Custer's Luck

Book excerpt: This is undoubtedly a remarkable book on a period of American history about which much has been written - the period of the Indian wars in the Northwest, from the close of the Civil War until the Custer disaster on the Little Big Horn. It presents in graphic detail and on a vast canvas the great events and the small which reached a decisive crescendo in Custer’s fate. Here is no savage battle incident presented in isolation from other events, but a sweeping panorama of a whole ere-inept, hesitant, and tragic. To insure comprehensiveness, the author describes the pertinent facts of the Grant administration, the embitterment of the Great Plains tribes, and the deteriorating Civil War army. The book is the record not only of the dashing Seventh Cavalry and its leader but also of the Grant-Custer feud, Sitting Bull, the Belknap scandal, Rain-in-the-Face, the battle strategy of the Indians, and Custer’s military rivals. Particular note is taken of the effect on history of Custer’s recklessness and glory-seeking and of the superstitions and fatalistic determination of the Sioux and the Cheyennes. The Battle of the Little Big Horn, reconstructed in this account largely on Indian eyewitness testimony, climaxed the long-developing tragedy and provided a "smashing crescendo to the vacillating policy of the United States government...towards the Indians of the Great Plains." A four color reproduction of an oil painting by John Hauser, entitled "The Challenge," has been selected for the cover of Custer’s Luck. The original canvas is in the collection of the Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the publishers gratefully acknowledge the cooperation of that organization in making this reproduction possible.