Katherine Addison's Blog, page 40

UBC: Fox, Archaeology, History, and Custer's Last Battle

Archaeology, History, and Custer’s Last Battle: The Little Big Horn Reexamined by Richard A. Fox

My rating: 5 of 5 stars




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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The whole thing took less than two hours.

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





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Conversations at 5:30

UNDERFOOT CAT: OH THANK GOD YOU'RE FINALLY UP.
ME: Good morning to you, too.
CATZILA: we are perishing of starvation
UNDERFOOT CAT: PERISHING UTTERLY.
ME: It's 5:30 in the morning. You have never once in your entire spoiled-rotten little lives been fed at 5:30 in the morning.
UNDERFOOT CAT: I'm sorry, did you not hear me? PERISHING. UTTERLY.
CATZILLA: besides it's lunch-time in Paris
ME: . . . Paris, France?
CATZILLA: le chat est adorable
UNDERFOOT CAT: Q.E.D., dude. Where's our breakfast?

Speaking of the Little Bighorn

PURELY BY SERENDIPITY, I happened to pick up a National Geographic in the doctor's office this morning and found this. It is deeply surreal in its own right, but even more so for me because Brigadier General Edward S. Godfrey (a lieutenant in 1876) is notable as a reliable diarist/witness; he's someone I know well enough, historically speaking, to have an opinion about. (He falls into the category of men honorably trying to do their duty to the best of their abilities, and is also notable as being an officer at/near/around the Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876, who actually kept his head.)

I wish they had identifications for any of the Native American men.

UBC: Gray, Custer's Last Campaign

Custer's Last Campaign: Mitch Boyer and the Little Bighorn Reconstructed by John Stephens Gray

My rating: 3 of 5 stars




Part of this book is fascinating, but "part," unfortunately, does not equal "all." Gray's writing style is clear and competent (it has to be, because I was able to follow his reconstruction of Custer's campaign), but not engaging, and he makes the mistake that so many nonfiction writers do of putting the explicit articulation of his argument at the end of his book instead of at the beginning. I would have found the biography of Mitch Boyer much more interesting if I'd known what I was reading it for.

So. Gray's purpose in writing this book is to do a time-motion study of Custer's 1876 campaign, especially the battle(s) at Reno Hill and what is now the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. His theses are:

(1) a defense, in general, of the accuracy and reliability of Native American witnesses to the battle, especially the Crow scout Curley who was the last person in Custer's company to leave the Little Bighorn alive, and a repudiation in particular of the accounts of the battle and campaign that make Curley out to be a liar and/or a coward.

(2) a defense, a eulogy, and a championing of Mitch Boyer, the half-Sioux half-French scout. (Mitch is an Anglicization of Mich', being short for Michel, and Boyer is only one of many possible spellings of his surname. I'm sticking with Boyer because that's how Gray spells it, but if you want to learn more about him, Bouyer will get you the Mitch you're looking for from Google.) Gray is especially concerned (he reveals at the end) to refute the rumors and speculation that Boyer betrayed Custer to the Sioux.

(3) a refutation of the persistent rumor that there were 20 to 40 bodies lost. He does patient, careful math and proves that, no, the Seventh Cavalry can all be accounted for, alive or dead. His margin of error is +/- 1, not +/-20.

He also along the way demonstrates that the unreliable witnesses to the Little Bighorn are the commissioned officers of the Seventh Cavalry, especially Major Marcus Reno and MOST ESPECIALLY Captain Frederick Benteen, and that most of the confusion is caused by officers lying outright or lying by omission in order to save their own faces (Benteen and Reno) or to save the faces of their fellow officers (almost all the other commissioned officers, including a steamboat captain who quietly "loses" a day of his chronology in order to avoid having to report an idiotic mistake made by the captain of the boat guard).

Gray's time-motion study is brilliant, and he provided me with all sorts of fascinating and helpful details, such as that the cavalry's "working trot" is 6 mph and that an ox-drawn wagon train can make 15 miles a day, while a mule train can make 20. The way he correlates and cross-checks his witness testimony is seriously beautiful to watch.

I wish he'd made a bigger deal of the part, buried at the absolute end of the book, where the archaeologists excavating the battlefield proved that Mitch Boyer died at the Little Bighorn by taking the pieces of skull they had and superimposing them on the only known photograph of Mitch Boyer. (In my guilty weakness for true crime shows, I've watched several cases of identity proven by this method, including Bun Chee Nyhuis [it's a weird photo of her, because she's making a face at the camera, but look at the way the skull fits her face].)

I don't know why I'm so fascinated by the Battle of the Little Bighorn, since I hate everything about it. I hate that the US Army was out there because President Grant and his Cabinet decided deliberately and with malice aforethought that they preferred breaking their word to the Sioux and Cheyenne over forcing American citizens to obey the law. For that matter, I hate every single one of the American citizens who decided that the possibility of gold was a good enough reason to ignore the fact that the Black Hills were off-limits, a good enough reason to trample all over the rights and beliefs of other human beings. (Do not talk to me about "pioneer spirit." You will not like what I have to say.) I hate the foreknowledge of the Sioux' defeat (Wounded Knee is only fourteen years in the future); I hate knowing that the Native American peoples who chose to honor their agreements and treaties with the American government (especially the Crow and Arikara, who were out there with the Army, scouting and dying for these entitled assholes) are going to get screwed over every bit as badly as the "hostile" peoples. And at the same time, I hate watching the catastrophe befalling the Seventh Cavalry; I hate knowing that Custer is leading his men to a terrible death (and as much as I loathe and despise what those men are out in Montana doing, most of them are not to blame, are merely men trying to do their duty as best they can); I hate--and yet am mesmerized by--watching the process of that catastrophe unfold.

Gray is bitterly lucid about the betrayal of the Native American peoples by the American government and its citizens. He is absolutely forthright about the lies and mistakes he catches the officers of the Seventh Cavalry in, and he is fierce in his championing of Mitch Boyer and Curley.

This is not a good place to start with the Battle of the Little Bighorn, but if you are already interested, Gray's time-motion analysis is fascinating.



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the woes of the small domestic predator

UNDERFOOT CAT: [on the bathroom sink] All right, where is it?
ME: [from the other side of the bathroom] It's not over there.
U.C.: Where the hell did it go?
ME: It's over here.
U.C.: Oh don't be ridiculous. How could it have gotten over there? It was right here.
ME: It's a bug. It has wings.
U.C.: [comes over to check] Wings?
ME: Which means you're not going to be able to catch it from the floor, either.
U.C.: [thoroughly put out] Wings is cheating.
(BUG: [from somewhere above our heads] Ha ha!)

UBC: Walker, Turley, Leonard, Massacre at Mountain Meadows

Massacre at Mountain Meadows by Ronald W. Walker

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



I was, I admit, a little skeptical about this book, being as it is "the most professional, transparent account of a controversial event in Mormon history produced under church auspices" (from the Journal of American History review, quoted on the back cover). From other reading, notably Salamander: The Story of the Mormon Forgery Murders with a New Afterword, I am aware that the Mormon church has not always put its best foot forward in the enterprise of historiography. That would be why I made sure I found and read The Mountain Meadows Massacre first, knowing that Juanita Brooks set the bar.

I was pleasantly surprised. Walker, Turley, and Leonard live up to the JAH review; their account of the massacre is both professional and transparent. They make the story as clear as it is ever likely to be; they make careful delineations about who shoulders what part of the blame for the way the events at Mountain Meadows unfolded (I have a tag on my blog for "clusterfucks of the old west," and believe me, this qualifies); they (a) remember that Native Americans are not a homogeneous population and that their society is not monolithic, (b) incorporate the perspective of the Paiutes into their narrative from what evidence they have, and (c) include among their appendices (the roster of emigrants known to have been killed and known to have survived; the value of the emigrants' property, the roster of Mormons suspected or proved to have taken part in the massacre) a list of Native Americans known to have participated in the massacre and a list of Native Americans accused of participating who can be proved to have been somewhere else. This is responsible historiography, and I appreciate it.

They also pull in modern research on how atrocities happen and really do an excellent job of showing the steps on the road to Hell: why relations between Mormon settlers and non-Mormon emigrants were so tense; the spread of rumor and gossip (I even buy their theory that the story of the emigrants poisoning dead cattle to kill Indians and Mormons is based in an anthrax outbreak); the terrible snowballing effect of one bad decision after another, until the Mormon leaders Dame and Haight had convinced themselves that the only option left to them was to massacre the Fancher wagon train.

I also appreciate the fact that Walker, Turley, and Leonard track carefully, and incorporate the testimony of, the children who survived because they were judged too young to talk. I've talked other places about children and history, and although that's not really something Walker, Turley, and Leonard are pursuing, the fact is that they treat respectfully the testimony from people who were seven or younger at the time of the massacre. One of the children, who was not quite three at the time of the massacre, nevertheless remembered distinctly and vividly her father being killed while he held her.

The massacre at Mountain Meadows is dreadful both in and of itself and in the way that it demonstrates how horribly easy it is to paint yourself into a corner, how difficult it is for human beings to stand firm against a group decision, even if they think the decision is wrong, and the awful awful things that happen because someone decides it's "too late" to do something better.



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How It Works

ME: This is not a good time.
CATZILLA: [blankly] what are you talking about? every time is a good time for kitty
ME: Really. Not a good time.
CATZILLA: but kitty is adorable
ME: Kitty is in the way.
CATZILLA: kitty is adorable
ME: Kitty is standing on what I'm trying to type.
CATZILLA: kitty is adorable
ME: Did I mention this is not a good time?
CATZILLA: KITTY IS ADORABLE [sits down. pointedly.]
ME: ::sigh:: [pets kitty] . . . Kitty is adorable.

UBC: Brooks, The Mountain Meadows Massacre

The Mountain Meadows Massacre by Juanita Brooks

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Juanita Brooks was a very brave person.

Writing less than a hundred years after the massacre and--as she states clearly--being a devout and loyal Mormon, she had the courage to (a) ask questions, (b) find answers, and (c) publish what she found, despite the fact that her findings were not favorable to the Mormon Church or many of its important early members, including Brigham Young. The book is fascinating as, in-and-of-itself, a historical artifact and as a work of historiography, talking about how history is made.

It is not a perfect book. I don't find Brooks a particularly compelling writer, stylistically, and she has the problem endemic to historians of her generation, of assuming that the motivations of Native Americans are irrecoverable and incomprehensible (and, yes, she does at one point compare the Paiutes to children). And hers is a first pass at the historiographical archaeology of the massacre at Mountain Meadows; historians coming after her, who had her work to build on, were able to dig deeper and extract more delicate shades of nuance. But she proves that the Mountain Meadows Massacre was the brainchild of the Mormons and that Mormon men participated, and held positions of leadership, in the massacre; and she proves that John D. Lee got thrown under the bus by his religious brethren. He was certainly guilty, but if he was guilty, so were a host of other men, all of whom walked away scot free while Lee was executed. The massacre exhibits one of the lows that human nature can sink to; the aftermath demonstrates another.



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UBC: Pelonero, Kitty Genovese

Kitty Genovese: A True Account of a Public Murder and Its Private Consequences by Catherine Pelonero

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



It is a cruel irony that it is so much easier to explain why a book is bad than why a book is good. Because this book is excellent and I'm sitting here trying to figure out how to explain why.

Partly, it's that Pelonero has a clear, vivid writing style; partly it's her effort to practice compassion towards everyone involved, even that baffling, prowling monster, Winston Moseley; partly it's that she has done the research and dug as deeply as she can dig, and she shows the careful process of assessing her sources, trying to figure out for each discrepancy who was wrong and why (and she admits that with some discrepancies it can't be done). Partly it's the vehemence with which she defends the truth against the revisionist histories that have started cropping up. I agree with her that I understand why people want to believe that what really happened wasn't as bad as the reporters made it out to be, but it is intensely frustrating, just as it is in any case where revisionist denier-ism crops up, to watch the rapacious ease with which the lie overtakes and in some cases drowns out the truth, how easy it is for people not to assess their sources, but to assume that because it's in print (or, even worse, because it's on the internet) it must be true. Plus the greedy pleasure we are all prone to when offered the idea that "they" have been lying to us but "we" know better.

Just because someone is telling you what you want to believe, does not make what they say the truth.

The death of Kitty Genovese is a true nightmare and a nightmare of truth. We need to remember her because we need to remember what her death tells us, in plain, indelible, capital letters, about human nature. Thirty-eight witnesses saw and did nothing, not because they were monsters, but because they were human beings.



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UBC: Smith, The Last Hurrah of the James-Younger Gang

Last Hurrah of the James-Younger Gang by Robert B. Smith

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



I picked this up at a library book sale for $2, having had enough experience with books about American outlaws to know not to expect much. But it was a delight to read, well-written and carefully researched, and interested in exactly the same thing I'm interested in: how can we assess and sift the primary sources on an event like the Northfield bank robbery and subsequent manhunt and how much of the truth can we recover?

Smith has no patience for Jesse James (neither the legend nor the man) and not the slightest desire to romanticize bank robbers; I appreciated his dry, down-to-earth tone, particularly as a corrective to the self-romanticization of (especially) Cole Younger. He errs slightly in the other direction, but the citizens of Northfield were heroic: Heywood and Bunker and Wilcox inside the bank, all of whom refused to tell the robbers that that closed safe door with its fancy combination time lock didn't mean a thing because the dial hadn't been spun to lock it; Manning and Wheeler and the other men outside the bank who armed themselves and shot back. And Smith is over-emphatic because he is so insistent that we recognize the James brothers and the Younger brothers for what they were--not Robin Hood, not Confederate heroes unjustly driven to bank robbery by the government and the carpetbaggers, but parasites, men who chose to survive by stealing from the very people who looked on them as heroes (being pre-FDIC, the money that the Jameses and the Youngers stole was the money of the depositors, not the money of the (conveniently reified) Bank).

(There's a parallel here with people who have I STAND WITH SCOTT WALKER bumper stickers, but I should probably put it down and back away slowly.)

Smith does an excellent job of assessing the primary sources against each other, surviving bank employees and citizens against surviving bank robbers: Clelland Miller and Charlie Pitts and Bill Chadwell not being able to speak for themselves--and, although that's pure happenstance, it's a pity, because all we have left are the Younger brothers and the James brothers with no chance of a dissenting voice--Joseph Lee Heywood and Nicolaus Gustafson not being able to solve the mystery of which of the outlaws murdered them.

Smith's narrative is engaging and easy to follow and does an excellent job of explaining why an experienced and successful gang of bank robbers ran so grievously aground in Northfield, Minnesota.



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