Waubonsee Community College

Thieves' road, the Black Hills betrayal and Custer's path to Little Bighorn, Terry Mort

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 323-324) and index

platesmapsillustrations

index present

non fiction

Thieves' road

bibliography

879915680

Terry Mort

the Black Hills betrayal and Custer's path to Little Bighorn

In the summer of 1874, Brevet Major General George Armstrong Custer led an expedition of some 1000 troops and more than one hundred wagons into the Black Hills of South Dakota. This narrative history tells the little-known story of this exploratory mission and reveals how it set the stage for the climactic Battle of the Little Bighorn two years later. What is the significance of this obscure foray into the Black Hills? The short answer, as the author explains, is that Custer found gold. This discovery in the context of the worst economic depression the country had yet experienced spurred a gold rush that brought hordes of white prospectors to the Sioux's sacred grounds. The result was the trampling of an 1868 treaty that had granted the Black Hills to the Sioux and their inevitable retaliation against the white invasion. Mort brings the era of the Grant administration to life, with its "peace policy" of settling the Indians on reservations, corrupt federal Indian Bureau, Gilded Age excesses, the building of the western railroads, the white settlements that followed the tracks, the Crash of 1873, mining ventures, and the clash of white and Indian cultures with diametrically opposed values

War, taxes, debt, and the resultant lure of gold -- Gold in Montana, disaster in Wyoming -- The adversaries -- The Gilded Age -- Politics, philanthropy, and corruption -- The Northern Pacific Railroad -- Custer agonistes -- The Yellowstone Expedition -- The Yellowstone battles -- Anatomy of a crash -- Build-up -- Soldiers, scouts and scientists -- Alkali and comets, grass and stars -- In the moon of black cherries -- Homeward bound -- Invasion