The Last Days of George Armstrong Custer by Thom Hatch

be killed if he initiated an attack.
    Much to the outrage of the Kansans—many of whom branded Custer a coward and a traitor—he decided that they would attempt to parley for the release of Mrs. Morgan and Miss White before taking any military action. It was all Custer could do to restrain the irate volunteers from taking matters into their own hands.
    Opportunity arose, however, when Chief Little Robe and a delegation visited the cavalry bivouac under a flag of truce. Custer ignored the flag, seized three minor chiefs as hostages, and threatened to hang them if the white women were not released.
    Three days later, when intense negotiation failed to break the stalemate and a battle loomed, Custer looped three ropes over the limb of a large willow tree and paraded his hostages beneath. At that point, the Cheyenne relented and released their white captives.
    Custer also demanded that the Indians report to Camp Supply, but the chiefs argued that their ponies were too weak and could not travel. Instead, the Indians would report when their ponies grew stronger. Custer reluctantly agreed and offered as an incentive for compliance the release of the women and children captured at Washita.
    The incident serves as an example of Custer’s growing maturity as an Indian fighter, that bloodshed was not always the correct course when dealing with the enemy.
    The participation of the Seventh Cavalry in the Winter Campaign quietly concluded on March 28, 1869. At that point in time, however, not all Cheyenne had submitted to the reservation.
    On July 11, the Fifth Cavalry under Major Eugene Carr—about 250 troopers and 50 Pawnee scouts—swept down on an unsuspecting encampment at Summit Springs. The surprised Cheyenne dashed from their lodges, many running to reach the cover of nearby ravines, while others were cut down in the initial charge. When the smoke of burning lodges had lifted, fifty-two Indians had been killed, among them Chief Tall Bull.
    Seventeen women and children were taken prisoner, including Tall Bull’s wife. A pony and mule herd estimated at four hundred was confiscated, and then the entire village—weapons, food, and clothing—had been destroyed. The village also revealed the presence of two white women who had been captured on May 30 on the Saline River—one of them was killed when Carr charged; the other was severely wounded but survived.
    The Battle of Summit Springs broke the will of the Indians and finally accomplished General Sheridan’s mission of clearing all hostiles from between the Platte and Arkansas rivers.
    But the conflict that had gained the most publicity and criticism was the Battle of the Washita. This conflict was considered a great victory in the estimation of the military establishment. Eastern humanitarians, however, called the action a massacre.
    Newspaper editorials and a deluge of letters criticized the army and condemned George Armstrong Custer—unfairly comparing him to militia colonel John M. Chivington, who had attacked a Cheyenne village on November 27, 1864.
    The Sand Creek affair had been a deliberate and indiscriminate slaughter. The undisciplined militia, with the blessing of their commander, killed, mutilated, and scalped at least 150 Cheyenne—two-thirds of them women and children—who had been promised safety at that location. The triumphant militiamen were hailed as heroes in Denver when they later displayed Indian scalps and other trophies during a parade and to an appreciative audience between acts at a theatrical performance.
    Sand Creek had been motivated by the political ambitions of John Chivington and Colorado governor John Evans and could not remotely be called a battle or anything but a massacre based on three separate government investigations, each of which condemned this rogue attack. There was simply no comparison between Sand Creek and Washita.
    Interested parties decried in particular the death of Black Kettle, whom