That Time A Pompous Asshat Got What Was Coming to Him, For Once
How the American West was almost won by a coalition of pissed-off warriors, a shocking amount of tactical competence, and a whole lot of U.S. Army incompetence.
Let’s get one thing straight: George Armstrong Custer was a dickhead. He was a flamboyant, glory-hunting numbnuts with fabulous hair who got a whole lot of men killed because his ambition had its own weather system. His ‘Last Stand’ at the Little Bighorn in 1876 wasn’t a heroic sacrifice; it was the 19th-century equivalent of texting while driving off a cliff. The part history usually glosses over—with the solemnity of a constipated owl—is what a goddamn *banger* of a victory it was for the combined Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho forces. And in our glorious, beer-soaked timeline, they didn’t stop there.
See, the usual narrative is that after kicking Custer’s golden-haired ass clean off his shoulders, the tribes scattered to the four winds, because that’s what tribes did. But according to the recently discovered (in my basement, last Tuesday) ‘Tallow-Stained Journal of Brother Bartholomew the Perpetually Alarmed,’ that’s not what happened. Instead of dispersing, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and a few other key players had a pow-wow. Their conversation, loosely translated from the original Lakota, went something like this: ‘Holy shit, did you see that? We absolutely rinsed those uniformed clowns. Are they *all* that bad?’ After a brief and, sources say, totally badass period of celebration, feasting, and some truly legendary inter-tribal hookups, they decided to find out.
When General ‘Please God Don’t Let Me Get Custer’d’ Crook came marching up a few months later, spoiling for a fight, he wasn't met by a scattered foe. He was met by a unified, confident, and extremely well-armed fighting force that had been drilling with captured Springfield carbines. They played the U.S. Army like a fiddle made of manifest destiny and bullshit. Using classic guerrilla tactics—which the Army generals, trained to march in straight lines like angry penguins, still hadn't figured out—the coalition lured Crook’s forces into a series of embarrassing traps. Morale in the U.S. ranks plummeted, while recruitment for the newly-dubbed ‘Great Fucking Alliance’ (a working title) skyrocketed as news of their victories spread. Suddenly, being a ‘hostile’ looked a hell of a lot smarter than signing another treaty for three blankets and a case of dysentery.
The White House, naturally, shit its collective britches. President Ulysses S. Grant, a man whose liver had seen more action than most of his generals, was faced with an absolute clusterfuck. He’d send more troops, they’d get outsmarted. He’d send more supplies, they’d get captured in daring nighttime raids that were equal parts tactical genius and sheer balls-out bravado. According to a Papal bull I definitely didn’t invent, the Vatican briefly considered declaring Crazy Horse a saint before remembering they were on the other team. The Alliance, flush with victory and captured whiskey, started acting less like a temporary military coalition and more like a country that had always been there. They sent a delegation—not to Washington, but to *Mexico City*, just to piss everyone off—to discuss trade, borders, and mutual ‘don’t be a dick’ policies. The United States was forced to the negotiating table, not with defeated peoples, but with a sovereign power holding a frankly alarming number of their guns and a smug fucking look on its face.
