Teaching With Documents, Volume 2

Contents:

Mapping a Mystery: The Battle of Little Bighorn

The Battle of Little Bighorn is a study in contrasts. In the East, reports of the defeat vied in newspaper headlines with hoopla about the celebration of the Nation’s centennial. A great Indian victory ultimately led to Indian subjugation. Cavalry commanders who saved their troops were disciplined rather than commended. "Custer’s Last Stand" is one of the best-recognized episodes in American history, yet very little is known about the events of that hot summer day. What was a minor episode in military history has become an enduring topic of study and debate.

In terms of documentation and verification, Little Bighorn presents a complex challenge to the historian. The salient difficulty is that neither Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer nor a single man of the five companies under his command lived to tell his story of the day. Reliable accounts of the 7th Cavalry’s actions end at a point four miles from Last Stand Hill where Capt. Frederick W. Benteen was ordered to scout bluffs to the south of Ouster’s advance and Maj. Marcus A. Reno was ordered west across the river to attack an Indian encampment. From official reports filed immediately following the battle and in testimony recorded some months later at the court of inquiry that absolved Major Reno of misconduct, the modern researcher can get a good grasp of what happened at the Reno-Benteen entrenchment. However, this information sheds little light on the events of the late afternoon of June 25, 1876, that resulted in the massacre of Ouster’s contingent. Even though Reno and other witnesses heard shots to the north, their view was obscured by dust, trees, bluffs, and distance. They did not know of their comrades’ fates until relieved on June 26 by troops led by Gen. Alfred H. Terry and Col. John Gibbons.

General Terry attempted immediately to reconstruct on-site the events that had led to the debacle, but the investigation was hasty because he feared renewed Indian attack and getting wounded survivors to medical stations was urgent. On the afternoon of the 26th and part of the 27th, Lt. Edward MacGuire of the Corps of Engineers and his assistant, Sgt. Charles Becker, sketched the battle site. They took compass bearings to construct a plat, made stick measurements of the locale by walking over much of the 10,000 acres of the battlefield, and recorded distances with an odometer cart. The dead were located and identified, when possible, by burial parties and MacGuire included some of this information on his map. Other evidence collected was less absolute. Because Reno and Benteen’s men had left their positions when rescued, MacGuire interviewed them to determine their placement and movements during the engagement. When they observed Terry’s column, the Indians left, breaking up their camp and removing most of their dead. MacGuire studied lodge pole holes and hearths to reconstruct the Indian encampment, and hoofprints, crushed grass, and artifacts to figure out their movements. It was as good a map as could be made under the circumstances, but MacGuire knew it was not fully accurate, as he testified at the Reno inquiry. "This map, except with regard to the relative position of points is a survey made with transit and chain," he admitted.

It is important to recall that there were surviving eyewitnesses to the swirl of action on Last Stand Hill-the Sioux and Cheyenne warriors. As they surrendered or were captured and placed on reservations, government officials interviewed them. Their accounts trickled in beginning in August 1876. Understandably, many were reluctant to provide details of their roles. Sioux warrior Red Horse said, "I don’t like to talk about that fight. If I hear any of my people talkingabout it, I always move away." Most Indian accounts were relayed in sign language, interpreted by translators, and summarized by reporting agents. Through this process, the Indian accounts were filtered by the white man. In spite of his reluctance, on February 27, 1877, at the Post Cheyenne Agency, Red Horse gave one of the most detailed reports of the Indian side of the battle, which was subsequently included in a report by Col. W.H. Wood. Five years later, at the request of surgeon Charles McChesney, Red Horse also drew a series of pictographs of the battle.

A report filed by Lt. WE Clark, 2d Cavalry, was incorporated into an assessment of the battle by his commander and was forwarded to the headquarters of the Military Division of the Missouri in Chicago. Clark had collected information from Indian witnesses to the battle with the help of interpreters and had obtained an Indian sketch of the site. Clark’s commander was not convinced of the reliability of Indian information and warned headquarters that "the narrative of the Indians should be received with a considerable degree of allowance and some doubt, as Indians generally make their descriptions to conform to what they think are the wishes of those who interview them." He was skeptical of the map, too, and wrote: "General features of the enclosed topographical sketch of Ouster’s battlefield are correct, but I doubt if the Indian who made it was in the fight as he puts the main attack on Ouster’s party upon the wrong [side?] of the ridge." After the report was received in Chicago, Capt. Garrett J. Lydecker of the Engineers was ordered to trace the Indian map. His tracing was attached to the report and sent on to the Adjutant General’s Office, which received both items on November 6, 1877. Lydecker’s tracing of the Indian’s map, however imperfect, names the remnants of tribes resisting enclosure on the reservation, including Blackfeet, Cheyenne, and seven tribes of the Sioux Nation, and provides additional information about the conduct of the battle. For that reason, it is the featured document in this article.

The MacGuire map, Lydecker tracing, official Army reports, telegrams, court testimony, and newspaper articles based on official information are all part of the National Archives collection of material related to the Sioux Wars. Although contemporary with the event, they are not particularly objective, verifiable, or complete; the historian cannot definitively recreate the Battle of Little Bighorn. A prairie fire in 1983 enabled the National Park Service to conduct the first major scientific excavation of the site. The general outlines of contemporary reports were confirmed by the thousands of artifacts uncovered and ballistic studies of spent bullets and cartridges. Still, the specifics of this event, like many in history, continue to elude us.

The Lydecker sketch is kept in the Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, 1780’s-1917, Record Group 94, Miscellaneous File, #53’/x. It is a black ink tracing, measuring 115/e by 13’/s inches, with Indian movements noted in red, soldiers’ in blue. Additional information can be found in National Archives Microfilm Publication M666, roll 273 (reports filed by the expeditionary force) and M592, rolls 1 and 2 (the Reno Court of Inquiry).

TEACHING ACTIVITIES

Map Analysis

1. Ask students to review their textbooks’ account of the Battle of Little Bighorn or a general article in another reference book. Duplicate and distribute a copy of the map and the following map worksheet to each student. Use the Map Analysis Worksheet with your students to analyze the map.

Mapping Activity

2. Divide the class into small groups of two or three students each. Ask each group to make a map of an event that occurred in their school or neighborhood during the past year. The map should be accurate spatially and include standard aids to the map reader such as scale, orientation, and key. It should be based on research and interviews-the memory of the group members requires additional verification-and these should be listed in a bibliography attached to the map. Subjects for this activity might include:

• The first series of downs at the first home football game of the past season

• The order and progress of the homecoming parade

• The arrangement of tables and entertainment at a prom including location of refreshments, chaperones, and the movements of the prom queen and her escort

• The arrangement of graduation ceremonies, a flow pattern of the procession, and an indication of speakers, faculty, valedictorian, and guests.


Click the image to view a larger version


Click the image to see a printable, full-page version of this teaching activity

Further Research

3. You may wish to instruct students to examine other maps and read additional primary and secondary accounts of the Battle of Little Bighorn, then write a paragraph with their own evaluations of the accuracy of the Lydecker map. Secondary resources might include:

Capps, Benjamin. The Indians. New York: TimeLife Books, 1973.

Graham, Col. WA. The Custer Myth. 1953. Reprint. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1986.

Jordan, Robert P "Ghosts on the Little Bighorn." National Geographic 170, no. 6 (December 1986): 787.

Stewart, Edgar I. Custer’s Luck. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1955.

U.S. Department of the Interior. National Park Service. Custer Battlefield. Washington, DC, 1987.

Utley, Robert. Cavalier in Buckskin. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988.

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Chicago: "Mapping a Mystery: The Battle of Little Bighorn," Teaching With Documents, Volume 2 in Teaching With Documents: Using Primary Sources from the National Archives, ed. Wynell B. Schamel (Washington, D.C.: National Archives Trust Fund Board for the National Archives and Records Administration and National Council for the Social Studies, 1998), 67–71. Original Sources, accessed March 29, 2024, http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=E6ZR5QU6BM4DEBY.

MLA: . "Mapping a Mystery: The Battle of Little Bighorn." Teaching With Documents, Volume 2, in Teaching With Documents: Using Primary Sources from the National Archives, edited by Wynell B. Schamel, Vol. 2, Washington, D.C., National Archives Trust Fund Board for the National Archives and Records Administration and National Council for the Social Studies, 1998, pp. 67–71. Original Sources. 29 Mar. 2024. http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=E6ZR5QU6BM4DEBY.

Harvard: , 'Mapping a Mystery: The Battle of Little Bighorn' in Teaching With Documents, Volume 2. cited in 1998, Teaching With Documents: Using Primary Sources from the National Archives, ed. , National Archives Trust Fund Board for the National Archives and Records Administration and National Council for the Social Studies, Washington, D.C., pp.67–71. Original Sources, retrieved 29 March 2024, from http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=E6ZR5QU6BM4DEBY.