THE WIDOWED ONES

A historical study of the wives of the U.S. Army officers who died at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

Most readers are familiar with the 1876 Montana Territory battle in which Gen. George Armstrong Custer’s 7th Cavalry was soundly defeated by warriors from the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho Nations. A neglected element of the narrative is the stories of the wives of the commanding Army officers who died that day. Those seven women—the most famous of whom was Elizabeth Custer—were dubbed “the widowed ones” by a Minneapolis newspaper editor, and in these pages, nonfiction author Enss, film and TV producer Kazanjian, and Western American collector Kortlander meticulously characterize them as a tight-knit group who, in the midst of their grief, communicated with one another for the remainder of their lives. They also point out that the women contended with dire financial straits, as the pensions they received were not enough to live on in the long term, and employment wasn’t easy for the women to secure. Also, as part of the extensive criticism of Custer’s actions, people expressed the opinion that his men all blindly followed his reckless lead, which deeply upset the widows. However, the authors show how the shared loss provided a source of healing: “Elizabeth’s affections and sympathy for the widows of the Seventh Cavalry helped pull her ever so slowly out of the pit of despair—a pit so deep her friends feared for her sanity….A tragic event had banded them together and formed the nexus of a friendship that would last for a lifetime.” The rigor of the scholarly research on display here is quite simply astonishing, as the authors seem to leave no stone unturned. However, this painstaking attention to minute detail can be overwhelming at times; even for such a short book, the mountain of information, including extensive correspondence, eventually becomes exhausting. Still, this is a perspicacious study that not only captures these particular women’s plights, but also an age in which independence for women came with extensive difficulties.

An often dense but well-researched and dramatically conveyed historical account.