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Post by walkaheaps on Feb 4, 2011 15:49:44 GMT -6
Hello, I'm new here.
I am sure I read somewhere that prior to the fight at LBH Custer announced:
"The largest Indian encampment on the North American continent is in the valley below and propose to attack it"
But if I did, I can't trace it. Did I imagine it or was it the irreplaceable Richard Mulligan in 'Little Big Man'?
Could someone possibly put me out of my misery?
Thanks
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Post by benteen on Feb 4, 2011 17:00:36 GMT -6
walkaheaps,
Welcome aboard
In Jim Donovan's book 'Custer and The Little Big Horn" he states As the troopers of the 7th Cavalry broke camp, Custer briefed his officers." The largest Indian camp on the North American continent is ahead and I am going to attack it"
Be Well Dan
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Post by Dark Cloud on Feb 4, 2011 17:17:56 GMT -6
What page do you find it on? I cannot locate it. It doesn't sound like Custer, and Boyeur is the one saying it's a big camp.
It's Terrible Glory. The subordinate title adorns several books.
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Post by benteen on Feb 4, 2011 19:38:37 GMT -6
darkcloud,
It is on page 148 in Jim Donovans book" Custer and the Little Big Horn" The Man, The Mystery, The Myth.
Be Well Dan
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Post by fred on Feb 4, 2011 20:31:48 GMT -6
I'm not sure I ever heard that before and if anyone had ever spewed invective over the comment, it would have been Benteen. I will check my notes, but I don't believe it would be there. Interesting.
I have that book, and Dan is absolutely correct; there it is, big as life. The problem I have with this, however, is that Donovan doesn't have a single footnote in the entire book, so the comment goes un-annotated. Weird!
Best wishes, Fred.
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Post by fred on Feb 4, 2011 20:42:00 GMT -6
I just did a quick word search for the word "encampment" in all the files I have for the officers of the Seventh and found nothing. Quick, brief, amateurish, but nothing.
Best wishes, Fred.
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Post by Dark Cloud on Feb 4, 2011 21:22:02 GMT -6
Sorry, I thought you meant Terrible Glory, as Custer and the Little Bighorn is the subordinate title. Well, the first of two.
He doesn't include it later, which probably speaks to his insecurity over it, and earlier, to his penchant of stating things as fact for which there is no evidence.
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Post by montrose on Feb 5, 2011 9:39:08 GMT -6
This is a sore point for me. I have had much trouble seeing a statement in a book, and following the citation trail. I keep finding bad citations and dead ends. This is markedly so in Donovan, Philbrick and Ambrose.
Donovan was trying to reach a broad audience. So his work is part non fiction, and part fiction. I believe the phrase cited here is fictional. He was trying to illustrate Custer's state of mind.
Overall, I like Donovan's work. He tried to follow the available evidence as best as he could. However, we all now that LBH has many major issues in contention. When he picks one theory over another on these points, I do not see why. Why means citing evidence and justifying theory. In most cases I do not see any acknowledgment that other theories exist.
This is the state of affairs across US historians. Back theory, bad history, work more suited for People magazine than scholarly journals.
On the flip side, it does sell books. Donovan has expanded knowledge of LBH among the general public. He was not writing for people who are on this forum.
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Post by Dark Cloud on Feb 5, 2011 11:36:54 GMT -6
Evan Connell, whose sales of SOTMS are still strong and is, by far, the all-time best seller about Custer, didn't succumb to thinking himself a historian, although he did a far better and fairer job than many who do. He collected the stories as known to 1984, acknowledging them as stories, and gave the reader the choice. He's also the far better writer and brought more people to the subject than anyone, I'd think, since Erroll Flynn. I don't know that it's ever been out of print.
The difference is, he doesn't claim the truth, or that it's knowable. He's a novelist by trade, but knows a good story, and sticking to it in those terms made few errors and brought more folks to it.
I could understand the feeling that Donovan "isn't writing for people who are on this forum" if he were writing a children's book or a general introduction to the subject, but he claims historian status, and you'd think he'd want the approval of this board and others like it, although they all have many of the same people. He makes assumptions for which there are no evidence whatever, and he makes several ringing errors.
These errors are of the detailed sort (Custer's wounds, Kellogg's last note home) that reassures readers of the dedication....had they been correct. This is before his attempt to paint Reno as snockered, and Benteen as petty. Those are the views, I surmise, of the folks Donovan attempts to rise among.
The example postulated here is a good example. What would be the basis for its inclusion once but not again if there were a shred of evidence for it?
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Post by fred on Feb 5, 2011 14:33:21 GMT -6
Darkcloud,
You are a lot tougher on Donovan than I am, but I think that quite a number of his errors could be attributed more to a lousy editing job by Little Brown than to Donovan. If I am not mistaken-- and my original posts listing I think about 20+ errors in the original version of A terrible Glory were lost when Diane's board crashed that one time-- almost all the errors we found are an editor's responsibility.
If you met him-- and I did, several months after his book was out-- and spent some time with him-- again, as I did-- I think you would come away with a slightly altered opinion. Maybe not fully convinced, but a little less critical than what you are now.
I will give you an example of one of the errors. Somewhere near the beginning of the book, he discusses the army's regimental nomenclature. It is footnoted and in the footnotes there is a breakdown. If you tote up the numbers, however, they do not jive with the stated total. That's an editor's screw-up. And to me, shot-in-the-left-side, shot-in-the-right-side is the same. Otherwise, what in the hell do you need an editor for? The reviews of the Philbrick book in the NY Times and the New Yorker magazine prove to me the reviewers have no clue... so where is all the vetting done?
Look... I see it with myself and the modest little thing I have put together. Have you any idea of the cross-checking I have done? Half my time... hell, more! three-quarters of my time is taken up checking out my facts with other sources that I have. I am doing that now with my second effort and "blaque." I like the gal who is supposed to be my editor, but she knows as much about this thing as "conz," and that's about zero. The difference is that she is a competent and honest young woman who doesn't make stuff up and she doesn't lie!!
So, again, I guess it is the writer's overall responsibility, but Little Brown did Jim Donovan no favors, let me tell you!
Best wishes, Fred.
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Post by Dark Cloud on Feb 6, 2011 10:01:30 GMT -6
I have small doubt Mr. Donovan is a nice guy; no reason to think otherwise. Someone on this board, when I started my mumbling complaints, insisted I talk/email him and then I'd understand. That threw me. I'd still contend you cannot be objective about a friend's book, and in any case the work has to stand alone outside the author. If it cannot, it's a failure. Period.
Such failures are not indicative of the author's humanity or kindness or devotion to his friends. But a book purporting to be a history is shackled to concepts of honesty, accuracy, and objectivity by standards that are consistent. What is subjective would be identified as such. That's why I find it ironic that the most popular author on the battle, Connell, who collected the tales and told them and said it was up to the reader, did a fairer and better job than those either pandering to existing mindsets or trying to stir up another for a 'unique' take, both without adequate thought and low standards of accuracy.
A too common one that Ward Churchill illustrates is over notation of trivia, utter lack of notation for important claims, redundant second hand attribution of support among the notes allowing multiple repeats of one opinion to present as separate observations of the event itself. Again: 50 recollections decades after the battle of being told Reno was drunk are not 50 personal observations of same. Adding more and more does not prop it up. Years back I tried to draw attention to the uses of first and third person in these accounts. "Shots were heard" is not saying "I heard shots." Calling attention to someone saying "shorts were heard" and claiming it as proof that individual heard shots, and he's an officer, and so there, is a constructed falsehood.
I still find it of interest that the RCOI clearly provides evidence Boston did NOT meet Martin: both by Martin's testimony (brother-s), the Recorder's followup ('all those around him...' which is not what anyone says describing two people), and Benteen's support in testimony to introducing Martin to the fact his horse was shot, something Martin agreed with at the RCOI. Only decades later did he meet Boston, who told him the horse was shot, and later he returned to Benteen as the informer. If that story had emerged in the gabby barracks before the RCOI, Lee and Whitaker and all Custerphiles would be all over it, since it's the perfect image to damn Reno and Benteen while illustrating the bravery of the Custer family in contrast. It falls too cleanly into handy template not to be used. The ease with which this welded into the tale illustrates how such things happen with cultural templates. Martin came under fire for other things, but never the one for which he himself had provided contrary evidence.
Donovan accepts it, as everyone, provides mutually animositic variations of Custer's wounds and seems to think there is a 'correct' one (we cannot know, it doesn't matter, why does this absorb attention?), has Kellogg writing a dramatic note long after the note was in the mail so to speak, and other errors that elude me this AM.
I don't know if it's EVER the editor's job to correct recondite fact unless he's expected to re-research the book independently. Usually, I thought, the author and the publisher have fact checkers, and you're correct, they don't seem to do that anymore. Or clearly, do it insufficiently. I think it pulls the rug out of the same log rolling reviewers quoted that none of them caught these, probably because they had not read it.
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Post by walkaheaps on Feb 6, 2011 13:47:29 GMT -6
Well, this is interesting. I didn't entirely imagine it, then- even though the statement appears to be apocryphal. Yet, I haven't read Donovan's book...
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Post by fred on Feb 7, 2011 7:19:34 GMT -6
Walkaheaps,
Just remember... the comment was not in Donovan's book, A Terrible Glory. It was in his first book, Custer and the Little Bighorn. It is a thin, coffee-table-style book, more noted for its pictures than its content.
Darkcloud,
I suppose you are correct. I didn't know Donovan when I read his book and I only read it because of the static I got from Elisabeth and Billy Markland. Markland, by the way, was probably the one who told you to e-mail him.
I enjoyed the book because I thought it was easy reading and I liked the way he organized it. At this point, I am beyond content and am super-critical of what I read... maybe because my opinions are more gelled than before, I don't know. You are and always have been a lot more objective than me; I am afraid I allow my emotions to run away too much. I think the realization of that is what has re-attracted me to you and your opinions. I think sometimes you are hyper-critical, but you do listen to reason and I like that... plus... God forgive me!... you do admit when you are wrong, a rare trait, indeed.
I also suppose you are correct about the editors and fact-checking, though that really bothers me. They should be better than that. I remember writing a very irate letter to the New York Times one time, responding to a fellow-Georgetown graduate's nasty criticism of the school's basketball coach who I happened to know and admire. My drone was some 2,500 words and I figured they would never print that crap. The following Sunday, there was my letter, trimmed down to some 750 words and more forcefully effective than I could ever make it. I was shocked at how brilliant an editing job it was, so every time I think "editor," I think of that anonymous person at the Times. Different situations, I guess, but still....
Best wishes, Fred.
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Post by blaque on Feb 8, 2011 14:58:13 GMT -6
The sentence might be apocryphal, but at least it is contemporaneous to the battle. On July 10th, 1876, an anonymous correspondent from Bismark sent to the New York Herald a long report of the action after interviewing Dr. Porter, Fred Girard (introduced as an old correspondent of the Herald) and an unnamed officer. The Herald published the report on July 11th, loosely structured in three parts: Porter speaks first, then Girard, then the officer. Actually the sentence appears in the very last paragraph:
An officer informs your correspondent: when Custer came in sight of the 1.800 lodges –a village of 7.000 Indians– he swung his hat and said: “Hurrah! Custer’s luck! The biggest Indian village on the American continent!” Halting here only for coffee, he pushed forward at a rapid gait; took five companies for his personal command, gave Reno three, and left four in reserve under Benteen, and sailed in.
The unnamed officer perhaps belonged to Terry’s staff (probably Captain Smith, carrying Terry’s dispatches on the Far West) because in the previous paragraph there was a detailed explanation of how Custer’s disobedience ruined the carefully planned strategy of General Terry against the hostiles.
My bet is that Custer did say words to that effect, but that someone in the Terry-Gibbon column embellished them, either for drama of in scorn. Such an utterance would have been appropriate and likely if addressed to the troops on the river bluffs overlooking the village; but definitely not before crossing the divide and with the men still in camp. The recollection of Dr. Porter as to Custer’s words that morning, just before starting for the divide, rings closer to the truth: Porter, there is a large camp of Indians ahead, and we are going to have a great killing –this from Porter’s “Reminiscences of Custer’s Last Fight” (Owyhee Avalanche, July 1897).
A last remark on Gerard. It’s well known that he did not reach Bismarck aboard the Far West, since he landed at Fort Buford on July 3rd and was still there on the 6th. However the Herald correspondent at Bismarck praised the good account of the battle given by Gerard: This means that the interpreter must have arrived to Bismark on the 10th, or that his account was a written one.
Jose
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Post by Dark Cloud on Feb 8, 2011 16:12:23 GMT -6
An unnamed officer about whom we know nothing except he was not there to hear it has his offered quote recorded by an unnamed correspondent which could mean it's a menage of reports -or, for that matter, made up - to fluff Bennett's glam boy Custer, who was a periodic contributor. By shocking coincidence it buttresses the previous effort to damn Custer for disobeying yet providing the gossamer of He Man courage and determination which makes the nation great on it's centennial. Possible it might sell papers, but coincidence only.
Again, Dr. Porter should not be mistaken for a Sherman Potter type as so many seem to do: he was 28 at the LBH and these are his recollections more than two decades later when for brevity and effect, memories get conflated and edited, and he's heard everyone's story by then. The term 'Dr.' then and now are as different as "MOH" then and now. There is no particular reason his recollections ought to be cherished more than others; or denigrated, either.
"The largest Indian encampment on the North American continent is in the valley below and <I> propose to attack it" sounds like a line from a British movie. It's the "North American" part that doesn't ring right. No doubt he said big village and we're goin' in as blaque says, but the "quote" is not to be believed.
If Porter had read the newspaper article, which is sure thing, a falsehood was installed in memory. The test would be in that line appeared in the newspaper interview or only later. Porter's accounts need a concordance as much as everyone's, like Martin's.
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