Custer's Dogs

General George Custer had his faults, but one characteristic makes him more likable. Custer loved dogs. He owned as many as forty and took them with him everywhere. Historian Brian Dippie wrote that Custer’s dogs “accompanied him on hunts and campaigns; they arranged themselves at his feet, rested their heads on his lap, shared is bed and his food, got under foot, made nuisances of themselves, but never lost their special place in his affection. They were like people to him.” His dogs adored him, too. When Maida, one of his favorites, was killed during a buffalo hunt, Custer wrote a rather bad, but very heartfelt, poem to her. During the Black Hills expedition in 1874, Custer wrote to his wife that his dogs surrounded him and that his favorite, Tuck—a tall, light-colored deerhound—slept at the head of his bed. On June 12, 1876, two weeks before Little Bighorn, Custer again wrote: “Tuck regularly comes when I am writing, and lays her head on the desk, rooting up my hand with her long nose until I consent to stop and notice her.”

Photo from http://wyomingtalesandtrails.com/

Custer and Bloody Knife (pointing) in 1874. The dog in the foreground is Custer's favorite deerhound, Tuck.

Several dogs including Custer’s beloved Tuck broke away from the pack train and followed their master into the famous battle. Indian witnesses claimed that Custer was easy to spot among the fray because of the tall, light-colored dog that stayed at his side until the last moments. The Cheyenne warrior Wooden Leg recalled a dog on Custer Hill, and soldiers saw a dog on a distant rise, but none was seen again. Tuck was not listed among the casualties. We will never know for sure what became of her or her renegade companions.

Homer Thomas

Homer Thomas was eight years old when he came with his family to Montana Territory from Illinois. It was almost Christmas when Homer wrote a letter to his grandmother. “I am glad you didn’t come with us,” he wrote, “you could not have stood it; [the trip] was mighty hard.” Homer described Virginia City as a poor place where the miners dressed in old, dirty, and ragged clothes. He wished especially for apples and cider, something not found in Montana. Homer’s longing for Illinois comes through as he wrote, “I expect this will be a great country someday, but I don’t care for that, just as soon as I can get enough gold, I bet you I am coming back.” But Homer did not return to Illinois. He followed his father in the milling and feed business and later was a founder of the mining camp of Monarch. But that 1864 Christmas letter to his Grandma, preserved in the Montana Historical Society archives, has a nostalgia unusual for an eight-year-old. “Well, Grandmother,” he wrote toward the end of his letter, “ it is pretty near Christmas time and I do not expect to get many things this year, for it is not like home, because old Santa Claus does not come out here to give children things, because he thinks all the children too smart to come to this old place. Well I can do without any nice toys this year, but I want you to save me some nice things so I can have them when I come back home.” But the years passed and Homer Thomas stayed in Montana. Illinois faded to become a childhood memory.

P.S. Not all children were so skeptical about Christmastime in Montana.
P.P.S More letters home