George Armstrong Custer

George Armstrong Custer is a remembered figure rather than a character encountered directly: the Colonel invokes him as a beautiful horse-cavalryman whose ambitions ended in disaster at Little Big Horn. Custer’s brief presence illuminates the Colonel’s own view of military identity, contrasting cavalry romance with the infantryman’s grim refusal of dreams.

Identity and Introduction

The Colonel names Custer as a general and calls him a beautiful horse-cavalryman. His portrait is shaped by the Colonel’s inward, sardonic reflection, not by an independent account of Custer’s life. The Colonel imagines the appeal of Custer’s way of being, including the prospect of a loving wife, while measuring that ideal against the defeat that destroyed it.

The Little Big Horn and the End of a Dream

In the Colonel’s meditation, Custer’s end is tied to the hill above Little Big Horn. He pictures the confusion of the defeat: horses circling amid dust and trampled sagebrush, and Custer left with the memory of black powder and the sight of his own people shooting one another. The Colonel also recalls newspaper descriptions of Custer’s badly mutilated body, but the emphasis falls on what the defeat means to him: Custer had finally made a decisive mistake, and the episode marks the end of his dreams.

Custer and the Colonel’s Self-Image

Custer serves as a foil for the Colonel’s infantry identity. The Colonel regards cavalry life as capable of carrying beautiful aspirations, only to have them shattered by a final failure. By contrast, he describes the infantryman as having no dreams except bad ones. This is not simply a dismissal of Custer: the Colonel pities him as a man whose hopes ended on that hill, even as he uses the contrast to define his own hardened outlook. The remembered defeat turns military reputation into a question of what remains after command and ambition fail.

A Place to Revisit

Later, the Colonel tells his companion that they will drive to the site of the Wagon-Box Fight and then to the place where Custer was killed. He promises to show her the markers for the dead and explain the fight. The planned journey gives the recollection a future-facing dimension: Custer’s story is not only an inward comparison but also part of the history the Colonel intends to pass on. The text records the intention to visit and interpret the site, not the visit itself.