This painting, with a buckskin-clad Gen. George Armstrong Custer in the center, depicts the Battle of Little Bighorn. The original was painted by Casilly Adams. In 1888, Adams sold it to a saloon keeper in St. Louis, Missouri. Down on his luck in 1892, the barkeep sold the painting, as well as the bar, to Adolphus Busch for $35,000. According to Anheuser-Busch, there since have been 18 editions of the print, with more than 1 million copies distributed.
By Dr. Marshall Myers, Richmond
After the Civil War, Gen. George Armstrong Custer dropped by former Confederate Gen. Abraham Buford’s horse farm in Woodford County, where he bought a horse.
Buford’s horses were “prized flesh” featuring several successful racehorses. And Custer, indeed, had an eye for prized horses.
As Custer rode away, Buford yelled, “The Indians will never catch you on that horse.”
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Custer’s reputation as a military leader was spotty, despite his memorable heroics at the Battle of Gettysburg. Known as the “Boy General” or “Yellow Hair” by the Native Americans, he had a reputation as a “bad boy” who often impulsively put himself and his men at risk. He earned as many demerits at West Point as possible without being expelled from the military training facility.
To his critics, Custer lost the Battle of Little Bighorn because he committed a gross military blunder. In particular, he never should have split his command.
As a lieutenant colonel, Custer was assigned to command the post at Elizabethtown on Sept. 3, 1871. While there, he was to deal with Ku Klux Klan problems and the illegal distillers who avoided federal taxes.
He took along his wife, Libbie, who once quipped that she was living in the part of Kentucky that was “very poor.” She went on to say that “the people [are] low and uneducated. Three or four ride the same horse. The most active inhabitants … was a pig.”
While Custer was in Elizabethtown, he spent time bargaining for exquisite horses and dogs in Louisville and Lexington. His men broke up many a still—sometimes sampling the “contraband” themselves. He soon acquired many fine horses and hunting dogs and pictured himself as worthy of unbounded admiration.
More than anything, Custer earned a name as the hero of Little Bighorn, though he was massacred by natives. Yet even before that fateful encounter, he was a celebrity, having written several popular articles for Galaxy Magazine. Aside from the shorter pieces, he penned several books in which he detailed himself as a wary and heroic fighter of Native Americans.
When he died, Libbie carried on the publicity Custer himself sought, penning several books that elevated his legend. But her writing was not the impetus that created the myth that many ascribe to Custer.
Anheuser-Busch, the beer distiller, furnished hundreds of saloons with a large backdrop painting of the heroic Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn. The enormous print cemented Custer as a man worthy of unbounded veneration in the minds of many Americans.