5. The newspaper’s response to the Battle of the Little Big Horn cause many of the myths about Custer, that are still around today.
The first reports of the calamity which had befallen the Seventh Cavalry reached the east as the nation was celebrating Independence Day. For the next several weeks reports from the west dominated the nation’s headlines. Terrible Battle with Indians read the headlines of the Charlotte (North Carolina) Democrat on July 10, 1876. The report beneath the headline was one of the first to claim that Custer had been among the last to die in the fighting, the first hints at what soon became the Last Stand. On Friday, July 7, 1876, the New York Times headlined their article The Little Horn Massacre, which also claimed Custer was among the last to fall.
The San Diego Union reported the story on July 6, with one subheading misspelling the dead officer’s name as Custar, and claimed that the Seventh Cavalry “fought like tigers”. Several newspapers around the country contained subheadings referring to the American troops involved being “completely wiped out,” or similar sentiments. Southern newspapers, such as Anderson Court House’s Intelligencer, were less lurid, and considerably less laudatory of Custer, perhaps because of the still recent wounds of the Civil War and Custer’s part in it. The press coverage helped feed a sense of national outrage against the native tribes and demand for a more thorough chastising of the natives involved in the battle, as well as any other tribes not confined to reservations.