How George Armstrong Custer Won Two Superbowls

History moves in strange circles.

In April 1873, George Armstrong Custer and his wife Libbie attended a ball in Yankton, Dakota Territory. The bandleader that night was a trim Italian immigrant — a cornet virtuoso, classically trained, leading his musicians with what witnesses described as gusto. Custer thought the music sophisticated for a frontier town and asked to meet the bandleader.

Custer offered the Italian the position of Chief Musician of the 7th Cavalry on the spot. He accepted, left Yankton on May 7, 1873, bound for Fort Abraham Lincoln, and spent the next three years composing marches, waltzes, and polkas with titles like Sitting Bull's March and The Mosquitoes of Dakota. The Italian was a man who knew his audience.

It wasn't all smooth sailing. In August 1875, he requested a discharge due to an apparent personality clash with the regimental band commander, Lieutenant James Calhoun. Calhoun signed off on the request, noting that the chief musician was "not a competent person." Custer endorsed it too. Felix, apparently, was not a man who made friends easily up the chain of command. But bureaucracies being what they are, the discharge never went through.

So when Custer and the 7th Cavalry rode toward the Little Bighorn in 1876, the band went with them. But once they reached the Powder River, Custer decided to leave the band behind. He wanted their horses, not the men. He left orders that the band was to remain on the supply steamboat Far West, moored on the Powder River. The last time they saw Custer alive, they were playing Garyowen as the rest of the 7th cantered into history. Sixteen musicians sat out the most famous military disaster in American frontier history.

The bandleader? Felix Vinatieri. After the battle, Vinatieri and his musicians were among the forces rescuing Major Reno and his survivors. The musicians served as medics, helping transport fifty-one wounded soldiers aboard the Far West for the long ride back to Fort Lincoln.

Custer wasn't so lucky.

With his patron dead, Felix didn't seek reinstatement. He returned to Yankton, gave music lessons, conducted, and became something of a local dignitary — respected not just for his connection to the famous dead general, but for his music. He died in 1891, leaving behind a wife, five sons, and two trunks of original compositions.

He also left behind a bloodline.

New England Patriots placekicker Adam Vinatieri is Felix's great-great-grandson. The same family that once played regimental airs on the Montana frontier sent a leg to Foxborough — and that leg hit the kicks that won two Super Bowls for the New England Patriots and is in the NFL Hall of Fame.

History, as I said, moves in strange circles.