Fates Change Horses

     During a lull between military campaigns, officers and men performed mundane duties of relative routine reveille to tattoo. The prosaic record for the year 1875 scarcely betrayed an unimaginable catastrophe on the distant horizon. Little but a fevered nightmare then reckoned a coming hour when the fate of Custer’s famed Seventh Cavalry regiment would change horses.

 

     As our project remains in progress, web content is intended as both informational and promotional—a peek into the work in progress. In the meantime, we are publishing two introductory books. An oversized special edition 204-page volume covers the complete 12-exposure set. A standard format edition spotlights two images from Goff's series:

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     Summer with the Seventh Cavalry: The O. S. Goff Images juxtaposes gray scale originals with modern colorizations. This exquisite coffee table sized volume looks beyond the lens by furnishing a backdrop of period documents and illustrations. Individuals are identified and events defined through a chronology supported by corroborating material. The dozen exposures are annotated and interpreted as a single series specific to the time range of 21st June to 6th July 1875. The authors share fascinating stories, correct long-held errors, and provide fresh insight into the “shadows” of individuals captured in Goff’s exposures.

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     Camping with Custer’s 7th Cavalry on the Heart River focuses solely on two of Goff’s exposures—those taken at a riverside campsite during a holiday excursion. This 100-page beautifully printed volume invites the reader on a journey to the Heart River Valley. Come along as the authors share postcards from their Dakota Territory time-travel experiences. Please visit the menu above at SUMMER 1875 and HEART RIVER for further details on both books. These unique and informative pictorial histories were published 11 December 2022. A softcover edition of Camping with Custer's Cavalry on the Heart River was released 28 April 2023. All editions are available at BLURB.COM BOOKSTORE. The full scope of this project will cover a 21-month period between the final two military campaigns of George Armstrong Custer’s career. Rather than traditional military study, we present a documentary study centered and generated chiefly through primary sources and contemporaneous materials. By offering our work to the imposing library on this subject, we recall historian Edgar I. Stewart’s statement concerning the Little Bighorn fight:

 

“… the blood shed on that historic Sunday has been exceeded many times over by the ink poured out from the fountain pens of historians who have discussed the subject in all its ramifications and implications.”

 

     In 1982, James Patrick Dowd compiled an exhaustive 200-page bibliography of Custer works under the title Custer Lives! as answer to exact quantity of ink poured forth on subject. Dowd sourced three thousand entries of which 576 are print books. It is indeed apparent the fountain pen serves as mightily as the sword! To gauge a current estimate, we reference WorldCat, the online library database. The search terms “little bighorn” or “little big horn” reveal U. S. library collections offer approximately 615 results of contemporary titles published between 1982 and 2019—just over sixteen books per year. Further data discloses “little bighorn/big horn” titles emerged year by year without cessation, and virtually consecutively, from 1950. For our interest we chose to contain informal count to non-fiction/non-juvenile titles specific to the fight itself. Were a broader net cast to include thesis, manuscript, juvenile, fiction, periodical, and associated material on the subject, the tally would significantly increase beyond a nominal 1191 titles. Yet even the ink begetting non-fiction titles tells sufficient tale. From the Bismarck Tribune’s 12 July 1876 front page headline screaming “Massacred!” to this very sentence, the literary life of Custer’s Seventh Cavalry lives on and lives long after pen and author both turn to dust. As authors, rather than statisticians, we reflect on the preceding numerical summary as contrast to our own project. Fates Change Horses is born as a horse of the proverbial different color.

 

     When Capt. Marsh docked the Far West at midnight on the 5th of July 1876 at Bismarck a figurative line of division split the history of Fort Abraham Lincoln into noetic divide of ‘before’ and ‘after.’ Blessed the previous year by domestic calm, Elizabeth Custer gazed from her beloved bay window, looking forward to the summer of 1875 with contented sigh.

 

"When spring came again, it is impossible to express the joy I felt that there was to be no summer campaign; and for the first time in many years, I saw the grass grow without a shudder."

--Elizabeth B. Custer, "Boots and Saddles,” or Life in Dakota with General Custer (1885)

 

     While various histories on the Seventh Cavalry allude in abbreviated manner to the period of our study, only Libbie in her first published memoir specifically addressed that interval at any length. As Mrs. Custer’s recollections emanated from marital rather than martial pen, her tender memories of army life may not wholly answer as rigorous factual account. In volume one of Fates Change Horses, we flesh out subtly drawn references within her work—matching and corroborating passages to primary source documentation and setting events in chronological order. Where necessary we break through that common barrier of 19th century literary technique of concealing personal names by way of abbreviation or alteration. While further spilling ink onto pages of general, if not specific subject, we trust that our project adds value to historical record by:

 

*filling a critical gap within the range of literature available on the Seventh Cavalry
*chronicling events as recorded in official, personal, and journalistic accounts
*revealing personal and social stories of life in garrison at Fort Abraham Lincoln

*identifying people and places from the obscure shadows of O. S. Goff’s lens

 

     Thank you for joining us at this website. Summoning the spirits of once upon a summer on the American frontier, let’s begin our journey.

Ho! All aboard for the West!