The Result of Reducing Our Army

Published weeks after the Little Bighorn disaster (June 25–26, 1876) devastated Custer's 7th Cavalry, Keller's cartoon argues that Congressional budget cuts left frontier soldiers to die. A skeleton in full U.S. Army uniform kneels at center, rifle across its lap — the army itself reduced to a corpse. Three Native American warriors close in around it; one raises a bloody knife. A gravestone at right reads Killed by the Indians. The cartoon's political target is Congress and fiscal retrenchment.