Francis Brooks, a Chicago poet, who was born in Memphis, Tennessee,
March 7, 1867, and died near Geneva, Wisconsin, April 12, 1898. A
memorial edition of his poems, edited by Wallace Rice, was issued
in the autumn of 1898.
Custer (George Armstrong) was born in New Rumley, Ohio, December 5,
1839. He entered the army directly after his graduation from West Point
in June, 1861, and participated in all but one of the battles of the
Army of the Potomac, attaining the rank of major-general at twenty-five.
He had eleven horses shot under him in battle. After the Civil War he
served in several Indian campaigns. His last fight, on the banks of the
Little Big Horn river in Montana, took place June 26, 1876. See
“Custer,” by Edmund Clarence Stedman (Complete Poems).
=Stanza 2.= =Sitting Bull=, who commanded the Indians in the Custer fight,
was a Sioux chief, born about 1837. He was killed while resisting arrest
in the Sioux outbreak of December, 1890.
=Stanza 3.= =Rain-in-the-Face=, a Sioux chief, who had been imprisoned for
murdering a sutler and veterinary surgeon, but had subsequently escaped.
See Longfellow’s poem, “The Revenge of Rain-in-the-Face.”
=Stanza 7.= =Comanche.= See “Miles Keogh’s Horse,” by John Hay (Poems).