Custer's Last Guidon

An Associated Press article from December 11, 2010.

BILLINGS, Mont. – After spending much of the last century in storage, the only U.S. flag not captured or lost during Custer's Last Stand at the Battle of Little Bighorn sold at auction Friday for $2.2 million.

Frayed, torn, and with possible bloodstains, the flag from one of America's hallmark military engagements had been valued before its sale at up to $5 million.

The 7th U.S. Cavalry flag — known as a "guidon" and with a distinctive swallow-tailed shape — had been the property of the Detroit Institute of Arts. The museum paid just $54 for it in 1895. "We'll be using the (auction) proceeds to strengthen our collection of Native American art, which has a rather nice irony to it I think," said the museum's director, Graham Beal.

On June 25, 1876, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and more than 200 troopers and scouts from the Crow Tribe were killed by up to 1,800 Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne warriors near the Little Bighorn River.

Of the five guidons carried by Custer's battalion only one was immediately recovered, from beneath the body of a fallen trooper. According to testimonials from Indians involved in the fight, the trooper, Cpl. John Foley, was attempting to escape on horseback — and had almost succeeded — when he shot himself in the head.

All the other flags under Custer's command were believed captured by the victorious Indians. The recovered flag later became known as the Culbertson Guidon, after the member of the burial party who recovered it, Sgt. Ferdinand Culbertson. Made of silk, it measures 33 inches by 27
inches, and features 34 gold stars.

While Custer's reputation has risen and fallen over the years — once considered a hero, he's regarded by some contemporary scholars as an inept leader and savage American Indian killer — the guidon has emerged as the stuff of legend.

"It's more than just a museum object or textile. It's a piece of Americana," said John Doerner, Chief Historian at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in southeastern Montana. For most of the last century the flag was hidden from public view, kept in storage first at the museum and later, after a period on display in Montana, in a National Park Service facility in Harpers Ferry, W.V., according to Beal, the museum director.

A second 7th Cavalry guidon was recovered in September 1876, at the Battle of Slim Buttes near present-day Reva, S.D. Now in possession of the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, that flag was poorly cared for and is now in horrible condition — "almost dust," according to the monument's chief of interpretation, Ken Woody.