Page:Nye's History of the USA.djvu/322

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318
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.

characteristic courage, General Custer attacked the enemy, sending Colonel Reno to fall on the rear of the village.

Scarcely enough of Custer's own command with him at the time lived long enough to tell the story of the battle. General Custer, his two brothers, and his nephew were among the dead. Reno held his ground until reinforced, but Custer's troops were exterminated,

It is said that the Sioux rose from the ground like bunch-grass and swarmed up the little hill like a pest of grasshoppers, mowing down the soldiers with the very newest and best weapons of warfare, and leaving nothing at last but the robbed and mutilated bodies lying naked in the desolate land of the Dakotah.

The Fenimore Cooper Indian is no doubt a brave and highly intellectual person, educated abroad, refined and cultivated by foreign travel, graceful in the grub dance or scalp walk-around, yet tender-hearted as a girl, walking by night fifty-seven miles in a single evening to warn his white friends of danger. The Indian introduced into literature was a bronze Apollo who bathed almost constantly and only killed white people who were unpleasant and coarse. He dressed in new and fresh buckskins, with trimming of same, and his sable hair hung glossy and beautiful down the coppery billows of muscles on his back.