Happy birthday to George Armstrong Custer; he was born on Dec. 5, 1836.
Now when American Indians hear his name they usually get bent out of shape talking about how he killed and hated their ancestors.
He did kill them; after all, he was a soldier. But did he hate them?
I don’t think so.
It’s always tempting to judge someone by the standards you have, and few are able – or willing – to judge a person based on the standards of the time in which they lived.
Here’s what Custer’s contemporaries had to say:
“Nits make lice.”– Col. John Chivington, in defending his men smashing in babies’ heads during the Sand Creek Massacre.
“The only good Indian I ever saw was dead.”– Gen. Philip Sheridan, commanding general of the U.S. Army.
Sheridan’s successor, Gen. William Sherman, also supported complete extermination of Indians. It wasn’t an unusual attitude during this time period; Mark Twain favored extermination, as did L. Frank Baum, of Wizard of Oz fame.
And Custer?
He once said that if he had been born an Indian, he’d be right out there fighting alongside Sitting Bull.
His Indian scouts said that Custer said victory at the Little Bighorn would make him The Great White Father, and then he’d take care of his Indian children.
Patronizing? Yes. But, it is a far cry from total extermination.
Custer wasn’t immune from the typical stereotypes; Indians were unclean, lazy, would steal anything they could get their hands on. (By the way, check your history: the Pilgrims found in odd that the Indians routinely bathed!)
Custer did kill Indians. That didn’t mean he hated them. He killed far more Confederates during the Civil War, than he ever did Indians. But no one ever says he hated Confederates. (In fact, at West Point and throughout his life, many of his closest friends were Southerners.)
The final irony, which most people don’t know, was that Custer begged to go with his men to the Little Bighorn.
He had been in Washington at Congressional hearings where he was defending Indian rights – accusing government officials of corruption and cheating the Indians. History showed that he was right.
But one of the accused was President Grant’s brother, so Grant refused to allow Custer to be part of the campaign against Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.
Only after three of the top generals in the army pleaded with the president, did Grant relent.
And, so, Custer went to Montana to fight Indians. Not because he hated them, but because since the age of 5 the only thing he wanted to be was a soldier, and soldiers fight.
On June 25, 1876 Custer died a soldier’s death, fighting to the end against overwhelming odds.
Many of the Indians who actually fought against Custer – and maybe lost close relatives to his attacks – respected him as a warrior, so why should we continue to demonize him and pretend he is a symbol of evil?
George Armstrong was a flawed man, sometimes petty, arrogant, ambitious – he was a soldier who did his duty as he saw it. And he almost missed out on his dramatic end because he was doing something few realize.
He was defending Native American rights.