Custer's Second-to-last Stand

Tu Tangata, Issue 21, 1 December 1984, Page 24

Custer's Second-to-last Stand

In this latest of Professor T. Titonui’s series of articles about the impact of the Maori on world history, he discusses one of the most extraordinary but least known incidents of the second Taranaki war.

General George Armstrong Custer was one of the most dashing heroes of the old American West. In the Civil War he became a Brigadier-General at the age of only 23; at the war’s end, as the world knows, he joined the 7th U.S. Cavalry and distinguished himself as an Indian fighter.

Less well-known is the fact of his court-martial in 1867 for ill-treating his troops and then deserting them. He was suspended for a year, and afterwards claimed in his memoirs that he went to live during this time on the shores of Lake Erie where he passed his time hunting and fishing. But in South Taranaki they tell a different story.

Despite his conceit, his tantrums and his flamboyant uniforms, Custer was a soldier through and through. A year’s enforced idleness would never have suited his gung-ho temperament and he looked around for more action, preferably unofficial and preferably killing natives.

In California he had befriended Gustavus von Tempsky, who had gone there prospecting for gold. Von Tempsky, who shared many of Custer’s characteristics, welcomed the chance to take his old friend on the campaign trail.

So it was that Custer was among the men under McDonnell’s command one night in August 1868 who set out to attack Titokowaru’s pa at Te Ngutu o te Manu. As he later related to fellowAmerican Kimble Bent, Custer was alarmed. He was a cavalryman, but in the deep bush north of Hawera there was hardly room to swing a sabre, let alone ride a horse. And one of his heroic cavalry charges was out of the question anyway as the whole force was on foot. The weather was terrible, the forest dark, eerie and thick with rata vines utterly different from the open prairie.

The enemy was different too. The Sioux and Cheyenne might be frightening, but they were not cunning junglefighters led by a one-eyed warriormystic who encouraged cannibalism.

So for all his famous bravery, Custer was ill-prepared for the battle which ensued when his company of Armed Constabulary, badly led and hopelessly lost, stumbled into an ambush.

Von Tempsky was shot dead, others were shot or hacked down. Custer panicked and fled. He might have got away but his fancy spurs tangled in the undergrowth. He was captured by Titokowaru and might have been eaten but for one of those quirks of fate which makes history such a fascinating subject of study. For among his captors was a compatriot, Kimble Bent. Although Bent was part-Indian himself, he had (until his desertion to Titokowaru’s camp) been in the British Army for some years and had probably not heard of Custer’s reputation. What he did hear was a prisoner with long yellow hair gibbering in terror with an American accent. Another American! Bent pleaded for Custer’s life.

One taste of action against the Maori was enough for Custer he returned to the States with extraordinary speed for within two months he was back in the saddle killing Cheyennes.

it is easy to understand why the whole sordid incident was never reported. Custer wanted to keep quiet his shame; the only man among the New Zealand authorities who knew who he was, Gustavus von Tempsky, was dead; Bent knew, but either never told Cowan (who interviewed him years afterwards) or was not believed and it must be admitted that the story is almost too fantastic to be true.

But the oral tradition of Ngati Ruanui cannot be overlooked, and Custer’s ex-

perience certainly goes some way to explain his behaviour back in the United States. His love of the cavalry and of the wide open spaces of the North American prairie; his conviction that savages must not be allowed to impede the great march of civilisation: these feelings can only have been reinforced by his one and only confrontation with the Maori. And perhaps too his bravery was fueled by that dark secret from his past when he fled in fear. He lived the rest of his life trying to atone for the moment when he lost his nerve. Why else would he have led his troopers against such heavy odds eight years later at the Little Big Horn, when he lost not his nerve but his scalp?

It is not known whether Sitting Bull and Titokowaru corresponded, but we can be sure that they would have respected each other: both had lost out in their struggle against the Whites, but both could look back to the day when they had given General Custer a hiding.

Next issue: What was found in the long-lost arms of the Venus de MHo.

Sir, I would like the congratulate Prof. Titonui on his first essay in the proposed series Maori Impact On World History. It is an outstanding contribution to scholarship, as it resolves certain problems in Biblical hagiology that have eluded researchers for some considerable time. Naturally, should the good professor discover in the course of further research the identity of the Fourth Magi, I would be much obliged if he would communicate with me at the following address: Ben Haifa Post Office, Bethlehem. Unlike his companions, the Fourth Magi did, in fact, leave without paying his taxes.

skj

Mulla Khalifa