The Online Photographer

Who is this?

(I'll hold off a while before posting the answer, to allow more people time to guess.)

Mike

ANSWER: As many of you guessed, it's Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer, supposedly taken two months before he was killed at the Battle of the Little Bighorn (called the Battle of the Greasy Grass by the Lakota [Sioux], the Cheyenne, and other Plains tribes. Greasy Grass was their name for the Little Bighorn and the surrounding area). Custer earned the temporary rank of Major General of Volunteers in the Civil War, and also the brevet rank of Major General in the regular Army; "brevet rank," sometimes called a battlefield promotion, was usually awarded for bravery, valor, and combat leadership, and also as a way of filling vacant leadership posts without incurring the cost of permanent promotions—recipients were paid at their regular Army rates. At the end of the War, Custer reverted to his full regular Army rank of Captain. He was then promptly promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in 1866, and that was his rank when he was in command of the 7th Cavalry (several readers picked up on the "7" on his epaulet) and when he was killed in 1876.

There isn't much good information about this particular picture online. Most of it comes from a January 2014 "Collector's Edition" of True West magazine called "100 Best Historical Photos of the American West." The contents are online. The TW title was "Custer’s Last Photograph" and the full caption was, "A vain man, George Armstrong Custer posed for more than 150 photographs in his lifetime, including this last photo, taken of him two months before the 1876 Battle of the Little Big Horn that would end his life." The same caption accompanies most other appearances of the same picture online. It is most likely a carte de visite (CDV in auction listings) or cabinet card (the difference is only size, cabinet cards being larger), probably produced in volume to be sold as souvenirs after his demise. 

The interesting thing about it is that his hair is cut short. He was a notorious dandy, and wore his dark blonde hair long and scented with cinnamon oil—the Indians' nickname for him, one of them, was "Long Hair." Here is the image that is perhaps the most iconic. It's not known why he cut it: some claim it was because he had premonitions of his death; other sources claim his wife Libbie had been urging him to cut it because she was afraid his long hair would make him more conspicuous as a target for scalping or mutilation; some say that maybe he just decided to. Or perhaps Thomas Berger, the author of Little Big Man, was correct when he had his fictional protagonist Jack Crabbe say that the 36-year-old Custer was beginning to go bald. No one knows for sure. 

The print is identified as having come from the Robert G. McCubbin Western Photographs Collection, which was broken up at auction in 2019. 

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