ELIZABETH A.LAWERENCE BOOK REVIEW

Elizabeth A. Lawrence Book Review

Elizabeth A. Lawrence Book Review

Introduction

The mount of Captain Miles W. Keogh, Comanche was the legendary sole survivor of Custer's Last Stand. As such, the horse makes an electric connection between history and memory. In exploring the deeper meaning of the Comanche saga, His Very Silence Speaks addresses larger issues such as the human relationship to animals and nature, cross-cultural differences in the ways animals are perceived, and the symbolic use of living and legendary animals in human cognition and communication. More than an account of the celebrated horse's life and legend existence, this penetrating volume provides insights into the life of the cavalry horse and explores the relationship between cavalrymen and their mounts. Lawrence illuminates Comanche's significance through the many symbolic roles he has assumed at different times and for various groups of people, and reveals much about the ways in which symbols operate in human thought and the manner in which legends develop.

Elizabeth A. Lawrence Book Review

Elizabeth A. Lawrence Book his very silence speaks. Comanche: the horse who survived Custer's last stand, Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 1989, 8vo, pp. 358, illus., $39.95, $16.00 (paperback). A biography of a horse and the chronicle of its posthumous existence hardly sounds enticing as a description of a book. Such a banal precis, however, does no justice to this excellent volume. On 25 June 1876, Colonel George Armstrong Custer and his cavalry engaged with Indians at Little Big Horn. Not one cavalryman was spared. The survivors numbered Indians, horses, and dogs. Custer's last stand very quickly became, and has remained, a significant symbolic event in American life. The meanings, with which it has been charged, however, have been varied greatly according to who was doing the symbolizing. Besides the battle as a whole, the engagement also furnished a cluster of subsidiary but historically important symbols. One of these was Comanche, the mount of Captain Myles W. Keogh. Comanche became the horse who was inaccurately dubbed the "sole survivor" of Little Big Horn. In a fascinating historiographical and anthropological study of myth-making, Dr Lawrence peels layer on layer off the stuffed remains of this animal, now residing in Kansas. Claiming knowledge of, or association with, the horse became a valuable commodity from very early after the battle.

Not surprisingly, therefore, the horse's public character and qualities soon became a jumble. Those who declared they knew him ...