Shooting Arrows and Slinging Mud: Custer, the Press, and the Little Bighorn

The jolting news of the defeat of the Seventh Cavalry, the death of the Custer brothers, and the victory of the allied Western Plains Indian forces at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876 came to a post-Civil War nation trying to rally behind a national centennial celebration. Mueller (journalism, Univ. of North Texas; Towel Snapping the Press: Bush's Journey from Locker-Room Antics to Message Control) covers the process of the news reporting on the battle, from army scout Muggins Taylor's initial report to officials at Fort Ellis, Montana Territory, to its appearance in newspapers across the nation. Tracking the coverage along the political spectrum, Mueller analyzes the reporting compared to other news stories and so, in the process, provides readers with a fascinating overview of the postwar political landscape. Mueller examines the attempts by reporters to first determine fact from fiction, the use of the news by politicians seeking reelection, the Hamburg, SC, race riots that nearly reignited a second Civil War and overshadowed reports of the distant "Custer Massacre," editorials ranging from calls for genocide to defense of Indian rights, and the use of humor to deal with the tragic news (e.g., Custer's "Sioux-icide").