ISSN: 0022-1198
CODEN: JFSCA
Page Count: 10

Who's Buried in Custer's Grave?
Scott, DD
Great Plains, Program Leader, Midwest Archeological Center, National Park Service, NE

Willey, P
Professor, Chico State University, CA

(Received 24 July 1998; accepted 21 September 1998)

Abstract

On 10 October 1877, the year after the Battle of the Little Bighorn, General George A. Custer's coffin was transported from a temporary grave in Poughkeepsie, NY, by steamer and cortege to permanent interment in the U.S. Military Academy's Post Cemetery. The ceremony included the appropriate military and funerary rituals. There were, nevertheless, reasons to believe that Custer's skeleton may not have been in the coffin—thus, he may have missed his own funeral. Custer's remains, or part of them, may have been overlooked during the exhumation and left on the battle-field, only to be recovered around 1940. These bones, as well as those of another individual, were unceremoniously buried in a grave which is now marked “Two Unknown U.S. Soldiers” in the National Cemetery adjacent to the Little Bighorn Battlefield in Montana. That cemetery, perhaps appropriately enough, is named the Custer National Cemetery. This paper presents information concerning Custer's original interment on the Little Bighorn Battlefield, his supposed disinterment, and the osteological evidence that his remains, or at least part of them, were left on the Little Bighorn Battlefield.

Keywords:
forensic science, forensic anthropology, George A. Custer, Battle of the Little Bighorn, skeletal analysis, Last Word Society

Paper ID: JFS14527J
DOI: 10.1520/JFS14527J
ASTM International is a member of CrossRef.