[June 25th marks the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Little Big Horn, one of countless fraught moments across the long history of the so-called “Indian Wars.” There are few more frustrating, morepro tragic, nor more tellingly American histories, so this week I’ve AmericanStudied a handful of those conflicts, leading up to this weekend post on Little Big Horn.]
On five pop culture representations through which we can trace how images of both Custer and the battle have evolved over these 150 years (which I’d complement with this prior post on Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and its “First Scalp for Custer” performance).
- Cassilly Adams and Otto Becker, Custer’s Last Fight (1884, 1896): Adams’s 1884 painting was already quite propagandistic in its depiction of a larger-than-life, heroic Custer at the center (in every sense) of its vision of the battle; but then in 1896 the Anheuser-Busch Brewing Association commissioned Becker to create a lithograph version, one that prominently features the company’s name and that hung above the bar in countless saloons for many decades to come. I’m not sure I can think of a better example of the intersection of white supremacist mythmaking and corporate marketing than that.
- Edgar Paxson, Custer’s Last Stand (1899): As that hyperlinked article traces, Paxson had been interested in the battle since arrived in Montana in 1877 and had been working on his epic painting for many years by the time the Becker lithograph dropped, so I don’t think we can say that Paxson’s work was in any direct way a response to that prior painting. But Custer’s Last Stand is nonetheless a striking complement and yet challenge to Custer’s Last Fight—the General is still very much at the center and the yellow flag above his head echoes the “Yellow Hair” nickname that sums up his mythos; but because of the time and research that Paxson put into representing so many individuals on both sides of the battle, I would argue that the viewer’s eye does not linger with Custer long, and that this latter painting offers a far more multilayered and realistic portrayal as a result.
- They Died with Their Boots On (1941): Unfortunately, the most famous film depiction of Custer and the battle falls far more on the propagandistic than the realistic end of the spectrum. The casting choices alone reflect the highly romanticized nature of this ostensibly historical film: legendary swashbuckler and heartthrob Errol Flynn as Custer, for example; mid-century Hollywood’s “vaguely ethnic character” go-to actor Anthony Quinn as Crazy Horse, for another. The Golden Age of Hollywood Westerns was not kind to Native American characters and histories overall, and so it is not surprising that this example follows that trend; but given how many Americans learn about our history from pop culture, it’s still deeply frustrating that this was and likely remains the most famous cinematic representation of Little Big Horn.
- Little Big Man (1964, 1970): But it’s not the only such cinematic representation, and offering a vital challenge to such propagandistic portrayals is the 1970 film adaptation of Thomas Berger’s 1964 revisionist Western novel. Protagonist Jack Crabb, a white man who was adopted by the Cheyenne and experienced much of the 19th and early 20th centuries through this multi- and cross-cultural perspective, ends up being hired by Custer as a scout, realizing that the general is quite insane, and purposefully leading him into the massacre at Little Big Horn. I haven’t studied Custer enough to know if that portrayal is any more accurate than the positive mythmaking, although I have long taught a chapter of his 1872 memoir in my Honors Lit Seminar and find his narrative voice quite extreme and self-aggrandizing to be sure. And when it comes to the overarching histories at least, Little Big Man has far more to tell us than They Died with Their Boots On.
- “Your Love Is My Rest” (1995): John Hiatt’s beautiful ballad about how love can offer a welcome respite from life on the road is obviously not focused on Little Big Horn; but in the final verse, its speaker, traveling West on a train, observes wryly, “We pass through the land/Of Custer’s last stand/And I grin/So this is where/Old Yellow Hair’s/Ghost Dance begins.” I would feel the same if I ever have the chance to visit the site, but I appreciate that the verse doesn’t end there, adding, “I got the blood on my hands/Can’t even live where I stand/I’m just a traveling man/Cursed or blessed.” While it’s easy and not wrong to take amused pleasure in the end that the megalomaniacal Custer met in 1876, it’s even more important to note that we’re all caught up in it, and ain’t nobody clean.
July 4th series starts Monday,
Ben
PS. What do you think?
PPS. On Bluesky, Michael Erard highlights another vital representation of Custer, Evan Connell’s Son of the Morning Star (1984).
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