Includes bibliographical references (p. 415-430) and index. From the blurb on the dust jacket: No battle in American history has inspired more debate and conjecture than the one that claimed Custer’s command at the Little Bighorn. Just when it seemed that nothing more could be said, John S. Gray has shed new light on it. Scrupulously researched, Custer’s Last Campaign will, predicts Robert M. Utley, “radically and enduringly transform the historiography of the Battle of the Little Bighorn.”
Starting with the shadowy Mitch Boyer, a mixed-blood heretofore known only as the sole army scout to follow Custer into battle and die with him, Gray devotes Part I of the book to filling in the details of Boyer’s thirty-nine years preceding the Sioux campaign of 1876. His career as a guide and interpreter epitomized the advance of white Americans into Indian country which led to the tragic encounters of that year. Part II covers the two weeks (June 11–25 during which Boyer served as Custer’s key guide and scout. Here the focus and approach change, for the troopers and scouts separate into many parties. Numerous details of the last days, hours, and seconds of the campaign have never before been clarified, and the final action of Custer’s own battalion has remained in limbo.

Using only known primary accounts of the battle and employing topographic research in conjunction with time-motion analysis, Gray has produced, for the first time, a coherent picture of those nebulous events. His method exposes accounts that are blatantly impossible and illuminates the often undervalued interviews with Indian scounts. The resulting reconstruction of the battle is convincing and illuminating—a unique work that will profoundly influence future conceptions of what happened that Sunday at the Little Bighorn."