Killing Custer Book Review Essay

From duration to time, a volume of true historic significance is written on a outlet that has been written on almost endlessly. The Battle of the pocket-sized Big Horn is one of the most written about, speculated on, celebrated, talked about, and glorified events in American History. Popularly known as Custers Last bear, it has been the subject of many films, documentaries, novels, and was even re-enacted at every Wild air jacket Show put on by Buffalo Bill Cody. In the work Killing Custer The Battle of Little cimarron and the Fate of the Plains Indians, Welch and Stekler do an excellent speculate in the subject matter at hand, and trace to the correct conclusion that this battle, which was a huge military disaster for the coupled States, at a time resulted in an even greater disaster for the Indian victors who won it that is, total defeat and total subjugation. The first chapter sets up the massacre of the Blackfeet on the Marias River,James Welch and Paul Stekler have do ne a magnificent job in researching and putting forth, a new book on this subject that has been so written about. Citing much of the new discoveries, that is archeology, and the Indian accounts, Welch was originally contacted by Stekler to do a script for a documentary for PBSs American Experience Last Stand at Little Bighorn. They worked on it together, and that particular one hour documentary was excellent. Feeling that he hadnt exhausted the subject, Welch delved more deeply into it, and wished to write a book on the subject. Killing Custer was the result, and it is quite excellent indeed. It is a stunning and thrill read from cover to cover.The information is not wholly new, but Welch and Stekler agree all of the newest discoveries into one stirring volume, and they stress the narratives, which in the past were by and large discarded and disclaimed, of the Indian accounts of the battle, after all, they were the ones who survived it The authors rightly put the battle into its h istorical perspective, pointing out that this huge defeat of the United States Military led directly to the total subjugation and defeat of the Plains Indians, putting them on reservations once and for all, with the nett defeat and insult at Wounded Knee, the massacre that was so supernumerary and so tragic.