Women, Custer, and Westward Expansion

WOMEN, CUSTER, AND WESTWARD EXPANSION

Doris A. McCraw

THE WEST, AS WE KNOW it, has had its share of conflict between the incumbent residents and the new arrivals. As we are near the time of the Battle of Little Big Horn, it seems appropriate to take a look at some of those conflicts from the perspective of two women who lived during that time. Both Elizabeth Custer (born 1842 & died 1933) and Helen Jackson (born 1830 & died 1885), lived and wrote about events that occurred prior to and after the battle at the Little Big Horn.

Both women were born east of the Mississippi. Helen in Massachusetts in 1830 and Elizabeth in Michigan in 1842. Both were married to men who were graduates of West Point. Edward Hunt, Helen’s first husband, graduated in 1845, second in his class. George Custer, Elizabeth’s husband, graduated in 1861.

Both men served in the Army during the Civil War. Custer on the battlefields and Hunt the US Army Corps of Engineers. While Custer was distinguishing himself on the battlefields, Hunt as the engineer, would have worked on bridges, etc. He also worked on an invention of what some call an early submarine and the explosive device that would shoot rockets from this ship to the shore. Hunt was also the author of books and papers, which include, Modern Warfare: It’s Science and Art, Engineer Notes and Queries: submitted to the Officers of the US Corps of Engineers, and Union foundations: a study of American nationality as a fact of science.

While Edward Hunt died in 1863 as a result of his being overcome by fumes in the hold of the ship where he was testing his explosive device, George Custer survived the battlefields of the Civil War and continued on with his military career, until the decisions at the Little Big Horn ended his life in 1876.

Before continuing on, a bit of background for those who may not be familiar with some of the past intersections of cultures, focusing on the West. When the Spanish moved into the Southwest, they believed it was their right to all the thousands of miles of land in the new country. In the early 1700s the Jesuits created missions in what is Baja California. In the revolt of 1734-1736 two of the priests lost their lives. In 1768 Father Junipero Serra, who was later made a saint, arrived in the region to convert the indigenous people. Serra’s efforts to bring about conversion of the natives was not without casualties on both sides. This is also the area that Jackson focused on when she wrote about the Mission Indians in the 1880s. For those who would like to know more, Jackson’s book, Glimpses of Three Coasts contains a reprint of the report she made to the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

In what is now New Mexico and Colorado another conflict erupted between the Spanish and the Comanche in the region. Juan Bautista de Anza, the man known for opening an overland route from Mexico to California and helping to establish the settlement in San Francisco, also made his mark in another cultural conflict. In Colorado his pursuit of Comanche chief, Cuerno Verde, along the front Range in the 1700s, helped to ease the settlement of the upper New Mexico/Southern Colorado area.

The Comanche had been making raids on the settlers in the region mentioned above. Many times, the Spanish set out in pursuit, but the Comanche would see them coming and disappear until the Spanish returned home. De Anza decided to try another tactic and went north, up behind Pike’s Peak to the west and came down what became known as Ute pass, thereby coming in behind the Comanche raiders. He met up with some of the band south of the confluence of Fountain and Monument Creeks but had to travel further south to meet up with the young chief Cuerno Verde, who had taken his father’s name after his death at the hands of the Spanish at Ojo Caliente. The exact location of the younger man’s death is still unknown, but many believe it is the area around Rye, Colorado which is south and west of Pueblo. As a result of the conflict Cuerno Verde and many of his warriors were killed in the 1777 battle. By 1778 a treaty between the Spanish and the Comanche was set in place. There are a number of books on de Anza and his exploits for those who wish to further their research. Among those are Juan Bautista de Anza: The Kings Governor in New Mexico, by Carlos R. Herrera and Juan Bautista de Anza: Basque Explorer in the New World, by Donald T Garate would be good starts.

On the Westward expansion of the United States, we can look to such conflicts as the Black Hawk war of 1832. These skirmishes occurred near the Mississippi river in areas around Western Illinois and Wisconsin. It primarily occurred between followers of Black Hawk, the Army and frontier militia. This is also the conflict the future president, Abraham Lincoln, was a part of. Although a treaty between the government and the tribes of this region allowed for the settlement by newcomers, Black Hawk wanted to remain in the area of his birth. He led a group of his followers back to the area after the treaty, near what is present day Rock Island, Illinois. Ultimately his efforts proved unsuccessful.

The 1862 Sioux uprising in Minnesota is said to have come about because of the failure to honor the treaties made with the Sioux in that area. As a result, the Sioux banded together to strike back. Reports say that one hundred settlers were killed within the first week. The conflict lasted approximately one month with reports saying that five hundred settlers and sixty Indians died in that conflict.

Of course, a major action in Colorado may also have played into the events that culminated at the Little Bighorn. The Sand Creek Massacre, as it’s known, took place in 1864, twelve years prior to the Little Bighorn. The reason this event may have contributed to the problem was the slaughter of the Arapaho and Cheyenne near what is now Fort Lyon, Colorado. This particular event remained in the public’s eye not only because of the atrocities, but because of the reports and testimonies of the people involved. The story played out in publications with conflicting stories. Although it was the Northern Cheyenne along with the Arapaho who were involved in the Little Bighorn battle, the events of Sand Creek would still be fresh in the minds of both tribes.

Of course, not all cultural intersects ended in violence. Mary ‘Queen’ Palmer, wife of one of Colorado Springs’ founders had local Indians come into her home after 1872, allegedly while she was sleeping. Because an uncle had been scalped and killed in Montana during the 1860s, this ‘invasion’ would have been frightening to her. However, there was no violence at her home. History says, they were just curious at who was living in the house in the area they visited.

Lucy Maggard, of Denver and Colorado City boarding house owner fame, had a run in with Indians as she made her way to Colorado via wagon. The family story goes that when the Indians were thought to be preparing to attack, Lucy told everyone to leave it to her. She then proceeded to bang her pots and pans and push her false teeth in an out. This was supposed to have driven the combatants away.

Finally, Elizabeth McAllister, wife of another Colorado Springs founder, was fond of making pies and bread. She would put her baking out on the window for the local Indians to take. They in turn, according to the stories, would leave gifts for Mrs. McAllister.

So where do Elizabeth Custer and Helen Jackson fit in the events and their aftermath?

Elizabeth Bacon was the daughter of a Monroe, Wisconsin judge who was, because of investments, etc. a wealthy man. Elizabeth was the only child of the judge’s children to reach adulthood. By the age of thirteen she had lost her siblings and her mother. It is said that her father doted upon her, and had hoped she would make an advantageous marriage, but Elizabeth prevailed and married George Custer. Elizabeth was around twenty-two years of age at the time.

Elizabeth, unlike some of the other military officer’s wives, followed her husband to his various postings. That the two were devoted to each other is what many people have said based upon, not only their correspondence, but Elizabeth’s efforts on behalf of her husband after his death.

Helen Jackson’s father was a college professor in Amherst, Massachusetts. Similar to Elizabeth Custer, Helen had lost her mother by the age of fourteen. There, also, had been two sons born to the Fiske family that died shortly after their birth. Unlike Elizabeth, Helen lost her father three years later, around the age of seventeen. Helen and her younger sister, Ann, were separated and sent to live with friends and relatives. It was while she was continuing her education and staying with the Palmer family in New York that Helen met her first husband, Edward, brother of Washington Hunt, the then governor of New York.

Unlike Elizabeth, who remained single, Helen remarried later in life to Colorado Springs banker/ businessman, William Sharpless Jackson. Also, Helen had two children from her first marriage to Hunt. Both boys died young. Murray, at eleven months and Warren, at age nine, two years after Edward’s death.

Both Elizabeth and Helen, as a product of their time, probably had the accepted beliefs of the majority of people about the Indians. Both women also wrote, those writings being part of how we remember and perceive them today.

Helen began writing after the death of her second son, and became well known for her poetry, essays, and fiction writing. These writings, because of her popularity, helped support her prior to her marriage to Jackson. Even in those writings, although rarely mentioned, Helen did not have many positive things to say about the Indians as she traveled the country for her health. It was while on the trip from Chicago to Ogden in the 1870s that Helen described seeing an Indian woman. Below is her description from the essay ‘From Chicago to Ogden’ in her book, Bits of Travel at Home, published in 1878.

Toward night of this day, we saw our first Indian woman. We were told it was a woman. It was, apparently, made of old India-rubber, much soaked, seamed, and torn. It was thatched at top with a heavy roof of black hair, which hung down from a ridgelike line in the middle. It had sails of dingy-brown canvas, furled loosely around it, confined and caught here and there irregularly, fluttering and falling open wherever a rag of a different color could be shown underneath. It moved about on brown, bony, stalking members, for which no experience furnishes name; it mopped, and mowed, and gibbered, and reached out through the air with more brown, bony, clutching members; from which one shrank as from the claws of a bear. “Muckee! muckee!” it cried, opening wide a mouth toothless, but red. It was the most abject, loathly living thing I ever saw. I shut my eyes and turned away. Presently, I looked again. It had passed on; and I saw on its back, gleaming out from under a ragged calash-like arch of basket-work, a smooth, shining, soft baby face, brown as a brown nut, silken as silk, sweet, happy, innocent, confiding, as if it were babe of a royal line, borne in royal state. All below its head was helpless mummy, —body, legs, arms; feet bandaged tight, swathed in a solid roll, strapped to a flat board, and swung by a leathern band, going around the mother’s breast. Its great, soft, black eyes looked fearlessly at everybody. It was as genuine and blessed a baby as any woman ever bore. Idle and thoughtless passengers jeered the squaw, saying: “Sell us the pappoose.” “Give you greenbacks for the pappoose.” Then, and not till then, I saw a human look in the India-rubber face. The eyes could flash, and the mouth could show scorn, as well as animal greed. The expression was almost malignant, but it bettered the face; for it made it the face of a woman, of a mother.

It is interesting to note that the description of the baby is in such stark contrast to that of the mother. This contrast, I believe, shows Helen’s regard for and the sense of loss she felt for her own children.

Elizabeth, in her book Boots and Saddles, published in 1885, shows her reaction to being invited to a ‘friendly’ Sioux camp with her husband.

At twilight my husband and I walked over. The village was a collection of tepees of all sizes, the largest being what is called the Medicine Lodge, where the councils are held. It was formed of tanned buffalo – hides, sewed together with buckskin thongs, and stretched over a collection of thirty-six poles. These poles are of great value to the Indians, for in a sparsely timbered country like Dakota it is difficult to find suit able trees. It is necessary to go a great distance to procure the kind of sapling that is light and pliable and yet sufficiently strong for the purpose. The poles are lashed together at the tops and radiate in a circle below. The smoke was pouring out of the opening above, and the only entrance to the tepee was a round aperture near the ground, sufficiently large to allow a person to- crawl in. Around the lodge were poles from which were suspended rags; in these were tied their medicines of roots and herbs, supposed to be a charm to keep off evil spirits. The sound of music came from within; I crept tremblingly in after the general, not entirely quieted by his keeping my hand in his and whispering something to calm my fears as I sat on the buffalo robe beside him. In the first place, I knew how resolute the Indians were in never admitting one of their own women to council, and their curious eyes and forbidding expressions towards me did not add to my comfort. The dust, smoke, and noise in the fading light were not reassuring.

I find it interesting the way the two write about their experiences with the Indians. Although both are writing after the events of June 1876, they both are vivid in details. Elizabeth would continue to write and lecture about her husband and his legacy. Helen rarely lectured, instead spending her time writing.

Things would change Helen’s view of the Indians after she heard Chief Standing Bear speak, when she decided to take up the cause of the Indians. From that point on, most of her writing efforts were for that cause. She wrote to a friend saying she had become the person she swore she would never be, ‘a person with a hobby.’

Some background on Standing Bear and the reason for his travel and speaking. Standing Bear of the Ponca tribe took his case to the courts. He wanted to return to the land he had been born on. He also wished to bury his sixteen-year-old son, who had died on the reservation they had been forced onto, in the land of his birth. His sons dying wish was that he be buried in his homeland, not a foreign land where his spirit would forever roam. The tribe had been removed from their ancestral lands and placed on the reservation in what is now Oklahoma.

When Standing Bear and his followers left that reservation in January of 1879, the traveled back to their ancestral land, arriving about two months later. Standing Bear buried his son’s bones, but the army gathered them and took them to Fort Omaha, with the intent of returning them to the reservation in Indian Territory. Instead a court case was begun on their behalf, on the legality of the detention, via a writ of habeas corpus. (the definition of habeas corpus is, a writ requiring a person under arrest to be brought before a judge or into court, especially to secure the person’s release unless lawful grounds are shown for their detention). The government disputed the right of Standing Bear to obtain such a writ as ‘an Indian was not a person under the meaning of the law.’

The case came before the judge in the U. S. District Court in Omaha on May 1, 1879. By May 12, the judge ruled that Standing Bear and his followers were indeed ‘persons’ under the law. This allowed them the rights of any other person in the land. The government appealed the decision, but the Supreme Court refused to hear the case. This allowed Standing Bear and the rest of the Ponca’s in his band to be considered free in the eyes of the law.

Although Standing Bear had won the initial case, he began traveling the country to help offset the court cost and to plead his case before the public. It was on one of these trips that Helen heard him speak. From that point on Helen’s efforts would be to help raise funds for these court cases, and to study and make the plight of the Indians known to the general public. For a more complete story of Standing Bear the books I Am a Man by Joe Sarita and The Ponca Chief by Thomas Henry Tibble are useful books to start with.

Both Elizabeth and Helen would spend a lot of their later years pleading for the causes that were near and dear to their hearts. For Elizabeth, that was restoring her husband’s good name. For Helen, it was the Indians.

Of all of Helen’s writings after this point, perhaps the ones that were the most well-known and possibly damning were A Century of Dishonor and Ramona. Although Helen had spent a great deal of effort and even took the Secretary of the Interior to task, she did not live to see the outcome of her efforts.

In the case of Elizabeth, she wrote three books about her time with her husband as they traveled from deployment to deployment. Her first book, published in 1885, the year Helen died, was Boots and Saddles. The other books are, Tenting on the Plains, Following the Guidon, and The Boy General, Story of the Life of Major- General George A. Custer.

It is in the last book that Elizabeth makes the statement: ‘...I hardly remember the time during the twelve years... when I was not in fear of some immediate peril, or in dread of some danger that threatened.’

It was also in Following the Guidon that she gives a glimpse of Custer upon his appointment to the 7th Calvary. It is a description of a man who loved life and career, a man who looked for advancement in his chosen profession.

In the autumn the appointment to the Seventh Cavalry came, with orders to go to Fort Garland. One would have imagined, by the jubilant manner in which this official document was unfolded and read to me, that it was the inheritance of a principality. Out of our camp-luggage a map was produced, and Fort Garland was discovered, after long prowling about with the first finger, in the space given to the Rocky Mountains. Then the General launched into visions of what unspeakable pleasure he would have, fishing for mountain trout and hunting deer.

It would have been a stolid soul indeed that did not begin to think Fort Garland a sort of earthly paradise. The sober colors in this vivid picture meant a small, obscure post, several hundred miles from any railroad, not much more than a handful of men to command, the most complete isolation, and no prospect of an active campaign, as it was far from the range of the warlike Indians. But Fort Garland soon faded from our view, in the excitement and interest over Fort Riley, as soon as our orders were changed to that post. We had no difficulty in finding it on the map, as it was comparatively an old post, and the Kansas Pacific Railroad was within ten miles of the Government reservation.

Custer’s connection to Colorado was in the killing of Black Kettle and his wife, survivors of the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864, at the Washita.

In her book, A Century of Dishonor, Helen takes the government to task for their treatment of the Indians. Essentially, Helen made a study of all the treaties the US government had made with the Indians. She also followed up with the outcomes of those treaties; how the government did or did not honor the details of those treaties. In the discussion of Black Kettle and his followers, after Sand Creek, she had this to say:

In 1868 “the country bounded east by the State of Arkansas, south by Texas, north by Kansas, and west by the hundredth meridian of longitude, was set apart for the exclusive use of the Cheyennes, Arapahoes, Kiowas, and Comanches, and such other bands as might be located there by proper authority;” and the whole was declared to constitute “a military district,” under command of Major-general Hazen, U.S.A. In October of the same year Major Wynkoop, who had been the faithful friend of the Cheyennes and Arapahoes ever since the days of Sand Creek, published his last protest in their behalf, in a letter to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. He says that the failure of the Government to fulfill treaty provisions in the matter of supplies forced them to resort to hunting again; and then the refusal of the Government to give them the arms and ammunition promised in the treaty, left them without any means of securing the game; hence the depredations. The chiefs had promised to deliver up the guilty ones to Major Wynkoop, “ but before sufficient time had elapsed for them to fulfill their promises the troops were in the field, and the Indians in flight. Even after the majority of the Cheyennes had been forced to take the war-path, in consequence of the bad acts of some of their nation, several bands of the Cheyennes, and the whole Arapahoe tribe, could have been kept at peace had proper action been taken at the time; but now all the Indians of the Upper Arkansas are engaged in the struggle.”(1)In 1869 many Arapahoes and Cheyennes had made their way to Montana, and were living with the Gros Ventres; most of those who remained at the south were quiet, and seemed to be disposed to observe the provisions of the treaty, but were earnestly imploring to be moved farther to the north, where they might hunt buffalo.

(1) On October 27th of this year Black Kettle and his entire band were killed by Gen. Custer’s command at Antelope Hills, on the Wichita River.

I’ve used the words of both women to give a better feel for the use of language. As you can see, both women were passionate about their respective goals.

Helen felt it important that she do what she could for the Indians. She gave a majority of the remaining years of her life to that goal. She had corresponded with Hiram Price, Federal Indian Commissioner, to study the conditions of the Mission Indians in Southern California. She’d had contentious correspondence with Carl Schurz, head of the Department of the Interior, about his handling of the Ponca affair. Her series of editorials with William Byers, former editor of the Rocky Mountain News, in the New York papers about Sand Creek, make for very interesting reading.

At the end of her life, Helen, just prior to her death, wrote to President Grover Cleveland asking him to read Century of Dishonor and said she would die happier on the belief that after reading he would do much to redress the wrongs against the Indian race.

In the case of Elizabeth Custer, she felt it important that her husband’s legacy of service to his country

and his career be upheld. She took umbrage at the negative response to his handling of the events that led to his demise. It is interesting that the publication of her first book of ‘memories’ was published the year of Helen Jackson’s death. To Elizabeth, her husband and his troops were there to keep safe the American people from harm. It was to this end that she told her story, both in written form and in lectures. Although her writings and speeches may not have been received with complete acceptance, she herself was looked upon kindly. It was said in her later age, she regretted not having a son to carry on her husband’s great legacy.

Both women had been shaped by the world they’d been born into. That their words and actions would influence future generations is a testament to their efforts. Regardless of how you feel about Custer, Indians, and the history of the intersection of cultures, these women and many others offer us the chance to study and learn of the history of the Westward expansion and its impact on the world we live in today for a different perspective.

—Doris A. McCraw is an Author, Speaker, and Historian-specializing in Colorado and Women’s History. She is a member of National League of American Pen Women, Western Writers of America, Women Writing the West, Western Fictioneers and the Pikes Peak Posse of the Westerners. She also writes fiction under the pen name, Angela Raines.