Who's Buried in Custer's Grave?

1998

1998

For more than twenty years, the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument has generated more controversy than any other unit administered by the National Park Service. Amateur historians belonging to the Little Big Horn Associates-angry because their overpriced, vanity press books were not sold in the park bookstore-had the staff investigated for alleged anti-Custer bias. At the same time, increasingly belligerent Native American activists protested that the site of their ancestors\u27 greatest victory was being run as a shrine to the frontier military. In 1988, Russell Means and other militants from the American Indian Movement stormed onto the battlefield and desecrated the granite monument marking the mass grave of the troopers who fell with George Armstrong Custer on 25 June 1876. Fearful of provoking violence, park officials failed either to stop or prosecute Means. Indeed, the National Park Service eventually moved to mollify its Indian critics by instituting interpretive p...

1998

Few western figures have received the attention George Armstrong Custer has. Since his death in 1876, his name and fame have alternately been attacked and defended by writers. Using a variety of primary and secondary sources, Louis Kraft\u27s recent monograph falls into the latter camp. As Volume Five of the Custer Trail Series, Custer and the Cheyennes incorporates alternating points-of-view of both whites and natives, using extensive quotes to let the actors speak for themselves. In this manner, Kraft presents a chronological narrative of Custer\u27s frontier beginnings on the Southern Plains of Kansas, Texas, and Indian Territory (Oklahoma) against the Tsistsistas (Southern Cheyennes). In addition to containing informative footnotes and bibliography, the book is handsomely designed with photos, art work, and maps. The price, however, may deter all but the most ardent Custerophiles. Kraft centers his discussion on General Philip Sheridan\u27s use of total warfare against Indian na...

Plains Anthropologist, 1989

1J1e analysis of a small Central Plains Tradition ossuary, recovered during salvage excavations near the town of Sargent, Nebraska, highlights both the potentials and current limitations in the understanding of small mortuary occurrences. The Sargent Site Ossuary, which contained the remains of at least twelve adults, yielded evidence both for the mutilation of some, if not all, of the individuals represented in the ossuary and for the differential mortuary processing of cranial, as opposed to post-cranial, bones in the multi-stage mortuary program. 17w ossuary appears to represents a collection of individuals killed away from the immediate locality, whose remains were later recovered for burial.

1952

Samuel A. Custer, born October 31, 1818, in Washington County, Pennsylvania, had, for some forty years prior to the journey which he described in his letter published below, farmed in Fulton County and then in Cass County, Indiana, and operated a brickyard near Logansport. In 1880 he sold the brickyard and used his new-found leisure by setting out alone to see the western United States and to visit his brotherin-law, Colonel David P. Jenkins of Spokane Falls, Washington Territory. To make a western trip was not unusual in the 1880's. Many a farmer and small businessman scouted the country for good land or business opportunities, but the writing of a detailed report was unusual, and, as is customary with all such annals of ordinary folk, its preservation was mere chance. Men and women who aspire to or attain distinction often endeavor to preserve diaries, photographs, and other personal documents. On the other hand, farmers, mechanics, and small burghers are often enveloped in oblivion because their records do not immediately seem worth saving. The letter of Samuel A. Custer, which is in the Crew Papers, an unpublished collection of family papers, now in the possession of Arthur R. Hogue, gives an account of a middle-aged, well-to-do, but otherwise undistinguished small businessman who traveled through the West in 1880. He noted the means of transportation used, his impression of the towns he visited, the amusements he engaged in, and such things as had more than ordinary appeal. Undoubtedly Mrs. Elizabeth H. Crew, the "Sisternlaw" addressed in Custer's let'ter, should have the credit for its preservation, along with some two hundred other interesting items. Elizabeth Crew, the youngest daughter of Israel and Elizabeth

1998

2013

The Annals of Iowa, 2013

2012

From 1990 to 1992, I designed and directed the excavation of the historic Russian cemetery at Fort Ross in northern California (CA-SON-1876H). The questions the research posed included: 1) Where was the cemetery, and what was its extent? 2) Who was buried in the cemetery? 3) What does the structure and nature of the cemetery tell us about the inhabitants of the Colony and their relationships to this new location? This paper reviews the data collected, particularly information gained from the cemetery excavations. Unfortunately, bone preservation was extremely poor, and determination of individual biological details was almost impossible. We did find the cemetery, determined who was buried there in a general sense and in terms of grave details, and concluded that the Russians were conservative in their mortuary practices and tended toward a focus on the community rather than individual relationships.