Evan S. Connell's Brilliant "Son of the Morning Star"

Today is the 150th anniversary of the Battle of the Little Bighorn. I’m not a student of American history. But this is one event I know something about, thanks to Evan S. Connell’s Son of the Morning Star (1984). What an extraordinary book! 

Connell weaves a rich, intricate tapestry, piecing together multiple versions of the battle, comparing stories, dispelling myths, weighing evidence, searching for truth in a welter of contradictions and inconsistencies. Here, for example, he makes short work of the notion that Custer shot himself:

He is said to have shot himself, the ultimate proof of cowardice, and today many people believe it. That he did so can be verified by numerous testimonials. For instance, an army officer in Wyoming was told by an old Indian that he – the old Indian – was hiding in a buffalo near the battlefield and saw Custer commit suicide. Buffalo seldom wallow on hillsides, but never mind. No powder burn was observed on his temple, but never mind. A right-handed man is not apt to shoot himself in the left temple, but never mind. These days it is stylish to denigrate the general, whose stock sells for nothing. Nineteenth-century Americans thought differently. At that time he was a cavalier without fear and beyond reproach.

Connell doesn’t denigrate Custer. But he doesn’t idolize him, either. He says,

Regardless of Sitting Bull’s presence or absence, regardless of the strategy he did or did not contrive, there is no doubt that Custer tracked these temporarily peaceful tribes. He tracked them, following a plan drawn up by General Terry, and it is clear that he meant to assault them. Instead of being ambushed, therefore, he must be likened to a hunter stepping into the jaws of his own trap.

Connell’s writing is superb – sharp, vivid, perceptive. Here, for example, is his portrait of the great Hunkpapa Lakota warrior Gall:

Even in pudgy middle age Gall was a man of such explosive strength that he fairly cracks the photographer’s glass. Every plate reveals a leader of prodigious psychic and physical energy. Full-length photos make him look squat, with short bent legs and a torso the size of a beer keg. Twelve years after the great fight he stepped on a scale. He weighed 260 pounds. At the Little Bighorn with white stripes painted on his arms and a hatchet in one thick hand, in the fullness of manhood, he must have galloped through Custer’s desperate troops like a wolf through a flock of sheep.

Son of the Morning Star is a remarkable effort to comprehend a chaotic battle in all its horror and complexity. Someday I’ll write an in-depth review of it. For now, on the 150th anniversary of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, I just want to ring the gong for a species of factual masterpiece.