Sound Bites

Dead men tell no tales.  (Stewart, Custer’s Luck "Preface")

[The Indian] cannot be himself and be civilized; he fades away and dies.  Cultivation such as the white man would give him deprives him of his identity.  (Stewart, My Life On The Plains 21)

I can sympathize, since my theme is that Custer never really gets to expire.  Over and over again he is doomed to repeat his grand finale.  (Dippie "Preface")

Cultural historians of the American West have never lost sight of the influence of the movies on the popular imagination.  (Dippie "Preface")

Almost any mention made of Custer’s Last Stand today is a reference not to history but to myth.  (Dippie 1)

In using the term “myth” here, I mean to elicit its richest connotations.  For Americans, the word implies everything from the hero tales of preliterate cultures through to the ideological fallacies held by advanced societies, and, in its plainest sense, refers to a notion based more on tradition or convenience than on fact; a received idea.  (Dippie 2)

National myths—even more than heroes, who serve as examples—are instructional devices that, indirectly and painlessly, instill in the citizens those values and beliefs that constitute their country’s tradition.  (Dippie 3)

No other area in the United States rivals the trans-Mississippi west as a breeding ground of national myths.  (Dippie 3)

To an Easterner who only dreamed of such country and the men who strode across the surface, the gulf between possibility and impossibility grew even narrower, and suddenly westerners were eight feet tall and made of steel, and the west—America’s last west—was a myth.  (Dippie 4)

Utter defeat has become a source of pride; the vanquished are the real victors. (Dippie 29)

If a myth’s lifespan is directly related to its currency, its relevance, then Custer’s Last Stand is presently assured of a long future.  (Dippie 57)

It is better to look at Western movies for recreation than historical education.  (Dippie 102)

They Died With Their Boots On is unquestionably the most influential version of the Custer story ever filmed.  (Dippie 106)

It is exceedingly the absurdity of the white man’s lot—to dwell eternally in a universe without a center—and surpassing the insanity of existence that Custer achieves a larger than life dimension.  Perhaps this is what it means to be the hero of absurd mythology. (Dippie 116)

In the long run historical debunking offers diminishing returns.  By nature it is uncreative.  It has to borrow life in order to thrive, and its very existence is a tribute of sorts to the durability of the legends and myths it preys upon.  (Dippie 123)

At the same time [movies] reflect popular opinion, they also mould it, and a successful film will often attract a train of imitators, thus amplifying the original influence.  (Dippie 125)

It requires no extensive knowledge to inform me what is my duty to my country, my command… "First be sure you’re right, then go ahead!"  I ask myself, "is it right?" Satisfied that it is so, I let nothing swerve me from my purpose.  (Custer to Annette Humphrey, Oct, 9, 1863, in Barnett 27)

Military law is very severe and those who overstep its boundaries must abide the consequences. (George Armstrong Custer, in Barnett 59)

The Great Spirit did not make us to work, but to live by hunting.  You white men can work if you want to.  We do not interfere with you, and again you say, why do you not become civilized?   We do not want your civilization!  We would live as our fathers did, and their fathers before them.  I am no white man!  (Crazy Horse, in Barnett 100)

I can whip the Indian if I can find them, and I shall leave no effort untried to do this. (George Armstrong Custer, in Barnett 147)

It is utterly useless to attempt the description of a buffalo hunt—the enjoyable part of it must be seen, not read.  (George Armstrong Custer, in Barnett 204)

The entire Custer story has been surrounded in mystery and I recall an elderly Colonel telling me once of a story that used to circulate in army circles that there were men who knew an unpublished truth about the story, but who were pledged never to reveal it. (Ronald Reagan, in Barnett 331)

Of course the march of civilization cannot be impeded.  The white man is destined to drive the aboriginal Indian from his haunts, his hunting-ground, and his lodge.  It seems hard that this should be so, but it is the destiny of nations.  (Chicago Tribune, April 21, 1876)

However vigilant the troops may be, the Indian on his raid is more so—however well mounted the trooper, the Indian has three mounts to his one.  Whatever care may be taken to secure the best arms and ammunition to the troops, the Indians find means through his friends to be fully his equal in that regard and his entire familiarity with the country vastly his superior.  (Gen. Christopher Augur, Annual Report for the Dept. of Texas 1873)

The old-time rule of the Plains: "When fighting Indians, keep the last bullet for yourself."  (Thomas B. Marquis)

Forty years after a battle it is easy for a noncombatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought.  It is another thing personally and under fire to have to direct the fighting while involved in the obscuring smoke of it.  (Herman Melville, Billy Budd)

The Great campaign of 1876 [Little Bighorn] is destined to become and remain the most romantic, epochal, tragic, mystical and definitive of all race conflicts known to the history of the New World, and, as the great American Epic, to take rank with perhaps the Iliad itself.  (Deland)

We add to our own honor by doing honor to Custer.  (Motto of the Michigan Custer Memorial Association)
 
 

Copyright (c) 1999 by Douglas Damian McKerns, Undergraduate at Lehigh University.

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