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Boots and Saddles or, Life in Dakota with General Custer

Boots and Saddles or, Life in Dakota with General Custer

by Elizabeth B. Custer

Introduction by Louise Barnett

Published by: University of Nebraska Press

Imprint: Bison Books

342 Pages, 127.00 × 203.00 mm, 1 illustration, 1 map, 1 appendix

Paperback
9780803234567
Published: December 2010

£14.99

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Description
Contents
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Praise

The honeymoon of Elizabeth Bacon and George Armstrong Custer was interrupted in 1864 by his call to duty with the Army of the Potomac. Her entreaties to be allowed to travel along set the pattern of her future life. From that time onward, she did indeed accompany General Custer on all his major assignments except the summer Indian campaigns, "the only woman," she said, "who always rode with the regiment."

This is the story of Elizabeth B. Custer (1842–1933), told in her own words. She was not only a housewife on the Plains; she was whatever the occasion demanded: nurse to a group of frostbitten soldiers; any-hour-of-the-day hostess to the regiment, since her husband was not fond of entertaining; the garrison's favorite confidante (and many an interesting story she has to tell); and would-be Indian fighter whenever the women of the regiment had to be left alone.

Boots and Saddles also offers a gentle, loving portrait of George Armstrong Custer, husband and man, by the person who knew him best. Elizabeth Custer's absolute devotion to him is revealed in every line of her story, which ends, appropriately enough, with the day on which she received the news of the disaster at Little Big Horn.

I. Change of Station

II. A Blizzard

III. Western Hospitality

IV. Cavalry on the March

V. Camping among the Sioux

VI. A Visit to the Village of "Two Bears"

VII. Adventures during the Last Days of the March

VIII. Separation and Reunion

IX. Our New Home at Fort Lincoln

X. Incidents of Every-day Life

XI. The Burning of Our Quarters.--Carrying the Mail

XII. Perplexities and Pleasures of Domestic Life

XIII. A "Strong Heart" Dance!

XIV. Garrison Life

XV. General Custer's Literary Work

XVI. Indian Depredations

XVII. A Day of Anxiety and Terror

XVIII. Improvements at the Post, and Gardening

XIX. General Custer's Library

XX. The Summer of the Black Hills Expedition

XXI. Domestic Trials

XXII. Capture and Escape of Rain-in-the-Face

XXIII. Garrison Amusements

XXIV. An Indian Council

XXV. Breaking Up of the Missouri

XXVI. Curious Characters and Excursionists among Us

XXVII. Religious Services.--Leave of Absence

XXVIII. A Winter's Journey across the Plains

XXIX. Our Life's Last Chapter

Appendix: With Extracts of General Custer's Letters

Louise Barnett is a professor of American studies at Rutgers University and the author of numerous books, including Touched by Fire: The Life, Death, and Mythic Afterlife of George Armstrong Custer, available in a Bison Books edition, and Atrocity and American Military Justice in Southeast Asia.

"This is a warmly human, first-hand account of the hardships, disappointments, fun and flattery, joys, and heartaches of women who accompanied their military husbands across the sage, up turbulent rivers, over the badlands of Dakota into the far reaches of the Western frontier, during the Indian troubles of the mid-1870s."—Montana: The Magazine of Western History