Legends of the Longhouse

Two veterans of the Battle of the Little Big Horn exchanged a series of letters between autumn 1891 and the summer of 1896. Captain Frederick W.Benteen of the 7th Cavalry made history in June 1876 when he came to the rescue of Major Marcus Reno's command during the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Private Theodore W.Goldin was with Reno during the battle, and later helped to bury Custer and his comrades. Benteen and Goldin had retired from the army when their correspondence - rare for being between an officer and an enlisted man - began. This volume contains a collection of Benteen's surviving letters, which provides an account of the Battle of the Little Big Horn and the Sioux War and gives sometimes malicious views of Custer and his wife, and other military figures. Goldin's replies to Benteen are lost, but this text supplies revealing letters from him to the historians E.A.Brininstool and Fred Dustin touching on the same events. Also included are two accounts of the Battle of the Little Big Horn by Benteen, discovered after his death in 1898.