![little bighorn battlefield little bighorn battlefield](https://st2.depositphotos.com/50619804/47303/i/1600/depositphotos_473033982-stock-photo-little-bighorn-montana-usa-memorial.jpg)
My husband and I spent a gorgeous fall day here in September 2015. All in all, it was an interesting and historic stop on my trip out West. Look closely or you might miss how artfully these were done. But I was most impressed with the lovely portraits etched in the cement. Entering the circular cement area, you'll see a sculpture of native americans on horseback. You'll see the marker for where Custer fell, the marker where Crazy Horse fell, and countless others. Once you return to the parking lot, I recommend that you then get out and walk to the Monument (you will have driven past it by now but the impact will be greater because you saw the land). You'll drive through several confusing fences that seem to imply you are on private land, but keep driving until you reach the turn around point. You'll see lots of headstones marking where soldiers and warriors alike fell in battle. There are a number of stops with notable historic markers. Next, hop back into your car for a drive down a paved road through the historic land. Next, I recommend that you go through the visitor center and see the little museum-there is a fair amount of artifacts. Each one for a soldier, and the impact will take your breath away. But here's what you'll see, rows upon rows of white grave markers in front of the parking lot. Creswell.I visited on a very windy day, so my experience was a bit effected by the fact that I was taking everything in with strong gusts of wind knocking me about. Custer”), 2 pages, quarto, Galt House, Lexington, Kentucky. The youngest general in American history, he has been lionized, and vilified, for losing his entire command in an Indian ambush at Little Bighorn.Īutograph Letter Signed (“G.A. The Custer clan died as they lived – together. And for all the millions of words written about Little Bighorn, oddly, this is an unusual, and even novel, thesis. This terrible testament to love and loyalty is why, in fact, Ronald Reagan wrote in a 1984 letter to a Western historian, he never believed Custer was a swashbuckler who, knowingly, would have placed members of his own family in harm’s way. Brother-in-law Jimmi, too, lay a short distance away. His own body, bristling with arrows, was found close by – as were Boston’s and Autie’s.
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![little bighorn battlefield little bighorn battlefield](https://live.staticflickr.com/4104/5171451319_b122e710f2_b.jpg)
Patrolling the Plains had been, for the Custers, a frolic and a lark – right up to the moment on Last Stand Hill when, some posit, Tom shot his mortally-wounded brother through the temple, lest he be tortured to death.
![little bighorn battlefield little bighorn battlefield](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Z4-44CksJqc/maxresdefault.jpg)
“don’t know what we would do,” Custer wrote from the trail, “without ‘Bos’ to tease…” He was frail and tubercular, and not, despite his brother’s pleading “every respect admirably adapted to perform the duties of a cavalry officer.” So Custer hired him as scout, at a hundred dollars a month, and happily took him along on his first, and last campaign. He is nearly twenty four years of age, of excellent habits and character and I think would be a credit to the service.”īoston Custer was not appointed a Second Lieutenant, or even accepted, however, into the United States Army. My brother is in every respect admirably adapted to perform the duties of a cavalry officer. “I am extremely anxious to obtain an appointment from the Secretary of War of my youngest brother Boston Custer as second lieutenant in the 7th Cavalry. The letter featured here, in which Custer lobbies for a second lieutenancy for his beloved “Bos” marks, for the ultimately unlucky kid brother, the first step on the trail to the Little Bighorn. Among the 268 dead were Custer’s nephew Autie Reed, his brother-in-law James Calhoun, his younger brother Tom and his youngest brother, Boston. In pursuit, every consideration but one flew from him – and when, on June 25, 1876, victory finally eluded him, at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, he died fighting, along with his entire command. But what made him so was, to no small extent, his absolute and single-minded love of the chase. When Ronald Reagan, a self-confessed “Custer buff”, asserted that the flamboyant general was a brilliant officer, he was dead-on: Custer was one of the best Cavalry officers, if not the best, in the United States Army. Custers, of whom there were five in the 7th Cavalry, lived as a clan, fought as a clique, and died in their matching white buckskins at the Battle of the Little Bighorn on the same afternoon.