"If we wish to understand why Custer, Reno, Benteen, or any of the troop commanders did what they did, we must, in imagination, ride at their elbows and try to see what they saw at any given time and place, the nature of the terrain, what they knew or believed about the position and numbers of the enemy, the whereabouts of the different detachments of the regiment, and try to understand their doubts and perplexities resulting from insufficient information... I have sought to explain in a systematic way they why of the battle no so much by dint of quotation from the sources as by subjecting these sources to a rigid analysis in order to discover what they seem to spell after all definite inconsistencies have been canceled out." From Legend into History With the possible exception of Gettysburg, no battle fought on American soil has caused so much discussion or widespread speculation as the epic Custer fight on the wild, rugged terrain north of the Little Big Horn River in Montana on June 25, 1876. The stories th
