Lakota Writer McGaa Uses Frontier Art to Study Army-Indian Combat

(Charles Shreyvogel’s Custer’s Demand, 1903)

Sioux writer Ed McGaa, a USMC major who flew F-4 Phantoms during the Vietnam War, believes that frontier painter Charles Shreyvogel (1861-1912) was a careful student of the military tactics employed by the US Army and Northern Plains Indians.  “No one can touch him, combat-wise,” he says.  Schreyvogel  sensed the epic drama unfolding on the vanishing frontier.  His preoccupation was to portray the military life of both sides, who fought valiantly.

     McGaa will draw from his private collection of Shreyvogel paintings when he talks to the Black Hills Veterans Writing Group on Saturday, May 10, at the Western Dakota Technical Institute in Rapid City, starting at 9 am.

       A regular guide at the Crazy Horse Monument in Custer, South Dakota, McGaa knows full well that the Indian tourist industry and cavalry museums in the Mountain West will remain a draw for people from all over the world, to find more about the battles between the cavalry and Indian tribes who were making their last stand against white incursions.  The Sioux and the Apaches were the toughest, but were eventually defeated.  General Custer and Geronimo are household words across the globe.

   McGaa argues that the close study of each painting will teach military historians about how the two sides actually fought: ” Beats Remington. Damn little of the 45.70s in close combat. Scabbards. Only one off-hand cavalry shooting and the horse was still, standing in the water. Pistols, while the Sioux fired their weapons with two hands or their pistols which obviously were taken from the cavalry.”

   McGaa knows that the Sioux were a strategy-driven military force, as was the US Army. Decades of close-quarter fighting meant that both sides were sophisticated about their opponent’s technical arsenals and tactical ploys.