The Rash Colonel

CUSTER'S GOLD by Donald Jackson. 152 pages. Yale. $5.

THE BATTLE OF THE LITTLE BIGHORN by Mari Sandoz. 191 pages. Lippincott. $4.50.

Lithe and handsome in fringed white buckskin, his golden mane glinting in the sunlight, dashing George Armstrong Custer stood before a tattered guidon of the Seventh Cavalry, smiting bloodthirsty Sioux hip and thigh. Finally, standing tall, his dead troops strewn about him, Custer faced a climactic Indian charge singlehanded and became the last man to die at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

That was the way Errol Flynn did it in They Died With Their Boots On in 1941. How George Custer himself did it 90 years ago last month--on June 25, 1876--is still a good question, since there were no survivors of Custer's command. Why the vain lieutenant colonel, who at 24 had been a major general in the Civil War, got into such a predicament in the first place, and especially why the Sioux pounced on him with such ferocity, has always been debated. Now these two small but impressively researched books offer a concise account of what actually happened.

Sold & Glory. In Custer's Gold, Author Jackson, editor of the University of Illinois Press, re-examines the legend that Custer's death was directly linked to a U.S. cavalry expedition he led into the Black Hills of South Dakota two years before. Custer illegally invaded the Hills in the summer of 1874, the story goes, looking for gold. He discovered it and set off a gold rush that drove the hostile Teton Sioux out of their Dakota country and eventually forced them to make a last desperate stand on the banks of the Little Bighorn in Montana.

This story, Jackson says, is almost--but not quite--true. After a meticulous study of military records and diaries, he convincingly argues that Custer's expedition into the Dakotas was simply a military reconnaissance and fully permissible under the treaty with the Sioux. Custer did find gold but, being a notorious glory hunter, he grossly exaggerated the amount. On his return, he urged that the Indians be compelled to give up the Black Hills for the good of white civilization. The Government tried to pressure the Indians into selling out, but failed; then it opened a military campaign against them. Jackson shows that the Indians who jumped Custer in 1876 had not yet lost the Black Hills. They fought simply because Custer with typical recklessness was riding hell-bent to attack them.

Military Stupidity. Novelist-Historian Mari Sandoz (Old Jules, Cheyenne Autumn), who died in March at 68, confirms this in her admirable account of the battle. Like most historians, she agrees that Custer was guilty of military stupidity when he divided his attacking force of about 650 men into three groups and placed them too far apart to support each other effectively. The Sioux, recovering from their surprise, made short work of Custer and the 212 cavalrymen whom he led. His last stand probably lasted no longer than 20 minutes. Afterward, the bodies of the soldiers were stripped and mutilated and left to rot in the sun. Most of the bloated, discolored corpses found on Custer Hill were never identified. Custer was a fortunate exception. His stripped body was found sitting behind a natural breastwork at the top of the hill, indicating that he may have been among the last to be killed. The Sioux had long since decamped.

Author Sandoz did a first-rate job in researching and recounting Custer's last battle. One fanciful notion about Custer's motivations, however, seems to be just too speculative to be taken seriously. Miss Sandoz reasoned that the 36-year-old soldier was burning to be President of the U.S. He began his march toward the Little Bighorn on June 22, five days before the Democratic National Convention was to meet in St. Louis. Custer, according to the author, hoped to achieve a spectacular victory over the Sioux, after which the convention would be stampeded into rewarding him with the presidential nomination. Just how Custer expected to achieve this in so short a time is left unexplained. Actually, his death was not reported to the nation until July 5. By that time, the Democrats had nominated Samuel J. Tilden, who met a different sort of disaster. Although he won a majority of the popular vote, 4,284,020 to 4,036,572, he lost the presidency to Rutherford B. Hayes by one electoral vote, 184 to 185.

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