Custer Wasn’t Who We Thought He Was
My Dad loved history, especially Civil War history. As a child, I grew up on stories of what led to the outbreak of the War (and it wasn’t just slavery) and about a brave young cavalry commander who came out of the Civil War to lead US troops in “protecting settlers” in the Dakota territory.
But that’s not who George Custer was. He was a legalized serial killer.
I understand this isn’t a popular opinion, and that’s ok. But it’s my opinion, formed after having lived in the Black Hills of South Dakota and working on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
Nothing can prepare you for the beauty that is the Black Hills National Forest on the Western side of South Dakota. We lived in Deadwood (yes, that Deadwood). It truly was the most beautiful place I’ve ever lived.
It’s hard to believe, then, that it was also the site of fierce fighting between several tribes of Native Americans and the US Army, ending in one of the great American tragedies — the consigning of Native Americans to reservations and stripping them of their rights.
It didn’t start at the end of the Civil War, but that’s when things heated up. Discharged Southern soldiers headed west to get away from the life they had known. They eventually ended up in Lakota land, along with land owned by other Native American tribes.
