himself to encourage other Indians to carry out certain tactic. So it’s a lot of small unit action that’s going on. There’s no Indian Napoleon that’s a little big, but you don’t need one.

01:11:06:13 – 01:11:46:04
Dan LeFebvre
That is very, very different than the way movie portrays any of that, especially in the in the in the battle in the movie, you see elements of things that we’ve talked about here. You cut everybody around him is fighting and Custer is just going on this rant against Grant’s and how it was his fault that he’s in this position and and all of this and then, of course, you do see Jack Crabbe being the lone white survivor as he’s managed to escape in the story there there comes together but we’ve talked about there were no white survivors like Jack Crabbe.

01:11:46:06 – 01:12:15:18
Gregory J.W. Urwin
When they left the depiction of Custer that that’s that’s with with how the character is ranked from his first appearance in the movie. Berger you know considers Custer something of jerk. But at the end, Jack Trib admires the bravery that Custer displays and encouraging his mad and trying to try to salvage something out of that, out of that situation has still get skill.

01:12:15:20 – 01:12:50:12
Gregory J.W. Urwin
But again, movies often paint with a broad brush. And when you consider the politics of the day that the movie was made, Arthur Penn, the director, was something of an anti authoritarian. I mean, just previous lead turns to bloodthirsty bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde and two glamorous, glamorous heroes. Custer’s The establishment, J.M. Custer’s, The U.S. Army, Custer’s. Every every dimwitted general already led his troops and disaster caused all kinds of collateral damage.

01:12:50:14 – 01:12:59:29
Gregory J.W. Urwin
He can be found. So we’re dealing with a caricature here and a thinly disguised picture of a modern U.S. general.

01:13:00:01 – 01:13:12:02
Dan LeFebvre
Well, at the very end of the movie, we see the character of Old Lodge and tell Jack that we won the battle, but not the war. What was the aftermath of the Battle of Little Bighorn?

01:13:12:04 – 01:13:40:22
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Well, you know, close to about I got my estimates vary, but about 8000 Indians came together in the valuable Bighorn. Now we’re talking about maybe 20, 2500 warriors. The rest are women and children, not combatants. It takes an awful lot of buffalo to feed a concentration like that. And the very numbers scare game out of thin air. So that number Indians just couldn’t stay together for long.

01:13:40:23 – 01:14:07:11
Gregory J.W. Urwin
They had to break up to hunt, defeat. And as they’re going and word of Custer’s defeat reaches the reaches of the East in the U.S. Army’s got Agent Chase. What we’ve got send reinforcements. Only got to hunt these people down. So they’ll do that. Now, it’s still very difficult because it’s the summertime. The ponies are flat. Our facts are all because the grass is green and unions will elude soldiers time and again.

01:14:07:11 – 01:14:35:04
Gregory J.W. Urwin
But they can’t keep here up and show different bands. They’re being hit at different places. And most of the army retires to where the quarters when snows fall. But an infantry commander named Nelson Miles stays out here, establishes a containment or cap on the river, and he signs that maybe horses on the horses can’t subsist on the plains because they can’t pull down to the grass and we can’t hold out from them.

01:14:35:11 – 01:14:58:16
Gregory J.W. Urwin
But by effort, you can go anywhere. You come out the fifth U.S. effigy, and by gum he does. And he starts hitting Indian caps. And again, he just don’t expect the white soldiers to show up. He starts capturing Indian ponies and bounding his infantry, all of them, which increases his mobility. But between him and other commanders, Robert McKenzie, in a chapter, they make life really tough.

01:14:58:18 – 01:15:39:00
Gregory J.W. Urwin
They hit camps and they destroy Indian habitations, all their stored food, either capture or kill ponies. These people can’t survive so bad after bad starts coming in to surrender at their agents. Some Lakota clutch Crazy Horse was as hard line a resistor as you could find. A small group of people under the leadership, said Igbo. You as a spiritual leader of the Lakota, During this resistance, they will go into Canada to escape being subjected the United States, but they don’t like it, and they’ll return that.

01:15:39:00 – 01:16:02:04
Gregory J.W. Urwin
You’ll be put on a reserve. I’m sure government will keep a close eye on something well, well allowed for a while to tour with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, but in the end, the ghost steps disturbances rise up at 1889 1890, there’s a suspicion that he he might be behind it and he’ll be assassinated by Indian police. Crazy Horse, 1977.

01:16:02:04 – 01:16:28:28
Gregory J.W. Urwin
He’s bayoneted to death under the suspicion that he was planning resistance. I think that was at Fort Robinson, Nebraska. So he’s eliminated two other Indian leaders, realize that they want to stay leaders and they want to stay alive. We got to play ball with the whites in 1877 and into the fairly early months of 1877. And that pretty much breaks Indian resistance, except for sending ball and his band to go and carrying and I resisting anybody but drunk they’re on the loose.

01:16:29:01 – 01:16:49:27
Gregory J.W. Urwin
So yeah they grant they crying they grind them down. So that’s the way it works now. Attrition. Oh the army. We just keep after these people until it was impossible for them to survive on their own and then, well the government put them on welfare, provided they stayed within the confines of their reservations.

01:16:50:03 – 01:17:09:06
Dan LeFebvre
Throughout the movie. I want to I want to ask there is a concept for one of the characters, a character, Younger Bear, and it mentions that he’s a contrary. It’s kind of the way the movie portrays it. It seems again, there’s a lot of over-the-top stuff, and this just seems over-the-top, you know, as a contrary. Everything except for battle has to be done backwards.

01:17:09:10 – 01:17:18:23
Dan LeFebvre
He walks backwards, he says hello instead of good bye. When he means goodbye says goodbye when he meets. Hello. Was that an actual thing?

01:17:18:26 – 01:17:41:27
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Believe it or not, it was. Oh, was their work out years now? They were a small cult among the Cheyenne because of the uppercuts and yeah, they would do the opposite of what everyone else was doing. People would be eating like what? And sometimes they got into battle. Sometimes a guy got involved with. Combat Leader What party would tell this people?

01:17:41:27 – 01:18:13:27
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Kid The opposition is too tough. Was all that actually would say fight it. So I’d have to go to him and take charge as well. But you know, I got alliances. So it’s a kind of extreme religious cult, but it did exist, which is, you know, and again, there was nice seeing that in other things of the movie, the depiction of the Cheyenne, you know, contrary to what we’d seen in Hollywood up to this time, they’re not noble savages and they’re not ignoble savages.

01:18:13:27 – 01:18:38:05
Gregory J.W. Urwin
They’re people. They have a certain lifestyle that works for them. They have a certain belief system that works for them among themselves. They they’re kind loving. They train their young people in their ways. They accept mistakes. They accept a certain amount of individuality. Or you want to you want to be trans. That’s okay. You know what? Not are fine.

01:18:38:05 – 01:19:01:07
Gregory J.W. Urwin
We got a place for you. You know, the great spirit is somehow blessed. You are, in a way distinct from everybody else, but with people that they adapt to. Yeah, I take them into the family circle and some of it’s funny. What? The culture. Yeah. Okay, great. Yeah. There were things going on in white culture to Trump again, I say they, they treat them as people.

01:19:01:09 – 01:19:05:08
Gregory J.W. Urwin
And that’s one of the great beauties of this movie.

01:19:05:11 – 01:19:22:00
Dan LeFebvre
Is it is following Jack Crabbe. But because he does live with the Cheyenne for a long time, especially in the beginning, and then he does go back at different times throughout the movie, it sounds like it does a pretty good job of showing what life may have been like for Cheyenne in the 1800s.

01:19:22:00 – 01:19:44:29
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Yeah, Yeah. I mean, it’s he’s happiest when he’s Cheyenne. The people are more honest, more transparent. What you see is what you get. I hate you, what you say so I can’t hurt you right now. I saved your life. I think you’re just stuck. Stop. That’s what makes you laugh. But at the same time. Okay, Marcus, you feel that way.

01:19:45:06 – 01:19:46:12
Dan LeFebvre
At least. At least you know.

01:19:46:19 – 01:20:27:10
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Yeah, You know he is. Yeah. It’s fun. It’s like the film, though, you know, far from science. Pretty misogynistic, which is not at all untypical for movies back in the 1970s. Women are. Well, you know, if I can use the B word, you got all go turns into this This nasty bitch washes, married a poor younger pair. You’ve got the hypocritical the Torrance Mrs. Penn drank, You know, he got Christian veneers, somebody who is just as savaged by evil and her needs and the people that she snares that sunshine.

01:20:27:12 – 01:20:51:10
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Jack Krebs, Cheyenne wife. She’s lovely in many ways. Now. She’s in many ways perfect woman. Although, you know, this is not as misogynistic. She knows how to manipulate. Jack, I want you to I want you to have sex with my sisters because they’ve lost their husbands and they’re lonely. But on Caroline, you know. Sister, won’t you tell it?

01:20:51:10 – 01:21:22:03
Gregory J.W. Urwin
She’s aching to be raped. The image and how she’s disappointed when they don’t do that. So there’s some really, really odd female portraits in the snow. But Berger’s novel opens in that spirit. Jack Krebs Wagon train, when he was a boy, is attacked. They kill all white men, but then they drag the women off and rape. And instead of adhering to the the stereotype of the white pioneer woman, shame the last bullet for yourself.

01:21:22:03 – 01:21:38:24
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Spare yourself, I’ll say worse than death. They all submit. And then the next day they put their clothes back on. It’s business as usual. So there’s that odd moment. If you sit down and think about some of these things, there are things to think about.

01:21:38:27 – 01:21:57:03
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, yeah, definitely. It seems like we we talked about various elements here, but it also seems just a lot of stereotypes that we’ve seen in other Western movies as well. Is there anything that you wish had been included that wasn’t.

01:21:57:06 – 01:22:15:23
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Well, you know, I’m going to be a persnickety historian. I say I wish they had know, shown the battle as it actually was. And more and more about how the seventh Calvary survived on Renault Hill and blah, blah, blah, blah. But, you know, I take that on its own terms. And then I was upset by it when I first saw it when I was a teenager.

01:22:15:23 – 01:22:54:08
Gregory J.W. Urwin
And that’s not right. That’s not right. But it works as entertainment and at times it delivers more than that. And not the three movies that you could say that about or. Yeah, I wish there were more reasons you could say that about them. Don’t take don’t don’t treat this history text, but there are things to be appreciated. And I one thing worth appreciating is that they filmed a lot of the battle on the Little Bighorn battlefield, not the national park, but a lot of the land over which the fighting occurred is not part of the national park.

01:22:54:08 – 01:23:18:16
Gregory J.W. Urwin
It’s part of the Crow reservation they filmed in Madison. Tell Callie, Oh, okay. We get down to the Ford where where Custer’s troops didn’t didn’t cross most of the Indian extras. So we’re not Lakota or Cheyenne. They were crow because that’s their homes. And now the production company went in looking for young Indians could ride horses. And so the crow crow makes some money.

01:23:18:18 – 01:23:39:19
Gregory J.W. Urwin
And and they had an air a hired to work at working on that I had a friend who is a ranger at the Custer Battlefield Drag Little Bighorn Battlefield. And during the shooting because they’re riding horses down bluffs and things like that, masses of people horse fell and broke and snapped or had to be put out of its misery.

01:23:39:21 – 01:23:59:11
Gregory J.W. Urwin
And there was a complaint because the film production company didn’t remove the carcass. They had a smell wood which reached the visitor center and the government couldn’t go over there and do it. The Park Service couldn’t go over there and remove it because it wasn’t their land. The crows didn’t seem to care because it wasn’t there where they were living.

01:23:59:13 – 01:24:08:12
Dan LeFebvre
I’m glad they did that, though. To add a little bit of authenticity to at least the terrain, because a lot of times in movies too, they it’s it’s a studio or it’s somewhere just completely different.

01:24:08:12 – 01:24:14:27
Gregory J.W. Urwin
And that sort Yeah it works flat. Yeah. You know so. Yeah.

01:24:15:00 – 01:24:38:06
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming on to chat about Little Big Man one Your books called Custer Victorious The Civil War Battles of General George Armstrong Custer. I’ll make sure to include a link to that in the show notes for this episode. For anyone who wants to pick up a copy But since that’s obviously a different part of Custer’s career than the story we talked about today, can you share an overview of your book for someone who wants to learn more about him?

01:24:38:08 – 01:25:00:02
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Well, when I did my interest in Custer, everything about him was about the Little Bighorn, the last day of his life, about which we know hardly anything, you know. Well, the archeology and a more intelligent reading of the Indian testimony has increased our knowledge over. Yeah, we knew. We didn’t know what he was thinking. Wow. We could speculate.

01:25:00:04 – 01:25:42:24
Gregory J.W. Urwin
One reason why Custer’s defeat made such an impact on the psyche of the American people was that he went into the Little Bighorn as an established national hero. And that reputation was born in the American Civil War, where a young man graduated last in his class at West Point in June 1861, within two years, was a brigadier general and soon became the commander, probably the best Calvary unit Calvary Brigade in the area, the Potomac, and then went on to become the now the commander of the best Cavalry Division in the Army of Shenandoah and then the army of the Potomac, all before he was 25.

01:25:42:27 – 01:26:11:00
Gregory J.W. Urwin
And he helped to win countless battles that were a lot bigger and a lot more important than the Little Bighorn because they helped to preserve the union. And I just you know thought this deserves a closer look. So when the time came for me to write my master’s thesis in 1979 at John Kerry adversity, I hope the Jesuits appreciate the plug.

01:26:11:03 – 01:26:34:25
Gregory J.W. Urwin
I decided to write my thesis on Custer in the Civil War and my advisor, the Reverend J. Smyth, S.J. Jesuit, who was also the biography of John G. Pershing. You know, I’ve been running magazine articles and stuff. He said, Well, you write, there’s a book, and I did. And after some revisions, I tried to find a publisher foolish enough to invest.

01:26:34:25 – 01:27:00:22
Gregory J.W. Urwin
And it came out in 1983 as Custer, the Taurus, its 40th anniversary. And it just more or less gives us a different look at Custer, look at Custer when he was successful, when he apparently could do no wrong. And I thought that that, you know, that was important, that this guy was not some some lame brain like Richard Mulligan depicted whatever personal foibles he may have had.

01:27:00:25 – 01:27:23:16
Gregory J.W. Urwin
He was good on the battlefield. That I think puts a little in a new light. So they’re saying, okay, look how this fool just doomed himself and a couple hundred men to death. What would a reasonable commander, why would he make these decisions? And the whole thing again, you know, the get image. Custer got his whole command massacred or two or ten men under his immediate command.

01:27:23:20 – 01:27:54:00
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Another 50 guys, Reno. And then he didn’t survive. But one of the railroad elite who got three divisions massacred, marching across open ground against Union Artillery and Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg were about Ulysses and Grant. The Cold Harbor ordered his troops to attack entrenched Confederates. 7000 men in 15 minutes. You know what yardstick for measuring these kinds of things.

01:27:54:02 – 01:28:22:11
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Even good generals can have bad debts. Even good general. And, you know, you don’t have to admire Custer to say, well, yeah, he answered qualities he had. He had certain success. Things were certain things. He just seemed to know how to do. Right. But everything seemed to go wrong for him. June 25th, 1876. So our custom victorious still a print, surprisingly enough, just got a surprise from the Little Bighorn Associates this past June.

01:28:22:14 – 01:28:39:10
Gregory J.W. Urwin
The honor books that they didn’t honor when they initially appeared with his J.D. Smith Award. So still out there, people are still reading it, and it has affected the way at least civil war historians want a Custer in that larger conflict. So I made a little contribution there.

01:28:39:16 – 01:29:01:26
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, I think I think you make a great point of, well, nobody nobody survived. So especially it sounded like what you’re talking about earlier right away. There seemed to be some, you know, the the media and the way that they portrayed things or there was just a lot of hearsay or I mean, nobody sort of nobody survived. So, yeah, I mean, you go.

01:29:01:26 – 01:29:02:24
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Back up stories.

01:29:02:24 – 01:29:05:24
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. Yeah. So we don’t we don’t know as opposed what’s.

01:29:05:27 – 01:29:15:21
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Possible ascension or if you’re Republican, that nasty little brat. Yeah. Got this But which is what? Which which which a needless sacrifice that.

01:29:15:24 – 01:29:16:29
Dan LeFebvre
Oh, really? Okay.

01:29:17:01 – 01:29:18:11
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

01:29:18:13 – 01:29:23:24
Dan LeFebvre
Well, thank you again so much for your time. I make sure to include a link to your book in the show notes for this episode.

01:29:23:26 – 01:29:34:08
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Thank you very much. My pleasure. Always a pleasure to be Based on a True Story.