ABOUT THE PODCAST NOVEL
On June 25th, 1876, General George Custer died at the Battle of Little Big Horn. (Or did he? But that's another story.)
Why did Custer rush into battle against the largest agglomeration of Indians ever seen in the West, without waiting for support from other cavalry contingents which were on their way to the scene?
To answer that, you need to know what happened on June 28th.
"The Glorious Boy," a podcast novel by Aram Schefrin, tells Custer's story from after the Civil War through the date of his massacre, in the voice of Captain Frederick Benteen, the soldier who hated Custer.
It's the story of a small but romantic man longing for past glory, seduced by capitalism, corruption and political ambition.
This is Aram Schefrin's fourth podcast novel, following "Marwan: The Autobiography of a 9/11 Hijacker," "Consider the Elephant: The Life and Death of John Wilkes Booth as told by his brother Edwin," and "The Tenth Cow," the tale of a plot to speed the Messiah's arrival at the risk of nuclear war.
All of these podcasts can be found at podiobooks.com, libsyn.com and on iTunes. Or you can listen to or download each chapter from this website.
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CHAPTER 1
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At Fort Duchesne in Utah in 1887, Captain Frederick Benteen, an old man now, is finishing out his soldiering career fighting Mormons who are disobeying Federal Law.
The Indian Wars are over, ended with the surrender of Geronimo in 1886. Benteen, now a drunk, picks fights with men he imagines are Mormons, and disrespects important women at Fort Duchesne. At his courtmartial, he tells the judges about his distinguished career in the Civil War. The prosecutor brings up the old charge that Benteen caused Custer's death at the Little Big Horn. Benteen retorts that it's Custer who has caused the death of Benteen.
Zulu cars
Spencer rifle
Henry rifle
Mormons in Utah
The Finger Lakes
Jamaica Ginger
Frequent micturition
Calhounism
Wilson's Creek
Bolivar
Pea Ridge, wilson's creek,
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GERONIMO
CHAPTER 2
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Benteen blames Custer's wife Libbie for spreading the story that Benteen had set Custer up to die. Thus begins the story:
After the end of the Civil War, General Custer is assigned to Fort Riley in Kansas. Libbie insists that her friend Anna come along to keep her company. On the way, in St. Louis, Custer, Libbie and Anna see a performance by Lawrence Barrett which reduces Custer to tears (something that happens to him often.) That night, after sex with Libbie (they have an extravagant physical relationship), Custer is not satisfied, and appears at Anna's door.
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CHAPTER 3
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Arriving the next day at Fort Riley, they are met by Major Alfred Gibbs, who commands the post. And waiting for Custer in Gibbs' dining room is General William Tecumseh Sherman. Sherman asks Custer if he misses the War. As Benteen tells it, Custer had hated to see it end. Beginning at Bull Run and ending with Lee's surrender at Appomattox, Custer had built a reputation for leading glorious charges and had been appointed the army's youngest volunteer brigadier general. But when the war ended, he had returned to his regular army rank of captain, and Libbie had insisted he find another career. He had gone to New York, where he'd met a general he had known in the war. The general cautioned him against leaving the army now. The transcontinental railroads were in the process of being built; they would run through Indian country, the army expected a fight, and there would be plenty for a cavalry soldier to do.
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The Kansas Pacific Railroad
End of Track
Junction City
7th Cavalry Regimental History
A letter from Libbie at Fort Riley
Major Gibbs and Custer in the Civil War
Custer at Bull Run
Custer at Gettysburg
Custer at West Point
Custer in the Shenandoah
General George McClellan
Delmonico's
Fifth Avenue Hotel,
The Union Pacific Railroad
The Central Pacific Railroad
Nymphs de pave
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CUSTER'S GREAT DAYS
APPOMATTOX
CHAPTER 4
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Custer is feted at the New York Broker's Board and in the salon of the financier Levi Morton. He meets the actress Maggie Mitchell, and sees the great singer Clara Kellogg. In his hotel lobby, he is accosted by Porfirio Diaz, who invites him to put together a cavalry unit and come to Mexico to fight the French-installed Emperor Maximilian and his Confederate supporters. But the President forbids it, afraid it might offend the French. With no other prospects, Custer goes to Kansas as a lieutenant colonel commanding the new Seventh Cavalry.
August Belmont
Niblo's Theater
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PORFIRIO DIAZ
CHAPTER 5
Sherman tells Custer how Indians fight. Custer's brother, Tom, joins the 7th. Custer throws a dinner for his officers, which ends in a poker game in which Benteen wipes Custer out. Benteen describes the hard life of the soldier on the plains.
Tom Custer
Wickcliffe Cooper
Myles Keogh
Counting coup
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MYLES KEOGH
CHAPTER 6
Colonel Smith, who commands at Fort Riley, explains what's happened out here up to now:
The enemy is the Cheyenne Indians. The Cheyenne had lived in Minnesota until the Chippewa, armed by the British, had driven them out. Some Cheyenne had gathered with the Sioux in the Black Hills of Dakota; some had gone to Texas, where they discovered horses, and soon became fierce warriors. The Dog Soldiers, a Cheyenne warrior clan, lived between the two branches on the Smoky Hill River in Kansas.
The discovery of gold in Colorado had led to demands that the Cheyenne be displaced from the plains east of the Rockies. At a parley at Fort Wise in 1861, the southern Cheyenne had agreed to give up their claim to their hunting lands and gather at a reservation at Sand Creek, in southern Colorado, on the banks of the Arkansas River. But the Cheyenne believed the treaty allowed them to hunt their old lands, and when they did they stole a few head of cattle from a ranch on the Smoky Hill. Colorado troops under Colonel John Chivington were sent out to punish them.
The troops never found the rustlers, but took vengeance on Lean Bear's innocent Cheyenne camped on Ash Creek. Enraged, the Dog Soldiers repeatedly attacked whites, although Chief Black Kettle, the Cheyenne's great leader, tried to stop them. In response, Chivington struck, not the Dog Soldiers, but Black Kettle's encampment on Sand Creek. Catching these indians - who had done no raiding - asleep, the troopers killed, scalped and mutilated twenty-eight braves and 105 women and children.
The Dog Soldiers and some Sand Creek survivors went north to join Red Cloud's Oglala Sioux on the Tongue River in what is now Wyoming and Montana. Black Kettle, though, went further south to the Washita River on the border of what are now Oklahoma and Texas.
That was the situation when Custer came to Kansas.
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SAND CREEK
CHAPTER 7
While Custer and Benteen languish at Fort Riley, Captain William Fetterman leads a contingent out of Fort Phil Kearny, a post built to protect the main road to the Montana gold fields, to respond to an Indian attack on a wood train out of the fort. Disobeying orders to confine himself to rescuing the wood train, Fetterman charges up Lodge Trail Ridge following taunting Indians. As he comes down the other side of the ridge, Sioux and Cheyenne spring a trap. Fetterman and all his men are wiped out and horribly mutilated.
In response, General Sherman sends General Hancock after the southern Cheyenne (who were not involved in the attack on Fetterman.) Hancock meets Custer and lays out his plans.
Alder Gulch
The Platte Trail
John Bozeman
The Bozeman Trail
Col. Henry Carrington
Lake De Smet
The Fetterman Massacre
John Portugee Phillips
General Winfield Scott Hancock
Henry Morton Stanley
James Gordon Bennet, Sr.
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FETTERMAN MASSACRE
GENERAL HANCOCK
CHAPTER 8
General Hancock orders the Cheyenne to parley at Fort Larned. But the Cheyenne don't appear, so Hancock moves out towards their village on the Pawnee Fork. Sioux and Cheyenne chiefs try to dissuade him from approaching the village; after Sand Creek, they were afraid for their women and children. A parley on middle ground is not conclusive, and, after waiting again for Cheyenne to come in, Hancock moves closer to the village. The Indians burn the prairie grass to deny forage to the cavalry horses, send their women and children fleeing, and four hundred Indians form a line, ready to charge. But one of them puts up a white flag, and Hancock and Custer meet Chief Roman Nose between the armies. Roman Nose tells Hancock the Indians don't want war. Hancock orders him to bring back the women and children and to meet with the soldiers again closer to the Cheyenne camp. Soon Hancock's scouts report that all the Cheyenne have abandoned the camp. Hancock determines to burn it, but Wynkoop insists that if he does, he will be responsible for starting a war. Hancock backs off, and sends Custer out to find the Cheyenne and bring them back.
Edmund Guerrier
Tall Bull
Little Robe
Pawnee Killer
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CHAPTER 9
Custer's men follow the fleeing Cheyenne, but lose their trail. Reaching the Smoky Hill River, they find the crew of the Lookout stage station murdered. Custer concludes the Indians he has been tracking had committed the killings. Later he realizes timing made that impossible, but by then General Hancock, on the initial word from Custer, has burned the Cheyenne village on Pawnee Fork.
Out of food, Custer's column has to give up the chase and turn in to Fort Hays for supplies. They don't find the expected food and fodder at the fort, and desertions begin. Hancock appears at Fort Hays and castigates Custer for sitting there. Custer's depressed thoughts turn to Libbie and sex. When a sympathetic Colonel Smith agrees to bring Libbie to Fort Hays, Custer imposes strict punishment on the troops for minor infractions, intending to get them (and himself) in shape before Libbie appears.
When Libbie appears, she and Custer "go among the willows" until Colonel Smith insists Custer resume the search for the Cheyenne, because the Indians have been raiding parties working on the nearby Union Pacific tracks.
Delaware Indians
Sand Hills
Butterfield Overland stage stations
Forts Hays and Harker
Hardtack
Military discipline
Attacks on the Union Pacific
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CHAPTER 10
Custer rides out toward the Platte River to rescue the Union Pacific's workers. Meanwhile, huge rains flood the country around Fort Hays, and to escape the floods Libbie and Anna flee east to Fort Harker, and then further east to Fort Riley.
Custer reaches Fort McPherson, a post on the Platte now commanded by the Colonel Carrington who was blamed for the Fetterman massacre. Meeting with Carrington, Custer learns that Fetterman had disobeyed Carrington's orders and caused his own death.
Out on the Platte, he meets Pawnee Killer and orders him to turn in to Fort McPherson. A bit later on, General Sherman comes out to Custer's camp on the Platte. Sherman berates Custer for letting Pawnee Killer go. He orders Custer to go on forced march to find the indian and bring him in. He will be resupplied at Fort Sedgwick. Sherman suggests he might bring Libbie to that fort.
Again consumed with desire to see his wife, Custer decides it would be easier to get her to Fort Hays, south on the Smoky Hill, than to Fort Sedgwick, north on the Platte.
O'Fallon's Bluffs
Wickiups
Travois
Jack Morrow Canyon
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CHAPTER 11
Desperate to be with Libbie, Custer disobeys General Sherman's orders. Instead of heading north after Pawnee Killer, Custer turns south toward Fort Wallace, where he has asked Libbie to meet him. Pawnee Killer finds Custer, and attacks him. After driving off the attack, Custer decides to follow the chief to his village, and arrest his whole clan. But when Pawnee Killer goes north, Custer doesn't follow. He resumes his march toward Fort Wallace at a horse-killing pace.
Thirteen men desert on the way. Custer orders them shot, against military regulations. Six of them are caught, three wounded. Custer refuses them medical attention and presses on to the south.
In the meantime, Indians have begun raiding again in the south. General Sherman now orders Custer to go to Fort Wallace - exactly where he wanted to go. The orders are sent to Custer with a party led by Lieutenant Kidder. Continuing toward Fort Wallace, Custer finds the Kidder party - dead and horribly mutilated, most likely by Pawnee Killer.
Major Joel Elliott
The Kidder massacre
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CHAPTER 12
At Fort Wallace Custer finds a letter written by a soldier at the request of Custer's illiterate cook, telling him that Libbie and Captain Weir looked to be a little too intimate when she was at Hays. Enraged, Custer takes a small party and rushes to Fort Harker, ignoring the deaths of two troopers in an Indian attack en route.
At Harker, Custer wakes up Colonel Smith and asks for permission to go on by rail to Fort Riley, where Libbie is. Smith agrees, and sends his adjutant, Captain Weir, to escort Custer to the train. At the station, Custer confronts Weir, who denies any improprieties. At Fort Riley, Custer braces his cook, who says she has never actually seen Libbie and Weir in flagrante. When Custer asks Libbie directly whether Weir has ever touched her, Libbie acts insulted, and backs Custer down with an implied promise of pleasure as she turns down her coverlet. Custer surrenders. Libbie never answers his question.
Custer in Kansas
Eliza
A letter from Libbie at Ft. Riley
Chalk Bluff Station and Castle Rock
Weir, Cooke and Keogh
Jefferson Barracks
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CHAPTER 13
Custer is arrested and courtmartialed for abandoning his mission and rushing to see Libbie. The Hancock mission has been a failure, and Hancock intends to make Custer the goat. While Custer awaits trial, President Andrew Johnson, in response to public furor over the Hancock war, sends a peace commission to negotiate with the Cheyenne.
The trial begins at Fort Leavenworth.
General Philip Sheridan
Custer's excuses
E-book of Custer's "My Life On The Plains"
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CHAPTER 14
Custer is convicted and suspended from rank and pay. The Peace Commission signs a treaty with the Cheyenne; the Indians give up Kansas and agree to move to the Red River near Texas. But they go back to the Smoky Hill to hunt buffalo, and while there spring an attack on the Pawnee. The attack fails, and the frustrated Cheyenne raid a settler family, raping the women. Knowing they would be punished, the Cheyenne decide to be hanged for sheep instead of lambs, and commit a series of depredations in Kansas. Phil Sheridan comes out to stop them, and calls Custer back.
Cimarron Crossing
Delphos, Kansas
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CHAPTER 15
The Battle of the Washita
Antelope Hills
Washita River
The Canadian River
The Osage
Hard Rope
Sun dogs
Battle of the Washita
Black Kettle
Mahwissa
Meotzi
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BATTLE OF THE WASHITA
BLACK KETTLE
GARRYOWEN
CHAPTER 16
Custer consummates his "marriage" to the daughter of a chief.
Indian sign language
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CHAPTER 17
Sheridan sends the captured squaws to Fort Hays, but keeps Mahwissa and Meotzi on hand in case their help is needed with the other Cheyenne. He insists Custer show him the Washita battlefield. There they find Elliott and his men, massacred.
Grant is to be sworn in as President, and Sherman promoted to General of the Army. Sheridan hopes to get Sherman's old post, but the Washita slaughter of Cheyenne has stirred up trouble back east. Sheridan must be in Washington to defend himself; before he goes, he warns the rest of the Cheyenne to come in and surrender. Little Robe's band does surrender, on New Year's Eve, telling Sheridan the rest of the Cheyenne are on their way in. Sheridan believes he can safely leave for Washington.
Fort Cobb
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CHAPTER 18
The Cheyenne do not come in. Custer goes out to look for them, taking Meyotzi. But the Cheyenne have slipped into Texas; Custer does not have enough supplies to follow them. He releases Little Robe who promises to bring them in. After Sheridan goes to Washington, Custer goes after the Cheyenne once more. He finds their head chief, Medicine Arrow, and Meyotzi tells him there are two captive white women in the Cheyenne camp. Custer takes four chiefs prisoner, including Big Head, Dull Knife and Fat Bear, and sends a chief back to the Cheyenne camp with his demand that the white women be released and the Cheyenne turn in to their reservation.
Camp Wichita
Wichita Mountains
The Arapaho
The Llano Estacado
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CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
Custer returns the captured squaws to the Cheyenne, says goodbye to Meyotzi and learns she is pregnant with his child.
Samuel Sturgis
Promontory Point
Credit Mobilier
Leland Stanford
Tom Durant
Lydia Thompson's Blondes
Pauline Markham
Sandy Forsythe
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PROMONTORY POINT
CHAPTER 21
The Cheyenne are finished, and Libbie sends Custer to New York again to find another career. There, Wall Street begins to seduce him.
Maggie Custer
James Calhoun
Georgetown, Colorado
Jay Cooke
The Northern Pacific
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CHAPTER 22
And he is seduced by a beautiful soprano. Libbie asks him with whom he has been unfaithful. He feels like telling her, and he does. Libbie banishes him.
Clara Kellogg
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CHAPTER 23
Custer dines with the New York press, and finds out whom Jay Cooke has bought.
Kate Woods and the Seven Sisters
Five Points
Corlear's Hook
Barnum's Circus
James Gordon Bennett
Horace Greeley
Whitelaw Reid
Charles Dana
Bayard Taylor
Paris Commune
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THE PARIS COMMUNE
CHAPTER 24
The Northern Pacific buys Custer - but for what?
Gideon Putnam Hotel
Travers Stakes
Saratoga Raceway
August Belmont
Franco-Prussian War
Grenville Dodge
Horace Porter
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THE TRACK AT SARATOGA AT DAWN
CHAPTER 25
Custer goes to Kentucky and is bored to tears. But Sheridan calls him to Chicago to deal with the great fire, and sends him out with a Russian grand duke on a hunting expedition. When the duke's party continues to New Orleans, an angry Libbie joins Custer in Louisville, Kentucky.
Elizabethtown, Kentucky
The Chicago fire
North Platte River
Grand Duke Alexis
The buffalo hunt
The buffalo hunt re-enactment
Buffalo Bill Cody
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BUFFALO BILL
BUFFALO BILL IN NEW YORK
CHAPTER 26
After Custer's sister's wedding, Custer and Libbie reunite.
The 7th Cavalry is sent to guard Northern Pacific surveyors in Sioux country, what is now the Dakotas, Wyoming and Montana, and Libbie goes along.
Peabody Hotel, Memphis
Overton Hotel
Dan Rice's circus
Charles Taze Russell
James River
The Great Sioux Reservation
Unceded indian territory
Missouri River
Bismarck, North Dakota
Sioux history
The Teton Sioux
The Laramie Treaty of 1868
The Yellowstone River
Fort Randall
The Badlands
The Tongue River
Bloody Knife
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THE PEABODY HOTEL
CHARLES TAZE RUSSELL
THE YELLOWSTONE
THE BADLANDS
CHAPTER 27
Custer has his first skirmishes with Sitting Bull. Although Custer holds the Sioux off and the railroad survey is completed, the Panic of '73 shuts the Northern Pacific down.
Custer is assigned to Fort Lincoln in Dakota Territory. Custer thinks it's pointless, since the Northern Pacific is dead for the moment. But Sheridan explains: there are rumors of gold in the Black Hills. The Hills are on the Sioux Reservation, and the army is supposed to keep whites out of them. Sheridan sends Custer to build a post within the Hills - ostensibly to keep miners out, but in fact to bring them in, along with the press, to tout the gold in the Hills and revive the fortunes of the Northern Pacific.
Bull boats
Lonesome Charley
The Panic of 1873
The Army of the Tennessee
General Alfred Terry
Fort Berthold
Niobrara River
Boston Custer
Hardee hat
Cheyenne river tribes
Belle Fourche River
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FORT ABRAHAM LINCOLN
SITTING BULL
THE BLACK HILLS
THE TOP OF HARNEY'S PEAK
CHAPTER 28
The Black Hills expedition finds gold. Custer and the press send the word back to the world. Custer's Galaxy Magazine articles are published as a book. And August Belmont starts him thinking about running for president.
The Heart River
The Cannonball River
Slim Butte
Inyan Kara
Harney's Peak
My Life On The Plains
The New York World
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CHAPTER 29
The government tries to buy the Black Hills, but they won't meet the Indians' price. So they order all Sioux to confine themselves to their reservation, promising to attack any who stay out. Sitting Bull refuses to come in. Broke in New York, Custer agrees to go on the lecture circuit. With Custer's help, James Gordon Bennett and the Democrats reveal that Grant's brother Orville and Secretary of War Belknap have been selling Army traderships for private graft. At Bennett's suggestion, to make some money Custer buys railroad stock on margin. There is a margin call, and Custer is ruined.
Powder River
Frederick Whittaker
The Redpath Bureau
The Lotos Club
William W. Belknap
Roscoe Conkling
James G. Blaine
Samuel J. Tilden
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CHAPTER 30
James Gordon Bennett convinces Custer to testify at the hearing on Belknap's corruption, by promising to support Custer for President if Tilden's nomination is stalled. Belknap orders Custer to report to General Terry in St. Paul, Minnesota, to get him out of the way. There Custer learns of Terry and Sheridan's planned move against Sitting Bull.
Belknap resigns, so Custer's testimony won't be required, and that is the end of Custer's presidential prospects. But Custer can't give up the hope; he and Libbie notify the press of the coming expedition. Success will get Custer in the headlines again, and from there, who knows?
Ben Holladay
Belknap's wives
John Gibbon
George Crook
Pullman Palace Car
Clement Lounsberry
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CHAPTER 31
But the Democrats decide to impeach Secretary Belknap, even though he has resigned, and Custer is summoned to Washington. Though warned against it by Sheridan's aide, Custer testifies against Belknap before the House. Terry's column will march against the Sioux in seven days, but Custer is held in Washington by subpoena to testify at Belknap's Senate trial. Custer asks General Sherman to help him get out of Washington, but President Grant refuses to let Custer leave. Custer tries to see Grant, but the President refuses. Pulling a fast one, Custer convinces someone at the War Department to give him orders to go. When he reaches Chicago, a furious Sheridan puts him under arrest. Two days later, relenting, Sheridan lets Custer send a telegram to Sherman. Sherman finally permits him to go to Fort Lincoln, but he is not to be allowed to go on the Sioux expedition.
Rufus Ingalls
Heister Clymer
Boss Tweed
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CHAPTER 32
At Terry's St. Paul headquarters, Custer learns that Terry, not Belknap had ordered him to receive the suspicious Indian corn. Custer writes to Clymer, explaining that he was wrong and that there was no longer any reason for him to return to testify. Terry, who needs Custer on the expedition against the Sioux, dictates a letter for Custer to write to General Sherman. Grant relents and allows Custer to go on the expedition, although only in command of the 7th Cavalry. Mark Kellogg, a reporter from the Bismarck Tribune and a stringer for James Gordon Bennett, accompanies the expedition against Sheridan's orders, and the expedition goes out in an atmosphere of impending doom.
Fort Ellis
Fort Fetterman
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CHAPTER 33
On the Yellowstone River, three cavalry columns converge on the Sioux - Colonel John Gibbon from the west, General George Crook from the south, and Terry and Custer from the east. Terry expected to find the Sioux on the Little Missouri River - but they weren't there, so he moved his column west to the Powder River. There he learns that Gibbon has seen an indian camp on the Rosebud, farther west. Concerned to catch all the indians, Terry sends Major Marcus Reno up the Powder on a scout. Reno's orders, if he doesn't find indians on the Powder, are to march further west to the Tongue River and then up that river to the Yellowstone. He is under no circumstances to go near the camp Gibbon has seen on the Rosebud. Terry has sent Reno on the scout instead of Custer because he believes if Custer finds indians, he will attack them alone. Reno disobeys Terry's orders and marches to the Rosebud. He reports to Gibbon on June 18th that the indian camp there is empty, but it's big. There has been no word from Crook, so Terry decides to hold Gibbon on the Yellowstone as a northern blocking force and send Custer and the 7th Cavalry to move on the Sioux. Custer tells Mark Kellogg of his presidential plans. Mark Kellogg tells Custer that the Democratic Convention would meet in St. Louis on June 28th. Custer now knows how little time he has. He enlists Lonesome Charley to make the run to the Bozeman telegraph as soon as he has defeated the Sioux.
The Far West
Bozeman, Montana
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CHAPTER 34
Custer sets out on the trail of the Sioux.
Mitch Bouyer
The Crow Indians
Wolf Mountains
The sun dance
Lame Deer Creek
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SUN DANCE
WAR SONG
CHAPTER 36
BENTEEN'S WILD GOOSE CHASE
BENTEEN MOVES TO REJOIN CUSTER
RENO CROSSES THE RIVER
RENO'S CHARGE AND RETREAT
BENTEEN GOES AFTER WEIR
BENTEEN'S FIGHT
RENO IN THE VALLEY
CHAPTER 38
Reno's Court of Inquiry, 1879
Fort Abercrombie
Lyman Gilbert
The Reno Court of Inquiry
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THE CASE AGAINST RENO
THE CASE AGAINST BENTEEN
CUSTER SPLITS HIS FORCE AGAIN
THE LITTLE BIG HORN AT MEDICINE TAIL COULEE
AN EXPLANATION OF WHY CUSTER KEPT HEADING NORTH
CALHOUN'S COLLAPSE
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ARCHAEOLOGY 1
ARCHAEOLOGY 2
ARCHAEOLOGY 3
ARCHAEOLOGY 4
ARCHAEOLOGY 5
THE BATTLEFIELD NOW
