New York: St. Martin's Press, 2015 ISBN 9781250051028
Hagiography. The inherent danger in seeing no wrong in a person, especially if you are claiming to write history, is that you as historian may be hoist on your own petard. Thom Hatch, with his worship of Custer, has blown himself so high that he may never hit the ground. While the dust jacket tells us that Hatch will "set the record straight" all he actually does is make the reader question his interpretation of events.
And there is plenty of interpretation on offer to everyone, not only about the Battle of the Little Bighorn itself, but in many other aspects of Custer's career. Hatch, in every interpretation he makes, sides with Custer, and at times what he doesn't write in his book tells the reader as much as what he does.
Despite what the title suggests, this book not only delves into the last days of Custer's life, but also gives us over a hundred pages of preliminaries, covering most of the life and career of Custer. Hatch passes over Custer's less-than-stellar time at West Point, excusing his record number of demerits and low pass mark as the result of "youthful exuberance". Whilst not going into great detail, Hatch writes of Custer's Civil War as a triumphal progress as he does of his subsequent efforts against the Indians. By this part of the book it's clear to the reader that we are reading a one-sided account of events.
Hatch then goes on to describe the prelude to, and the Battle of, Little Bighorn relatively accurately. It is when he comes to his analysis that we again see his bias emerge. He is determined not to allow any opprobrium stick to his glorious General.
Hatch puts the entire blame for the failure of the Cavalry at Little Bighorn onto Major Reno's failed charge on the Indian village. While on one page he is equating Reno's failure to carry out Custer's order to the letter as a capital offence, in the next he incidentally shows us several reasons why Reno acted as he did: he thought Custer was coming along behind him, and Reno had no experience fighting Indians. One could, contra Hatch, just as easily argue that, given Custer knew Reno had not fought against Indians before, that he should have been much more explicit with his order, and in explaining what his tactics were to be. If - as Hatch contends - Reno's charge was the key to victory or defeat, it would have been well for Custer to do so. Reno was in fact second-in-command on the day and it would have been reasonable and even expected that Custer would discuss his overall tactics with him.
It is clear that Reno suffered from Battle Shock after the first contact at Little Bighorn, and his behaviour was far from what should have been expected from an officer, but it is a long bow to draw to place the entire failure of the Cavalry down to his ineffectual charge.
The irony of this excoriation of Reno for not following orders to the letter, after praising Custer for doing the same during the Civil War, is not lost on the reader, although it seems to be so to the author. Even with Hatch's idolisation of Custer throughout this book, it is clear in these pages that while Custer was no doubt personally brave, he was also reckless and impulsive. To attack what was as far as is known the largest Indian encampment ever seen on the Plains without even a reconnoitre of the lay of the land, or knowing if the River was passable, was reckless in the extreme, even if time was of the essence to catch the Indians by surprise.
Hatch describes how Custer almost had a "set play" for his battles against Indians - attack the front of the encampment with some troops, outflank and catch the Indians as they regroup or flee with the rest. This worked previously, but it seems that this time, under the aggressive leadership of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and Gall the Indians had decided to stand and fight. They outnumbered the Cavalry by five-to-one.
There is no knowing what the outcome of the Battle would have been if Reno had continued his charge; Hatch assumes that Custer would have come in on the flank to an easy victory. An equally realistic scenario is Reno and his men being cut down in the maze of tepees while Custer was held off at the river before the weight of numbers forced him to retreat, or to suffer defeat.
The reality of course is that no one thing caused the disaster. If General Crook had notified Terry and Custer of his battle on the Rosebud, if Custer had better knowledge of the size and location of the village, yes, if Reno had charged into the village, if Benteen had kept moving toward Custer with the pack train, if Custer had retreated toward Benteen and Reno when he was still able, if Custer had got his men together in a defensive position early enough, if, if, if. The enormous amount of Little Bighorn literature spawns from these ifs, and a lot of it is better thought-out and argued than Hatch's book.
Hatch also, to my mind, borders on the offensive when he brands the Indians as enemies of the United States, and of progress, writing "The United States had every right to expand its boundaries to include the Great Plains West. Oddly enough, many moder scholars believe there was something honorable about the Sioux fighting to defend their right to roam free. The West was becoming too small and populated to allow a group advocating violence to close off thousands of square miles.....Peace entreaties had been made and were dismissed." The disingenuousness of this paragraph, the last sentence in particular, is astounding. Peace entreaties had indeed been made, and regularly broken, by the United States Government. The Black Hills had been given in perpetuity to the Indian tribes and then taken away, as had many other locations across the West. What resort did the Indians have but to try to keep what was theirs by force, as negotiation and treaty had failed time and again. And surely there is honour in fighting for your freedom: I have no doubt Hatch, a Vietnam Veteran, would claim that himself. To state that there is honour in fighting for your way of life is not to denigrate the bravery of Custer, or of the Seventh Cavalry, who were on the right and wrong side of history at the same time, as were the Indians. By pushing his feelings too far, Hatch undermines himself, the petard explodes again.
There are better places to start with the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Custer, and indeed the American West, than with this book.
Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell
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