May 12, 2026 • 10 mins
The idea of General George Custer's deadly military blunder being a heroic last stand was constructed over decades to encourage U.S. colonization of the West. Learn how Anheuser-Busch helped in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://history.howstuffworks.com/american-history/custers-last-stand.htm
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff. Lauren
vogelbam here. In eighteen ninety six, twenty years after General
George Armstrong Custer was killed alongside two hundred and sixty
one of his cavalrymen at the Battle of Little Big Horn,
the beer company Anheuser Busch, brewed up a wildly popular
(00:25):
advertising campaign. The company produced one hundred and fifty thousand
copies of a chromo lithographic print called Custer's Last Fight,
and they plastered it in saloons and taverns across the
United States. The print, based on an eighteen eighty eight
painting by Cassiley Adams, depicts a chaotic battle scene on
(00:47):
the Montana Territory plains, with some dozen blue uniformed cavalrymen
laying dead or wounded on the ground as war painted
American Indians finished them off with clubs, spears, and rifles.
In the center of the violent scrum is a long
haired Custer, addressed in fringed buckskin, raising his saber skyward
(01:08):
to dispatch one last enemy warrior before succumbing to the
overwhelming force of his attackers. For the article, this episode
is based on how stuff works. Spoke with Tim Lahman,
a professor of history and political science at Rocky Mountain
College in Billings, Montana. He said, more people learned about
what they think happened at Custer's Last Stand from this
(01:30):
Anheuser Busch lithograph, and probably after a few Budweisers. Even today.
In American mythology, the popular notion of Custer's Last Stand
echoes the story told in this much reproduced painting. Custer's
Down to the Last Defeat ranks with the Alamo as
a tale of white heroism in the face of Native aggression,
(01:54):
of patriotic martyrs dying with their boots on to protect
colonists moving westward. But the real story isn't nearly so
cut and dried. Today, let's talk about what was really
going on with Custer's Last Stand. On June twenty fifth
of eighteen seventy six, the Civil War cavalry hero known
(02:15):
as the Boy General George Custer led a US army
attack on a Native village in the Black Hills in
violation of a treaty promising those lands to the Lakota people.
A Custer and his seventh Cavalry were clearly the aggressors,
and if the Battle of Little Bighorn was anyone's last stand,
it was that of a group of Plains Indians defending
(02:36):
their very way of life. Layman said it was crystal
clear to sitting bull in the Lakota that they would
be attacked that summer, and they saw the confrontation as
one last great fight for their free way of living
before they had to submit to agencies and reservations and
federal domination. Custer was a complex and controversial figure even
(03:00):
in his day. A brash troublemaker at West Point who
graduated last in his class a, Custer earned fame during
a series of heroic cavalry charges at the Battle of Gettysburg,
which landed him on the cover of Harper's Weekly and
propelled him to becoming the youngest general in US military history.
After the Civil War, Custer chased further glory on the
(03:22):
Western frontier and rebranded himself as an and I quote
Indian hunter, a complete with buckskin suits cut in European
styles with fringe on the callers and sleeves. In dispatches
that Custer wrote for newspapers and magazines back east, he
sold himself as a veteran frontiersman with intimate knowledge of
(03:44):
indigenous ways, but in reality, Custer didn't speak a lick
of Lakota or Cheyenne languages and had very little understanding
of the peoples he fought. After the eighteen sixty eight
Battle of Washida River, Custer bravely or foolishly went to
a Cheyenne encampment, nearly alone, to negotiate the relief of hostages.
(04:07):
The Cheyenne invited him to a pipe ceremony to settle
the agreement, which Custer took as a sign of respect,
but that wasn't the intended message. Layman explained. They understood
that Custer promised never to attack the Cheyenne again, and
if he did, he would be rubbed out. They took
the pipe, dumped out the ashes, and rubbed them into
(04:29):
the dirt as a sign of what would happen to him.
In eighteen sixty eight, Fort Laramie Treaty created a reservation
of land for the Lakota people in the Black Hills
region of modern day Montana, But when gold was discovered
in the Black Hills in eighteen seventy four, Congress decided
it was time to rewrite that Treaty, Custer and the
(04:51):
seventh Cavalry were sent to Montana Territory under the pretense
of convincing resistance leaders like Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse
to come to the nego otiating table, but the real
intention was a colonist takeover of the lucrative Black Hill's
gold deposits. In June of eighteen seventy six, Custer was
given orders to engage with the Lakota at the head
(05:13):
of the Rosebud River, but Custer decided to follow tracks
to the nearby Little Bighorn River. The preferred US Army
tactic was a dawn raid on Native villages, but Custer
worried that waiting for morning would sacrifice the element of surprise,
so he split his forces in three and ordered the
attack on Sitting Bull's encampment in mid afternoon. Under Custer's
(05:38):
battle plan, Major Marcus Reno led a direct charge into
the village while Custer and one hundred and twenty men
occupied a ridge where they could round up any escaping
women and children to hold his hostages. This was a
charming tactic Custer had used before to force surrender. Unfortunately
for Custer, the plan fell apart almost instantly. Arino's men
(06:03):
were easily repulsed by the Lakota and Cheyenne fighters, and
a contingent of Ogla La Lakota, led by Crazy Horse,
circled back on Custer's forces and trapped them on what's
now known as Last Stand Hill. A. Custer ordered his
men to shoot their horses and stack the carcasses for
a makeshift bunker, but it was hopeless. The end captured
(06:26):
in paintings like Custer's Last Fight show Custer and his
men bravely fighting until their last breath, but the archaeological
record and contemporary Native accounts say otherwise. Olayman said the
evidence suggests tactical disintegration, which is a nicer way of
saying that they got really scared and started to run
(06:47):
once the panic set in. Indian combatants said it was
like hunting buffalo. We just rode down and killed them.
The shocking news of Custer's death spread like wildfire, and
the newspapers immediately cast him as a martyr for manifest destiny.
The New York Herald published a wholly fictional account of
(07:08):
the battle's final moments, quote in that mad charge up
the narrow ravine with the rocks above, raining down, led
upon the faded three hundred, with fires spouting from every
bush ahead, with the wild swarming horsemen circling along the
heights like shrieking vultures, waiting for the moment to sweep
down and finish the bloody tale. Every form, from private
(07:30):
to general, rises to heroic size. They died as grandly
as Homer's demigods. Success was beyond their grasps, so they
died to a man. It's unclear where the particular phrase
Custer's last stand was first coin, but the mythology of
a last stand was well entrenched at this point in
(07:52):
the American Indian Wars. Custer himself had used the same
poetic language in a letter to the father of a
soldier whose company was by a Native ambush in eighteen
sixty seven. In the decades after Custer's death, the last
stand myth was popularized, and not only in beer advertisements,
but in Buffalo Bill Cody's immensely popular Wild West show,
(08:14):
in which the real sitting Bull actually participated for a time.
And Custer's widowed wife, Libby, spent the next fifty two
years of her long life writing books and giving lectures
about her heroic husband that cemented his legacy. This fictional
concept of Custer's heroism and his last stand was used
(08:35):
to justify unbridled westward expansion, despite the fact that there
was already a civilization there. It just didn't look like
what European Americans expected, and it had resources that they wanted.
Layman said. It created the image the Custer in a
last stand was simply defending himself, and that European Americans
(08:58):
more broadly, were defending themsel from these aggressive hordes of Indians.
People created the death that they wanted to imagine had
happened to their hero. It turned out that the last
stand story spread by the pro Custer press had its
intended effect. The army experienced a rush of recruitment of
(09:20):
so called Custer Avengers, who waged a series of brutal
campaigns over the following year that defeated the holdout Lakota
and Cheyenne resistance. Today's episode is based on the article
Beer Ads and wild West Shows hyped the myth of
Custer's heroic last Stand on how stuffworks dot com, written
(09:43):
by Dave Ruse. Brain Stuff is production by Heart Radio
in partnership with how stuffworks dot com and is produced
by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from my Heart Radio.
Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff. Lauren
vogelbam here. In eighteen ninety six, twenty years after General
George Armstrong Custer was killed alongside two hundred and sixty
one of his cavalrymen at the Battle of Little Big Horn,
the beer company Anheuser Busch, brewed up a wildly popular
(00:25):
advertising campaign. The company produced one hundred and fifty thousand
copies of a chromo lithographic print called Custer's Last Fight,
and they plastered it in saloons and taverns across the
United States. The print, based on an eighteen eighty eight
painting by Cassiley Adams, depicts a chaotic battle scene on
(00:47):
the Montana Territory plains, with some dozen blue uniformed cavalrymen
laying dead or wounded on the ground as war painted
American Indians finished them off with clubs, spears, and rifles.
In the center of the violent scrum is a long
haired Custer, addressed in fringed buckskin, raising his saber skyward
(01:08):
to dispatch one last enemy warrior before succumbing to the
overwhelming force of his attackers. For the article, this episode
is based on how stuff works. Spoke with Tim Lahman,
a professor of history and political science at Rocky Mountain
College in Billings, Montana. He said, more people learned about
what they think happened at Custer's Last Stand from this
(01:30):
Anheuser Busch lithograph, and probably after a few Budweisers. Even today.
In American mythology, the popular notion of Custer's Last Stand
echoes the story told in this much reproduced painting. Custer's
Down to the Last Defeat ranks with the Alamo as
a tale of white heroism in the face of Native aggression,
(01:54):
of patriotic martyrs dying with their boots on to protect
colonists moving westward. But the real story isn't nearly so
cut and dried. Today, let's talk about what was really
going on with Custer's Last Stand. On June twenty fifth
of eighteen seventy six, the Civil War cavalry hero known
(02:15):
as the Boy General George Custer led a US army
attack on a Native village in the Black Hills in
violation of a treaty promising those lands to the Lakota people.
A Custer and his seventh Cavalry were clearly the aggressors,
and if the Battle of Little Bighorn was anyone's last stand,
it was that of a group of Plains Indians defending
(02:36):
their very way of life. Layman said it was crystal
clear to sitting bull in the Lakota that they would
be attacked that summer, and they saw the confrontation as
one last great fight for their free way of living
before they had to submit to agencies and reservations and
federal domination. Custer was a complex and controversial figure even
(03:00):
in his day. A brash troublemaker at West Point who
graduated last in his class a, Custer earned fame during
a series of heroic cavalry charges at the Battle of Gettysburg,
which landed him on the cover of Harper's Weekly and
propelled him to becoming the youngest general in US military history.
After the Civil War, Custer chased further glory on the
(03:22):
Western frontier and rebranded himself as an and I quote
Indian hunter, a complete with buckskin suits cut in European
styles with fringe on the callers and sleeves. In dispatches
that Custer wrote for newspapers and magazines back east, he
sold himself as a veteran frontiersman with intimate knowledge of
(03:44):
indigenous ways, but in reality, Custer didn't speak a lick
of Lakota or Cheyenne languages and had very little understanding
of the peoples he fought. After the eighteen sixty eight
Battle of Washida River, Custer bravely or foolishly went to
a Cheyenne encampment, nearly alone, to negotiate the relief of hostages.
(04:07):
The Cheyenne invited him to a pipe ceremony to settle
the agreement, which Custer took as a sign of respect,
but that wasn't the intended message. Layman explained. They understood
that Custer promised never to attack the Cheyenne again, and
if he did, he would be rubbed out. They took
the pipe, dumped out the ashes, and rubbed them into
(04:29):
the dirt as a sign of what would happen to him.
In eighteen sixty eight, Fort Laramie Treaty created a reservation
of land for the Lakota people in the Black Hills
region of modern day Montana, But when gold was discovered
in the Black Hills in eighteen seventy four, Congress decided
it was time to rewrite that Treaty, Custer and the
(04:51):
seventh Cavalry were sent to Montana Territory under the pretense
of convincing resistance leaders like Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse
to come to the nego otiating table, but the real
intention was a colonist takeover of the lucrative Black Hill's
gold deposits. In June of eighteen seventy six, Custer was
given orders to engage with the Lakota at the head
(05:13):
of the Rosebud River, but Custer decided to follow tracks
to the nearby Little Bighorn River. The preferred US Army
tactic was a dawn raid on Native villages, but Custer
worried that waiting for morning would sacrifice the element of surprise,
so he split his forces in three and ordered the
attack on Sitting Bull's encampment in mid afternoon. Under Custer's
(05:38):
battle plan, Major Marcus Reno led a direct charge into
the village while Custer and one hundred and twenty men
occupied a ridge where they could round up any escaping
women and children to hold his hostages. This was a
charming tactic Custer had used before to force surrender. Unfortunately
for Custer, the plan fell apart almost instantly. Arino's men
(06:03):
were easily repulsed by the Lakota and Cheyenne fighters, and
a contingent of Ogla La Lakota, led by Crazy Horse,
circled back on Custer's forces and trapped them on what's
now known as Last Stand Hill. A. Custer ordered his
men to shoot their horses and stack the carcasses for
a makeshift bunker, but it was hopeless. The end captured
(06:26):
in paintings like Custer's Last Fight show Custer and his
men bravely fighting until their last breath, but the archaeological
record and contemporary Native accounts say otherwise. Olayman said the
evidence suggests tactical disintegration, which is a nicer way of
saying that they got really scared and started to run
(06:47):
once the panic set in. Indian combatants said it was
like hunting buffalo. We just rode down and killed them.
The shocking news of Custer's death spread like wildfire, and
the newspapers immediately cast him as a martyr for manifest destiny.
The New York Herald published a wholly fictional account of
(07:08):
the battle's final moments, quote in that mad charge up
the narrow ravine with the rocks above, raining down, led
upon the faded three hundred, with fires spouting from every
bush ahead, with the wild swarming horsemen circling along the
heights like shrieking vultures, waiting for the moment to sweep
down and finish the bloody tale. Every form, from private
(07:30):
to general, rises to heroic size. They died as grandly
as Homer's demigods. Success was beyond their grasps, so they
died to a man. It's unclear where the particular phrase
Custer's last stand was first coin, but the mythology of
a last stand was well entrenched at this point in
(07:52):
the American Indian Wars. Custer himself had used the same
poetic language in a letter to the father of a
soldier whose company was by a Native ambush in eighteen
sixty seven. In the decades after Custer's death, the last
stand myth was popularized, and not only in beer advertisements,
but in Buffalo Bill Cody's immensely popular Wild West show,
(08:14):
in which the real sitting Bull actually participated for a time.
And Custer's widowed wife, Libby, spent the next fifty two
years of her long life writing books and giving lectures
about her heroic husband that cemented his legacy. This fictional
concept of Custer's heroism and his last stand was used
(08:35):
to justify unbridled westward expansion, despite the fact that there
was already a civilization there. It just didn't look like
what European Americans expected, and it had resources that they wanted.
Layman said. It created the image the Custer in a
last stand was simply defending himself, and that European Americans
(08:58):
more broadly, were defending themsel from these aggressive hordes of Indians.
People created the death that they wanted to imagine had
happened to their hero. It turned out that the last
stand story spread by the pro Custer press had its
intended effect. The army experienced a rush of recruitment of
(09:20):
so called Custer Avengers, who waged a series of brutal
campaigns over the following year that defeated the holdout Lakota
and Cheyenne resistance. Today's episode is based on the article
Beer Ads and wild West Shows hyped the myth of
Custer's heroic last Stand on how stuffworks dot com, written
(09:43):
by Dave Ruse. Brain Stuff is production by Heart Radio
in partnership with how stuffworks dot com and is produced
by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from my Heart Radio.
Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
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