rrative, as well as the expertise (if not the fawning loyalty) of Crow and Ree scouts.
The principal fact about Custer's foray from the Yellowstone River toward the Little Bighorn is that the expedition, while critical to U.S. government policy of making war on the Plains Indians, was not an offensive operation but a scouting party. Thus one may be forgiven in retrospect for considering that the slaughter of Custer's men, shocking as it may have been, should not have particularly been a surprise. Sandoz explains that Custer, accompanied by much publicity, fanfare, and flamboyance of personal style, embarked on a scouting party at the order of General Alfred H. Terry, who was later to follow with a battleready force. Terry's orders were to prohibit the press from going along on the scout; Custer brought along a journalist. Terry's orders were for Custer to scout and report; Custer appears to have left with the 7th Cavalry with a view toward finding and defeating an Indian force sufficiently surrounded by publicity to result in Custer's being drafted as a presidential candidate. Standard military strategy in the field--aside from following orders to scout and report--would have required Custer to attack the mass of Indians encamped near the Little Bighorn with a fully staffed, fully armed force; as Sandoz spins the tale, Custer appears to have deliberately split his command forces in a way calculated to have the effect of providing him with the label of hero and so make the presidential candidacy, scheduled to be decided within a week of the mission, a fait accompli.
A pattern of disobeying orders, extraordinarily presumptuous misreading of political circumstances and power, programmatic disregard of sensible military intelligence or strategy, and an arrogant disregard of ordinary tactics, informed by vaulting ambition and little enough evidence that he had any real ability for governance or command--all of these were attribu...