Showdown at Little Big Horn (Bison Book) [Paperback]

Dee Brown (Author)

Book Description

Series: Bison Book | Publication Date: March 1, 2004

On Sunday afternoon, June 25, 1876, Gen. George Custer and 264 members of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry engaged more than 3,000 warriors of the Lakota Sioux, Arapaho, and Cheyenne nations and were killed in the ensuing battle.

Acclaimed historian Dee Brown traces the events of that day and of the weeks before, through the eyes and ears of seventeen participants from both sides, including Natives, scouts, soldiers, and civilians.

Why did Custer divide his forces? Why did he not take his regiment’s Gatling guns? Why did he expect Sitting Bull to surrender without a fight? How did Sitting Bull’s vision at the sun dance on the Rosebud foretell the occasion and the outcome of the battle? How did war chiefs Crazy Horse and Gall take advantage of Custer’s tactical errors? And why did they preserve Custer’s body from mutilation?

Showdown at Little Big Horn answers these and other questions, telling the story of the fight from many points of view, based on reports, diaries, letters, and testimony of the participants themselves. Together the accounts provide a gripping narrative of a punitive expedition gone badly awry and an assemblage of Native peoples who forestalled for a while the army’s domination of the northern plains.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A very powerful story that draws one in much the same way as a good novel: by evoking the sights, the smells, the noise, and the desperation of the battle. This is essential history for the Custer buff, or anyone interested in the Indian Wars on the Plains."—Roundup Magazine

(Roundup Magazine )

From the Inside Flap

On Sunday afternoon, June 25, 1876, Gen. George Custer and 264 members of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry engaged more than 3,000 warriors of the Lakota Sioux, Arapaho, and Cheyenne nations and were killed in the ensuing battle.

Acclaimed historian Dee Brown traces the events of that day and of the weeks before, through the eyes and ears of seventeen participants from both sides, including Natives, scouts, soldiers, and civilians.

Why did Custer divide his forces? Why did he not take his regiment’s Gatling guns? Why did he expect Sitting Bull to surrender without a fight? How did Sitting Bull’s vision at the sun dance on the Rosebud foretell the occasion and the outcome of the battle? How did war chiefs Crazy Horse and Gall take advantage of Custer’s tactical errors? And why did they preserve Custer’s body from mutilation?

Showdown at Little Big Horn answers these and other questions, telling the story of the fight from many points of view, based on reports, diaries, letters, and testimony of the participants themselves. Together the accounts provide a gripping narrative of a punitive expedition gone badly awry and an assemblage of Native peoples who forestalled for a while the army’s domination of the northern plains.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 220 pages
• Publisher: Bison Books (March 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0803262183
• ISBN-13: 978-0803262188
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,526,822 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gripping, Can't Put It Down Tale of the Custer Fight, March 14, 2005

By 

Alan Rockman (Upland, California) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Showdown at Little Big Horn (Bison Book) (Paperback)

The late Dee Brown was a master Historian whose writings about the Old West captivated many of us. "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" was a true classic. Dee Brown was NOT a Native American, but his saga of broken treaties, the massacres of Sand Creek and elsewhere, of how the Indian was mistreated, saw their buffalo slaughtered and were forced into war cannot but affect even those who cheered for the Soldiers, Cowboys, and Settlers.

In "Showdown at Little Big Horn" Brown took his masterful storytelling skills, plus his expertise as a Historian and whipped together a dramatic retelling of the Little Big Horn fight as seen through the eyes of many of its major participants.

George Custer, Sitting Bull, and Crazy Horse are all there; as are Reno, Benteen, the hapless doomed, such as the Scout Lonesome Charley Reynolds and Newspaperman Mark Kellogg, who wasn't even supposed to cover Custer in the first place but took the place of his boss, who gave him a bloodstained belt as a talisman of good luck. The boss had been wounded in the Civil War, but the belt did not bring luck to Kellogg, who took an arrow in the back as he watched the companies of Myles Keogh and James Calhoun be annihilated by the hordes of Sioux and Cheyenne under Crazy Horse and Gall.

The common soldiers like bugler John Martin - Giovanni Martini, the last 7th cavalryman to see Custer and his command alive; and the braves who fought on both sides are there too.

Brown concludes this slim but mighty work by telling how Comanche, Captain Keogh's valiant horse, was found badly wounded on the battlefield, the only known survivor of Custer's immediate command.

The details of how the campaign took shape and how everything went wrong is there, with a dramatic voice created by Brown but taken from the real words of those who fought on that Greasy Grass on that summer day - June 25, 1876.

For those desiring a simple, yet impressive volume of the Custer fight at the Little Big Horn, writen in almost the same dramatic narrative voice style of Shaara's "Killer Angels", this is an extremely good book to begin.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars History can be entertaining, May 15, 2002

By 

steven g. mann (monett, mo USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Showdown At Little Big Horn (Paperback)

A very entertaining read. A suberb story-teller, Dee Brown takes us into the lives of 19 participants in the slaughter that was Little Big Horn. We get to meet and ride along with some of the most colorful characters that seem to have gotten lost between the pages of history. Dee Brown has used eye witness accounts, diaries, letters, and the testimonies of the civilians,and soldiers that participated in this battle.
It wasn't just Custer's undertaking, but a full Army battle group.

5 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Non-fiction Novel about Custer's defeat at Little Big Horn, January 8, 2005

By 

K Scheffler (Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Showdown at Little Big Horn (Bison Book) (Paperback)

I read this on the heals of the author's superb Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, and have mixed feelings about it. Expecting it to be a similar historical account, this time on the Battle of Little Big Horn, it quickly became evident that this was in fact a work of fiction based on eye-witness accounts--so, essentially, a non-fiction novel. Nevertheless, I read it in its entirety, and found it to be, for the most part, a good read. Brown attempts to bring to life the experiences of individual participants, and in this he largely succeeds. However, the story mainly focuses on the American invaders, with only a few chapters devoted to the Indians. This makes the book seem rather unbalanced and incomplete, and therefore somewhat of a disappointment.