Cultural depictions of George Armstrong Custer Cultural depictions of George Armstrong Custer George Armstrong Custer (1839–1876) was a United States Army cavalry commander in the American Civil War and the Indian Wars. He was defeated and killed by the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. More than 30 movies and countless television shows have featured him as a character. He was portrayed by future U.S. president, Ronald Reagan in "Santa Fe Trail" (1940), as well as by Errol Flynn in "They Died With Their Boots On" (1941). In 1896, Anheuser-Busch commissioned from Otto Becker a lithographed, modified version of
Battle of the Little Bighorn also accepted. Historian James Donovan states that when Custer asked interpreter Fred Gerard for his opinion on the size of the opposition, he estimated the force at between 1,500 to 2,500 warriors. Additionally, Custer was more concerned with preventing the escape of the Lakota and Cheyenne than with fighting them. From his own observation, as reported by his bugler John Martin (Martini), Custer assumed the warriors had been sleeping in on the morning of the battle, to which virtually every native account attested later, giving Custer a false estimate of what he was up against. When he and his scouts