America at its Centennial was envisioned in dramatically different ways by those living through the times. Red Horse, a Sioux warrior, painted at least 40 pictographs of Custer in the Little Big Horn. In his telling, there is little that is heroic.
Warriors go about the business of destroying an invading army.
And the brutalities are rendered simply as facts of battles. In 1881, John Mulvaney offered a triumphal narrative of the same event. Custer is dressed in uniform and with saber in hand. Though in actuality, he had neither that day. He holds off the fateful moment of his death.