After reading Killing Custer, I really began to think about what it means to be an American. I realize that “what is an American?” is one of the main themes in this course, but until I read this book I really didn’t understand how packed of a question this is. America is the land of the free, home of the brave; we stand for freedom, peace, and liberty. We all hear these phrases as children and we feel a sense of pride about being an American and living in such a prosperous and innovative nation. Would we really carry this continuing sense of pride to such an extreme if we actually begin to recognize the things that we did in order to become the nation we are today?
The land of the free? The “real” Americans, the Native Americans, were rounded up, herded off, and put on reservations in the name of national progress and expansion. The same people the Europeans idolized for their free manner and connection to the land were the same ones who stripped them of these characteristics. Home of the Brave? What do we consider brave? The slaughtering of Natives over sometimes false claims of aggression? Do we consider Custer brave? History books and tales of life one the frontier certainly seems to put him in a positive light. He was our great martyr of 19th century expansion. After reading Killing Custer I feel that “The Custer Myth” should be broken. It showed his flaws, especially his reckless behavior concerning not only his troop but his self, and really showed his treatment towards the Native Americans.
In so many ways this book made me realize even more that history is told by the winners of a war, and not by the losers. This book definitely gave a voice to the Native Americans, who for so long had been silenced. I am proud to be an American. There is no other place I would want to live, but it makes me cringe when I think of the fact that I live on the soil of a people that were murdered, demoralized, and in some ways forgotten about. After reading this book, I wish again that the books that we once read in our middle and high schools had a more even account of history, not just from the stand point of white America.
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I agree that this book shed a lot of light on the common American misperception of Custer and the Native Americans. However, the acts of White Americans who slaughtered Native Americans were not indicative of White Americans as a whole, just as the actions of Native Americans who slaughtered White settlers were not indicative of all Native Americans. In this sense, this biased account of the interactions between Whites and Native Americans probably provides an inaccurate account, in the same way that portrayals by White historians fall out of line with reality.
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