No Survivors

Originally published in 1950, No Survivors was the first of Will Henry’s many novels based on historic incident. In it he shows what General Custer’s lonely stand and final moments at the 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn might have been like, militarily and emotionally. Though the history books say that only the horse Comanche escaped alive, Will Henry creates one other survivor, Colonel John Clayton—and he was doomed, too.

The fictional Civil War officer who once saved Custer’s life, Clayton leaves a journal describing his later career on the western frontier. As a civilian scout for the U.S. Army, he tries to head off the Fetterman Massacre. He is captured by Crazy Horse and taken into the Oglala Sioux tribe. For nine years he lives as an Indian—the adopted son of Crazy Horse, an intimate of Sitting Bull, and the husband of a medicine woman. He rides with the Indians against the white invaders, but by 1876 he has to make a choice about who he really is.