general george armstrong custer led an expedition into the region. settlersers and flooded into the region. they fought battles with the lakota. ultimatument an saying all residents the two go back to their reservations. comply, thedn't general attacked. general custard suffered one of the worst defeats in u.s. history by sitting bull. violence exploded throughout the and it washe 1870's, often the indians who suffer the worst. from the perspective of the reformers and policymakers who advocated the peace policy only a few years prior, it looked like there was no peace, native people are resisting aspects of the civilization policies. from the indian perspective, this makes sense. they wanted to retain their homeland and things the united states owed them. they could choose to accept or not accept whatever they wish. as a result, reformers are in gauge of the conclusion it would have to change indian policy once again. the reservations have failed because indians were too community-minded. would then work, these reformers, to break apart reservations

you have to mention george armstrong custer, idiot he was. he was always glory-seeking and fool hardy, especially after the war when his major general rank moved back to lieutenant general, and he wanted his stars back and got them by killing indians and in 1876 he was to attack an indian village. and he would be in the center column and two support columns and he got in position, got impatient, failed to wait for his support and attacked straight ahead. with 247 men. he expected to find a couple hundred indians and found 2,000 sioux and cheyenne waiting for him. and what ensued was a slaughter. i know many of you have scene dramatic paintings of custer's last stand. that's not true. it was a rung fight for your life and national geographic archaeologists have check the hair and they found bodies in an area over four and a half miles. 247 men were killed. 247 horses were killed. one horse survived, quote, quote, custer's last stand. but the news of his death by indians reached the east coast, and on july 4, 1876, the centennial of our birth,

custer is very nice. >> well, 2012, michael o'keefe published a two-volume bibliography on george e george armstrong custer. there will 10,000 items, and he annotate them all. 3,000 of them were books. so i think the logical first question to begin with is, t.j., why custer? >> i hate myself. no. i have to say thank you very much for coming. i love to have a constance to talk to rathers and potential readers and to have a conversation with paul andrew hutton, you is not just a great hoyton a and a great writer and has a become coming out this spring called "the apache wars" it's phenomenal. so watch for that. so to have this conversation with a good historian and a good writer is terrific. there is -- i could easily go on and on and give a hoe spiel about custer and why by book is justified, but the subtitle complain mitt approach. sometimes you go into a subject because it hasn't been written about enough before, or you really feel like people have gotten it wrong, and is a say there's a lot of great writing as well as a lot roof writing about custer. my approach was to change the camera angle, and i'm ve