Plot
The film begins at a Board of Inquiry over the Battle of the Little Big Horn; specifically examining the conduct of Major Marcus Reno. Captain Bill Benton (perhaps inspired by Frederick Benteen) is called to the stand, and rather than merely answer questions from the board states that he will tell his version of the "true story" that the audience sees through flashback.
Benton relates his first arrival in the Wild West in 1875, where his detachment is escorting the wife of the local Indian Agent Mr. Turner. The Indians attack the party and abduct Mrs Turner away from Benton's command. Benton's army scout "Dakota" advises against tracking the Indians until the next day due to their laying of false trails that lead into ambushes. Dakota and Benton come across a wounded Indian whom Dakota shoots, saying sarcastically he would now not have to starve on an Indian Reservation.
Received by his commanding officer Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer, Benton is gently told his first encounter with the enemy has been disastrous but Custer confirms that he did the right thing by following Dakota's advice not to pursue the hostile party. Custer invites Benton to a dress dance held at the fort that evening and dismisses the distraught Mr. Turner by telling him that he will visit the hostile Indians who abducted his wife in the morning.
Benton's fiancee Caroline Reno is at the fort, but their relationship has grown cold due to Caroline's father Major Marcus Reno holding a grudge against Benton. At the dress ball, where Custer wears a major general's tunic with Colonel's insignia, Major Reno drunkenly comes in and demands everyone address and salute him as "Major General Reno" due to his former rank in the Confederate States Army. Custer replies with good nature, attempting to reconcile the former warriors of the North and South, but Reno is in a bad mood. He physically attacks Benton but only hits the floor, prompting Benton to inform Caroline that her "family tree has fallen".
The next day Benton and Custer go to meet Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull to negotiate Mrs. Turner's release. The Indians propose that Custer release all his Indian prisoners in exchange for Mrs. Turner. Custer decides on a compromise: he will hang the Indian leaders if Mrs. Turner is not released. The Indians reluctantly agree and Mrs. Turner is released.
Custer gains Benton's respect by Custer's disgust at the incompetent Indian agents who he feels have been put in place by a corrupt Federal administration that Custer and his wife Libby will confront in Washington. Before their departure the captive Indians unsuccessfully attempt to escape and are slaughtered.
In Washington, D.C., Colonel Custer destroys his military career by formally accusing many Federal politicians with corruption, including Orvil Grant, the brother of President Ulysses S. Grant. When the President refuses to meet with Custer, he begins to realize his military career may have come to a premature end.
Meanwhile, back in the West the Army's commander General Alfred Howe Terry visits the fort and summons Major Reno and Captain Benton to inform them that Custer is going to be court martialed. Major Reno is deflated when the General offers Captain Benton command of the 7th Cavalry Regiment and a promotion to brevet colonel. Captain Benton refuses and considers resigning his commission out of loyalty to his commander. When Terry offers the same command to Reno, Caroline browbeats her father, which leads him to also reject the offer; he subsequently gives his blessing to Caroline's and Benton's marriage and gives up his drinking.
In Washington, Senator James G. Blaine visits the humbled Custer and tempts him with an offer to be his party's candidate for President of the United States. The Senator informs Custer this can be accomplished through obtaining a reputation through his military exploits in a war with the Indians. The Senator assigns a newspaper journalist (likely based on Mark Kellogg) to Custer, who is sent back without court martial to his regiment.
Benton notices that Custer's empathetic feelings for the Native Americans have vanished and he is pushing his regiment into a war where he can claim glory. Custer motivates his command by personally shooting deserters in the back—including his scout Dakota, who had defected to the Indian side. This prompts Benton to strike his commanding officer, resulting in his arrest. He is later freed by Indians who know of his attempts to help their people at the aborted escape attempt. His Indian friends are later ambushed by a cavalry patrol while Benton attempts to warn Colonel Custer of a massed Indian army made up of forces from several tribes.
Custer fails to take sufficient heed of the warnings, and divides his forces, weakening them. Thereafter, events unfold similarly to the historical Battle of the Little Big Horn.
The Battle of the Little Bighorn, known to the Lakota and other Plains Indians as the Battle of the Greasy Grass, and also commonly referred to as Custer's Last Stand, was an armed engagement between combined forces of the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes and the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army. The battle, which resulted in the defeat of U.S. forces, was the most significant action of the Great Sioux War of 1876. It took place on June 25–26, 1876, along the Little Bighorn River in the Crow Indian Reservation in southeastern Montana Territory.
George Armstrong Custer was a United States Army officer and cavalry commander in the American Civil War and the American Indian Wars.
Sitting Bull was a Hunkpapa Lakota leader who led his people during years of resistance against United States government policies. He was killed by Indian agency police on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation during an attempt to arrest him, at a time when authorities feared that he would join the Ghost Dance movement.
The Sioux Wars were a series of conflicts between the United States and various subgroups of the Sioux people which occurred in the later half of the 19th century. The earliest conflict came in 1854 when a fight broke out at Fort Laramie in Wyoming, when Sioux warriors killed 31 American soldiers in the Grattan Massacre, and the final came in 1890 during the Ghost Dance War.
Marcus Albert Reno was a United States career military officer who served in the American Civil War where he was a combatant in a number of major battles, and later under George Armstrong Custer in the Great Sioux War against the Lakota (Sioux) and Northern Cheyenne. Reno is most noted for his prominent role in the Battle of the Little Bighorn, where he did not support Custer's position on the battlefield, remaining instead in a defensive formation with his troops about 4 miles (6.4 km) away. This event has since been a longstanding subject of controversy regarding his command decisions in the course of one of the most infamous defeats in the history of the United States military.
Gall, Lakota Phizí, was an important military leader of the Hunkpapa Lakota in the Battle of the Little Bighorn. He spent four years in exile in Canada with Sitting Bull's people, after the wars ended and surrendered in 1881 to live on the Standing Rock Reservation. He would eventually advocate for the assimilation of his people to reservation life and served as a tribal judge in his later years.
Bloody Knife was an American Indian who served as a scout and guide for the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment. He was the favorite scout of Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and has been called "perhaps the most famous Native American scout to serve the U.S. Army."
Flashman and the Redskins is a 1982 novel by George MacDonald Fraser. It is the seventh of the Flashman novels.
Charles Albert Varnum was a career United States Army officer. He was most noted as the commander of the scouts for George Armstrong Custer in the Little Bighorn Campaign during the Great Sioux War, as well as receiving the Medal of Honor for his actions in a conflict at Drexel Mission following the Wounded Knee Massacre.
Isaiah Dorman was an interpreter for the United States Army during the Indian Wars. He perished at the Battle of Little Bighorn, the only black man killed in the fight.
Sitting Bull is a 1954 American-Mexican Eastmancolor Western film directed by Sidney Salkow and René Cardona that was filmed in Mexico in CinemaScope. In a greatly fictionalised form, it depicts the war between Sitting Bull and the American forces, leading up to the Battle of the Little Bighorn and Custer's Last Stand. It was the first independent production to be filmed in the CinemaScope process. Featuring sympathetic portrayals of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, The New York Times called it a "Crazy Horse opera".
George Armstrong Custer (1839–1876) was a United States Army cavalry commander in the American Civil War and the Indian Wars. He was defeated and killed by the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. More than 30 movies and countless television shows have featured him as a character. He was portrayed by future U.S. president, Ronald Reagan in Santa Fe Trail (1940), as well as by Errol Flynn in They Died With Their Boots On (1941).
James McLaughlin was a Canadian-American United States Indian agent and inspector, best known for having ordered the arrest of Sitting Bull in December 1890, which resulted in the chief's death and contributed to the Wounded Knee Massacre. Before this event, he was known for his positive relations with several tribes. His memoir, published in 1910, was entitled, My Friend the Indian.
The Great Sioux War of 1876, also known as the Black Hills War, was a series of battles and negotiations that occurred in 1876 and 1877 in an alliance of Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne against the United States. The cause of the war was the desire of the US government to obtain ownership of the Black Hills. Gold had been discovered in the Black Hills, settlers began to encroach onto Native American lands, and the Sioux and the Cheyenne refused to cede ownership. Traditionally, American military and historians place the Lakota at the center of the story, especially because of their numbers, but some Native Americans believe the Cheyenne were the primary target of the American campaign.
The Battle of Honsinger Bluff was a conflict between the United States Army and the Sioux people on August 4, 1873 along the Yellowstone River near present-day Miles City, Montana. This was U.S. territory acquired from the Crows in 1868. The main combatants were units of the U.S. 7th Cavalry under Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer, and Native Americans from the village of the Hunkpapa medicine man, Sitting Bull, many of whom would clash with Custer again approximately three years later at the Battle of the Little Big Horn in the Crow Indian Reservation.
Son of the Morning Star is a 1991 American two-part Western television miniseries released by Chrysalis based on Evan S. Connell's best-selling 1984 book of the same name. It starred Gary Cole and featured Dean Stockwell, Rosanna Arquette, Rodney A. Grant, Nick Ramus, Buffy Sainte-Marie, and Floyd Red Crow Westerman.
Grant Prince Marsh was a riverboat pilot and captain who was noted for his many piloting exploits on the upper Missouri River and the Yellowstone River in Montana from 1862 until 1882. He started to work as a cabin boy in 1856, eventually becoming a captain, riverboat pilot and riverboat owner, in a career lasting over sixty years. During that time, he achieved an outstanding record and reputation as a river steamboat pilot and captain, serving on more than 22 vessels. His piloting exploits became legendary and modern historians refer to him as "Possibly the greatest steamboat man ever", "possibly the greatest [steamboat pilot] ever", "possibly the finest riverboat pilot who ever lived", "the greatest steamboat master and pilot on both the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers"
The Yellowstone Expedition of 1873 was an expedition of the United States Army in the summer of 1873 in Dakota Territory and Montana Territory, to survey a route for the Northern Pacific Railroad along the Yellowstone River. The expedition was under the overall command of Colonel David S. Stanley, with Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer second in command.
The Battle of Pease Bottom, also called the Battle of the Bighorn River was a conflict between the United States Army and the Sioux on August 11, 1873 along the Yellowstone River opposite the mouth of the Bighorn River near present-day Custer, Montana. The main combatants were units of the 7th U.S. Cavalry under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, and Native Americans from the village of the Hunkpapa medicine man, Sitting Bull, many of whom would clash with Custer again approximately three years later at the Battle of the Little Big Horn in the Crow Indian Reservation.
Winfield Scott Edgerly was an officer in the United States Army in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Born in New Hampshire in 1846, he attended the United States Military Academy, graduating in 1870. He served on the frontier through the Indian Wars, including the Battle of the Little Big Horn and the Wounded Knee Massacre; in the Spanish–American War; in the Philippine Insurrection; and (briefly) in World War I. He served in several command positions. He was an observer of the Kaiser Maneuvers in Germany in 1907. He was retired as a brigadier general for disability in 1909, was recalled briefly in 1917 and died in 1927. Edgerly is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
