Custer's maverick behavior brought him occasional trouble with Army authorities (including an 1867 court-martial and one-year suspension) but also made him something of a folk hero among a populace fascinated by the "Wild West." Testifying before Congress in 1876, he bluntly criticized corruption in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, leading to another brief suspension. One historian has called him "the incarnation of a certain type of American hero: impetuous, devil-may-care, and successful--until that afternoon of June 25, 1876, on the hills, gullies and bluffs bordering the Little Big Horn River." In his infamous "last stand," Custer ordered a surprise assault on a Sioux/Cheyenne encampment, but he badly undercounted their numbers and tactically miscalculated by dividing his forces. In the ensuing Indian counterattack, all 260 of Custer's soldiers died. He published his memoirs, My Life on the Plains, in 1874.
SOURCES: Encyclopedia of American Biography; Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography. . |
