The Battle of the Little Bighorn was fought on this date in 1876 (only four years before my grandfather Harvey Burgess was born). I've been to the battlefield three times: in 1964, 1989, and 2014. (I guess I'm on the quarter-century plan, which means I'm due to go again in 2039, when I will be 82 years old.) I've read many books about the battle and am still forming my opinion about what happened on that fateful day. In case you're interested, the best book I've read on the subject is John Gray, Custer’s Last Campaign: Mitch Boyer and the Little Bighorn Reconstructed, foreword by Robert M. Utley (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1991). The battlefield is sacred ground to me. Katherine has instructions to scatter my ashes on the battlefield when I exit this vale of tears.
Here is a reconstruction.
