Lakota Noon: The Indian Narrative of Custer's Defeat

Rating:
Summary: The Reverse Angle...
Review: After sending his famous message to Benteen, "Big Village, Come Quick, Bring Packs," Custer and his men vanish from U. S. Army history. What happened thereafter was witnessed mainly by Custer's foes in the battle. Although huge numbers of Indian accounts have been collected in the roughly 125 years since Little Bighorn, historians have generally thrown up their hands at the gross contradictions, inconsistencies, confabulations and impossibilities found in the Indian accounts.

What Michno has done is to go through the published and unpublished accounts available, and fit them into a framework of time and space that actually turns out to make a fairly consistent picture of Custer's last battle. As several other reviewers have noted, there is a large piece missing from Michno's material, namely the accounts of the Indian scouts riding with the 7th Cavalry. It is very puzzling that this resource was ignored. However, that is the only real problem I found with the book. Michno uses the Indian accounts to explode a fairly large number of myths about the battle and its participants, particuarly Gall, Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull. He also winds up with the only really convincing version I have read of the disposition and movements of Custer's men during the various stages leading up to the classic hilltop "Last Stand."

In the past 50 years academic historians have largely retreated completely from any desire to find out or recount what "actually" happened in any historical event. Instead, the event is used only as the thinnest of pretexts to grind various ideological axes. Custer's defeat was being used in this way almost the second Libby Custer died, more than 70 years ago. So it's doubly refreshing to find a history book where the facts are still the focus of concern.

This book is not, and is not intended to be, a complete account of the Battle of the Little Big Horn. It is best read as a companion to other standard works on the battle, such as Gray's.

Rating:
Summary: The Reverse Angle...
Review: After sending his famous message to Benteen, "Big Village, Come Quick, Bring Packs," Custer and his men vanish from U. S. Army history. What happened thereafter was witnessed mainly by Custer's foes in the battle. Although huge numbers of Indian accounts have been collected in the roughly 125 years since Little Bighorn, historians have generally thrown up their hands at the gross contradictions, inconsistencies, confabulations and impossibilities found in the Indian accounts.

What Michno has done is to go through the published and unpublished accounts available, and fit them into a framework of time and space that actually turns out to make a fairly consistent picture of Custer's last battle. As several other reviewers have noted, there is a large piece missing from Michno's material, namely the accounts of the Indian scouts riding with the 7th Cavalry. It is very puzzling that this resource was ignored. However, that is the only real problem I found with the book. Michno uses the Indian accounts to explode a fairly large number of myths about the battle and its participants, particuarly Gall, Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull. He also winds up with the only really convincing version I have read of the disposition and movements of Custer's men during the various stages leading up to the classic hilltop "Last Stand."

In the past 50 years academic historians have largely retreated completely from any desire to find out or recount what "actually" happened in any historical event. Instead, the event is used only as the thinnest of pretexts to grind various ideological axes. Custer's defeat was being used in this way almost the second Libby Custer died, more than 70 years ago. So it's doubly refreshing to find a history book where the facts are still the focus of concern.

This book is not, and is not intended to be, a complete account of the Battle of the Little Big Horn. It is best read as a companion to other standard works on the battle, such as Gray's.

Rating:
Summary: The definitive analysis of American Indians' battle account
Review: Gregory Michno takes previous Custer scholars to task for having too long ignored the battlefield accounts of the participants who lived to tell - and who did tell us - what happened! Yet Michno is careful not to accept any participants' accounts or claims blindly. He organizes their stories into a time/space format that breaks the battle events down into easily understood parts, each critically analyzed within those constraints and for verifiability of truthfulness, logic, and reliability. He is no less afraid to challenge certain Indian accounts than he is to scold fellow historians' prior "mendacity" in repeating myth or misinterpretation, creating "fact" out of whole cloth, letting their ethnological bias show, or for just plain wrong-headed analysis.

If you are not only interested in the where/what/when of Custer's movements, but also the actions of individual Indian participants such as Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Rain in the Face, Gall, and more, Michno tells you. He reminds one of military historian John Keegan, in that Michno exhibits keen interest in not only "the generals" but also the "regular Joes" - what they saw, where they ran, who they spoke to - are the core of the narrative.

And precisely because of that, Michno reveals that many of the things you thought you knew about the battle (and the people who fought it) are wrong - an assertion which Michno and his subjects do a commendable job "proving". Be it the size of the Indian village, the number of warriors involved, Custer's motives and tactics, the so-called "last stand", or the tragic aftermath, Michno has something to say. If you've read a dozen books on the subject, Michno's is the capstone; if this is the only book you'll read on the battle, Michno saves you both time and misdirection. Hoka hey!

Rating:
Summary: One of the top handful
Review: If I were possessed by a all-consuming passion to understand the Battle of the Little Bighorn and were limited to owning the number of books I could count on one hand, Michno's Lakota Noon would be one of those books. The author at times stretches his conjectures too far and he fails to compare the Lakota accounts with those of Custer's surviving Indian scouts. But Michno makes sense of what at first seem a confused mass of vague native accounts and demonstrates that they are accurate and valuable testimonies. For my money, this is the best Indian perspective book available on the great Lakota and Cheyenne victory.

Rating:
Summary: An Important Study of the Battle
Review: Michno's work is a good effort to place the participants of the Little Big Horn on the battle field within a realistic time frame. The time-motion idea, used by Michno in Lakota Noon, was used by John Gray in Custer's Last Campaign, (another useful book on the battle). The work is an interesting read.

Michno makes a valiant effort to de-bunk a number of long-standing myths about the Little Big Horn battle; his theories are well developed and credible. They may or may not be correct, but his ideas are as valid as any forwarded yet.

There were three minor problems with this text. First, the work could have (and should have) drawn upon the testimony of the Crow participants in the battle, particularly Curley. Curley's claim that some troops (probably Companies E and F) actually made it to the mouth of Medicine Tail Coulee is is direct conflict with Michno's beliefs and he should have made an effort to acknowledge or refute this claim. Second, all of the recent writers about the Little Big Horn, including Fox, Michno, and a host of others, seem to be unable to agree as to what to call the various ravines, coulees, ridges, etc. Some unified effort needs to be made to standardize names, e.g., Luce Ridge by Michno should be the same as Luce Ridge by the Park Service. Third, all the recent writers seem to enjoy taking mean-spirited pot shots at each other's ideas. I realize that a healty discussion is important and its necessary to acknowledge differences and inconsistencies, but it should be done in a civilized and professional manner.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: Mrichno's book is excellent, well researched and a wonderful read, so much so it's hard to put down. This work and his The Mystery of E Troop: Custer's Gray Horse Company at the Little Bighorn will go down as two of the very best books on this historical event. Both of his works impressed me and have gone a long way in help shaping my views. You just can't go worng and his writing style is so easy to read.

Rating:
Summary: A New Look at the LBH from the Victors Point of View
Review: One of the great books on the Little Big Horn because it offers a fresh approach from the Native American point of view by consolidating their testimonies through time motion studies. Michno's book offers a different point of view that Custer stayed on his side of the river to stay in some visual contact with Benteen and Reno after the latter's retreat. That Custer hoped that he would draw the Indians to him while the rest of his command would appear in his rear to trap the Indians between two attacking units. He also demonstrates a new spin on Custer's movements that Yate's Battalion of E & F troops joined Keough's Battalion (C, I and L) on Nye Cartwright Ridge instead of Battleridge, that Yates went futher north and west than originally thought, that the Cheyene Lame Whiteman's backbreaking attack ocurred below Custer Hill and not against Company L on Calhoun Hill to the Southwest and that Keough's Company I's collapse caused the destruction of the south of Battleridge leading to the destruction of Custer's battalions. Mincho also adds disturbing insight that Reno and Benteen may have witnessed the destruction of Calhoun's command but not Custer's that was further north and still fighting when the two commands turned away. A lot of detail and testimony that makes Mincho's appraisal more believable because many of the testimonies substantiate each other and isolate those that appear to be exaggerations. And the testimonies trace the whereabouts and actions of Gall, White Bull, Sitting Bull, Wooden Leg, Two Moons, Crazy Horse, Lame Whiteman and many more participants.A good book to go with Utley's, Fox's and Gray's. They all cannot be right in every detail but reading them all brings you closer to narrowing the possibilities.

Rating:
Summary: Flawed Analysis Masquerading as Primary Source Testimony
Review: The premise of this book is excellent: to take Indian testimony, order and locate it through time-motion analysis, and present a reconstruction of the battle in 10-minute increments. Unfortunately, in execution the book is flawed. First, the author's methodology and assumptions are not explained. We cannot subject his assumptions and premises to scrutiny. Second, the author summarizes the Indian testimony mostly in his words and not the Indians, further burying the truth behind the author's assumptions. For example, the author might say 'He saw Yate's Company ride off.' The belief that it was 'Yates' Company' is the author's, and was not part of the Indian testimony. Where this becomes critical are those places where the author is obviously wrong -- for example, he establishes at one point that Yates' men engaged on foot holding their own horses, and at another point that Calhoun's men engaged on foot with every fourth soldier withdrawing with the horses. Then he presents testimony where the Indian said that the soldier's withdrew their horses, and he attributes it as a sighting of Yates' Company! Third, once he has his time-motion analysis out of synch, he carries on the errors to the latter stages of the battle and his errors compound into combinatorial explosion. Fourth, the writing is poorly executed: in what the author labels a ten minute period often recounts several hours of an Indian's movements. Fifth, the author has an irritating habit of intejecting long discourses arguing small details into the body of the narrative that should properly have been handled either in footnotes or in a separate chapter -- these discussions break up the flow of the narrative and make the book difficult to follow. Sixth, his understanding of cavalry tactics is weak -- for example, he assumes that volley fire would be used as a signal for a unit to withdraw (that's what the cavalry used bugles for). Last, while presenting the Indian testimony he totally ignores that of the soldiers, which could have provided some good benchmarks upon which to anchor some of the points of his time-motion analysis.

That is not to say that there is much of value here. The author's analysis of the size of the village and number of Indian combatants is excellent, as is most of the testimony that he attributes to the Indians (just do not accept his labels uncritically). His discussion of the movement of C Company is compelling, as is his sequence of the collapse of L and C Companies. There is much of value here to the patient reader. For those with more background, or ambition to get deeper into the topic, the book is a "must have" -- but should be read in concert with Fox's "Archeology and History..." and Gray's "Mitch Bouyer ...". I am doing some work in this field for a study of military morale and cohesion for the USMC. Comments welcome to [e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: A "Must Have" book for LBH scholars
Review: This fine book stands with the few really well thought out accounts of the Battle of the Little Big Horn. The Herculean task of trying to make sense of all the Indian testimony is done very well here. Michno's discussions at the end of each section helps point out what is plausible and what is not. Michno does not simply swallow as absolutely true all the Indian testimony (Indians could exaggerate and distort as well as Marcus Reno and Benteen could). The importance of this book is twofold in my opinion. It discredits (and rightly so) much of what Richard A. Fox claims in his archaeological study of battlefield shell casings, and it claims the fighting at Last Stand Hill went on a lot longer than the testimony at Reno's court of inquiry admitted. Obviously this has huge implications for Reno and Benteen, who, if true, were hardly blameless for the debacle, to put it kindly. See Lary Sklenar's analysis in "To Hell with Honor" to explore this aspect of the controversy. Just what did they see at Weir Point if Michno's theory is correct? One can only wonder. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: New Food for Thought
Review: What happened at the Battle of Big Horn? There have been hundreds of theories. Which one is right? Gregory Michno's LAKOTA NOON provides all of us with a new version of what happened at the historical battle. Michno has written the history of the battle by time sequences of what happened by primarily using recorded versions of the battle from the victors' viewpoint. What recorded versions have we read in the past about General Custer's last battle? There were no survivors from Custer's troops. Reno's troops were far away and could not see the entire and complete defeat of Custer. That leaves the Indians. They fought both Reno and Custer. They saw it all. Michno has painstakingly researched the Indian's testimony of the actual details of the battles and has brillantly put them into the time sequence of the entire battle. He has also objectively shown which accounts are true and which appears to be false. He has done with a dedicated search for the truth. There are no omissions and wild interpretations of what happened to fit the author's theory of this battle in LAKOTA NOON. Every reader will find an author who successfully lays out new theories and new evidence of this famous battle. The reader will find LAKOTA NOON an exceptional work by someone who has expended many hours researching all the past theories of this battle with a dedicated attempt to provide his readers with the facts and an objective pursuit of evaluating all evidence to shed new light on a subject that has been written by many. Many will debunk Michno's masterpiece because it does not go in accordance with many outdated theories of the Battle of The Bighorn. But, if you are interested in this subject, you owe it to yourself to read something new and refreshing. It is truly new food for thought.