Was Custer a scumbag? Not any more than any of the other politicians, lawmakers, and opportunists who drove the locals off their land, tricked and basely cheated them with treaties they did not keep, and gave them poor quality items when they gave them anything. No more than the bureaucrats and missionaries who took no time to understand cultures diferent from their own and decided that the only way to "educate the savage" was to squash out as much of the native people's culture and beliefs as they could. Actually, i'm probably being a little hard on Custer. He was serving as a military officer at the time--in large measure he was just obeying orders...and there you get into a whole other can of worms...