Reviews for With Custer's Cavalry

The average rating for With Custer's Cavalry based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-01-01 00:00:00 Haeseung Chung This book is the memoir of Katherine Garrett Gibson; since it has no critical apparatus, it's impossible to tell how much of what we get is what she herself wrote and how much she was edited and/or expanded by her daughter (Katherine Gibson Fougera). I don't say this because I suspect Fougera of misrepresenting her mother's text, but just to signal that there is no way to tell. Katherine Garrett Gibson went west to live with her sister, Mollie Garrett MacIntosh, a year or two before Little Bighorn. As Mollie was the wife of one of Custer's lieutenants (also killed at LBH.), Katherine's narrative is full of the officers of the Seventh Cavalry; General Custer himself, with his brother Tom, teaches her how to ride and shoot, and her friends are all officers who will die at LBH and their wives. (Her own eventual husband, another of Custer's lieutenants, would have been at LBH. except for a premonition which caused her to nag him into rejecting the transfer.) Katherine Gibson and her narrative are very much products of her time, with all the racism, classism, sexism, and other toxic ideologies that implies; this is not a deep or thoughtful look at Custer's Seventh Cavalry and its fate (she clearly idolizes Elizabeth Custer, and she remains unthinkingly loyal to the closed society she married into, even when her narrative itself suggests points of criticism). But it is keenly observed and full of fascinating details: my favorite is Senora Nash, the Mexican wife of one of the sergeants, the best laundress, cook, and midwife in the regiment--who is revealed upon her death to have been a man. (Katherine Gibson is baffled by this, and offers an elaborate explanation about a Mexican bandit escaping justice and Sergeant Nash's gluttony.)

Review # 2 was written on 2020-06-09 00:00:00 Benjamin Reynolds My mom borrowed this book to me knowing I'm a history buff like she is. I'm almost positive that she bought it from the Fort Abraham Lincoln gift shop at Ft. Lincoln in Mandan, ND years ago. I've always been interested in the story of The Little Bighorn, as there are so many sides to the story. The story is told almost as a memoir of life at Ft. Abraham Lincoln in the events leading up to the battle at Little Bighorn. Pros: Stories of eating rattle snakes for dinner, using weeds as wedding flowers because of a drought summer, Native American children sneaking into the fort to catch a glimpse of the Christmas tree, descriptions of North Dakota seasons in all their brutality, and true Dakotan grit Cons: The story was written long ago and contains many racial slurs. It also seems to be very biased about how "awesome" General Custer is. I also wonder how true the author's premonition was about the battle or if she later took credit for what might merely be a coincidence.