James Welch writes from the perspective of the American Indians, rather than that of the whites, in order to tell in a new way one of the most reproduced - in television, film and literature - event in all of American history: Custer's Last Stand, also known as the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
"Killing Custer" begins in 1870, six years before this battle, with the Marias Massacre, an event that shaped American Indian history drastically, yet is almost completely forgotten. The book continues until 1890 with the death of the last great chief, Sitting Bull, and the Massacre at Wounded Knee.
Welch, author of "Fools Crow" and "The Indian Lawyer," wrote this book along with Paul Stekler, a UT radio-television-film professor, with whom he also collaborated on the "Killing Custer" documentary for PBS. The book goes into detail about the legwork that went into the film, from all the actual research to finding tribe elders whose parents or grandparents had been present at one of the battles or massacres. The filmmakers wanted these oral histories to be told on film, but it was sometimes difficult to convince the elders that they would be paid for their time and information, since they had notoriously been wronged by whites in the past.
The idealized textbook version of the prominent figures of this time are thrown out. Welch instead presents George Armstrong Custer as a man who had the highest number of casualties of all the Union division commanders during the Civil War. He wore crazy costumes, including "a sombrero, tight-fitting black hussar jacket, [and] Mexican spurs." and relied on "Custer's Luck." Custer was possibly involved in several shady business deals and did not do reconnaissance before attacking in the famed battle.
"Killing Custer" flows seamlessly from 1870 to 1492 to 1973, tying the distant past to the not-so-distant one and illuminating the struggle of American Indians since they began to lose their culture, lands and lives to invading whites. The 1973 murder of a Lakota man by a white service station attendant, who was charged with second-degree manslaughter and let out on bail, brought the American Indian Movement to take action. They took over Wounded Knee and proclaimed an Independent Oglala Nation. This was met by a government-led siege that lasted 71 days and claimed casualties on both sides, illustrating that U.S. government policies toward American Indians did not change much from 1868 to 1973.
Welch himself, who died in 2003, was an American Indian, part of the Blackfeet and Gros Ventre tribes, and "Killing Custer" enables him to tell the story from an empathetic rather than sympathetic standpoint. His research is spot-on, including interviews from American Indians and white soldiers, pictures, drawings and even Custer's last letter. Details of American Indian rituals, vision quests and beliefs permeate the text, giving the reader a greater understanding of why the Plains Indians of the time acted the way they did. Mutilating the corpses of enemies was to ensure that those who meant them harm in this life would not be able to cause them any harm in the next life, where they would all inevitably go. By seeking to eliminate the prejudices and change the perceptions of this time period, "Killing Custer" succeeds.
"Killing Custer" was released in 1994 but will be available in a new paperback edition Feb. 19 for $14.95.
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