Digital Extra: The Journal's 175th Anniversary

07.21.2004

1876. 'Indians must be made to pay the penalty'

The news from the frontier took more than a week to reach readers in Rhode Island -- George A. Custer and his column of troops had been wiped out at Little Big Horn, in Montana.

The Providence Journal reported the news July 6, 1876, in headlines stacked upon headlines:

Startling News From The Indian Country

Gen. Custer with the Seventh Cavalry Attacks an Indian Camp

HE MEETS AN OVERWHELMING DEFEAT . . .

NOT A MAN ESCAPES

The next day, The Journal said in an editorial that Custer was "one of the most experienced, daring and successful of our Indian fighters."

"In the present case, it appears that he must have been even less cautious than the cavalry officer generally is."

Journal files / AP photo

Custer's Last Stand, the famous painting by Harold Von Schmidt, shows George A. Custer, in left background, during the battle with Cheyenne and Sioux Indians in which more than 200 U.S. Army cavalrymen were killed.

"Of course," the paper argued, "the Indians must be made to pay the penalty of this massacre. It will cost great exertion and many lives, but it will never do to allow such an event to go uncared for, or such an Indian victory to remain uncancelled."