Jerome A. Greene
Page 19
After we got ready and the mules had quit trying to buck their packs off, the steamer Far West ferried us across the Yellowstone, as all the streams in this part of the country were very high by now. On the way up the Big Horn River we suddenly came across our Crow Indian scouts, and they told us that they had just been talking to Curley, who appeared to them on the west back of the Big Horn, and they, with our outfit, were on the east. Of course, their talk was by the sign language and he advised them not to go on as Custer and his men were all killed, and the hostiles were without number. This was the last we saw of our Indian scouts for a couple of weeks or more, excepting two that we found with Reno’s men, and I will tell more of them later. This was in the forenoon of June 26, and about noon, or a little later, we forded the Little Horn, and I want to tell you the water was cold and nearly up to our necks although a good many of the soldiers thought it was close to one hundred in the shade that day.
It was during this afternoon that the command reached some high ground and saw some smoke ahead on the Little [Big] Horn River, one of whom, as I remember, was Lieutenant Woodruff, who shouted, “I think Custer has got them and the smoke we see is where he is trying to smoke some of them out.” We, of course, did not believe what Curley had told the other Crows from across the Big Horn that morning, but we did know that we were nearing the camp of the hostiles, as members of the cavalry were sent out to the flanks of the outfit mostly on the higher hills, as the command kept right up the river bottom, it being easier walking for the infantry. These cavalrymen were instructed to ride in a circle whenever they saw anything suspicious, and, too, I noticed they took to the highest ground that they could find in order, I suppose, to see over the country better. Some of the hostile Indians were pretty late in leaving their camp, as our flankers soon began to ride in circles, but it was getting late in the evening and we did not know what was ahead of us, so we camped just before dark. The infantry camped in form of a hollow square, and nobody took any clothes off. Each man slept with his rifle beside him, and each one had a belt full of cartridges. This was on the 26th of June, and I had served just four years, leaving me one more year of a five-year enlistment and, of course, I remembered this date.
Our officers knew by this time that something had gone wrong, as according to the talk among the soldiers this was the date we were to have met Custer and all hands were to tackle the Indian village together, but Custer, it seems, had ideas of his own on that matter, and I don’t believe that he thought that enough Indians could be brought together to whip his regiment—that is with himself in command. We soldiers thought that Custer could not be beaten. I thought, too, that the officers of our regiment were disappointed in the turn affairs had taken, as they were a fighting bunch and most of them had risen from the ranks during the War of the Rebellion, especially the captains.
We were astir at daylight next morning and after breakfast started on our way up the river. Very soon after we started we came in sight of the Custer command on a side hill to our left as we went up the river—every man laying where he fell, and as this is the only sight I had of this battleground, I won’t say much about it, only that it was three-fourths of a mile off our road and no one went to it as I remember now. Another thing that I remember was that stragglers from the hostile camp had disappeared altogether. We next went through the Indian campground, and it surely looked as though they left in a hurry, and lots of their camp equipage was left behind. I saw lodge poles, buffalo robes, pots and pans galore, and in one place I saw a stack of new milk pans which no doubt had been taken from some settler, as gold had been found in the Black Hills and a rush in there had been started a year or so before’76. One of the last things we passed in the village was two complete tepees, covers on and all which I was told afterward contained the bodies of seven Indians who had been killed in the battle, and their favorite ponies had been slain and were laying on the outside of these tepees. These Indians we were told were petty chiefs. After passing the Indian camp we soon came to the ground that Major Reno and his command fought over, and wherever we saw a batch of feathered arrows sticking up, we knew that there the body of a trooper lay, especially those who had life in them after they had fallen, and were told that this was work of squaws and young bucks that weren’t old enough to go on the firing line.
We did not see anyone that we knew at this time, as decomposition had already set in; the weather, too, had been very warm. A first lieutenant named Donald McIntosh was lying on his face directly in our line of march, and he had on a buckskin shirt with his name written or printed on it. A captain of our command who was on horseback was riding near me when we passed this body, and said that he knew McIntosh in life, and that the lieutenant was a part Delaware [sic—Mohawk] Indian himself. The captain who made these remarks was killed a year or so later at the Battle of the Big Hole by the Nez Perce Indians, and the name of Camp Baker was changed to Fort Logan in his honor. As soon as we got in sight of Reno’s camp on the hills where he retreated and intrenched his command, we camped as usual about as near to them as we could get. It happened that on this particular day our company was in the lead, and on account of the bluffs and timber we were out of sight of his camp until we came just opposite to it, it being on the other side of the river. A man we called Reddy Stevenson [Thomas W. Stevenson, Company G, Seventh Cavalry], whose time had expired the fall before this expedition, and who was not a good walker, had gone East and reenlisted for the cavalry, and for this trip he was assigned to that regiment. We had hardly begun our camp preparations before five or six of the men on the hill came down to our camp, and among them was Reddy. They told us how glad they were to find that we were not Indians, as they at first thought, owing to the dust we kicked up on our line of march, and too, they asked if we knew what had become of Custer and his command. After we told them of the men we had seen lying to our left, and told them also about Curley’s going down the Big Horn River and the talk he made to the other Crows across that river, they came to the conclusion that it was Custer’s command, and that Curley the Crow scout was right and so far as learned he was the only one to escape. One of the men then turned loose on Custer and seemed to blame him for the outcome of the battle, but none of the men I heard speak of the matter had anything but praise for Captain Frederick W. Benteen, who, according to their story, managed things after they got together on the hills.
General Terry had, so I was told, an investigation of that battle shortly after we got there, but as we did not hear anything more of the matter, [we concluded that he?] came to the conclusion that everyone had done their best and that there were too many Indians for Custer’s outfit. The first chore we did that morning was to bury the dead and haul off the horses that lay on the ground where we were camped, as we were camped on the ground that Reno fought over. Part of the cavalry went to bury the Custer men and part of them followed the Indian trail that leads away from the battle ground. The Indians, according to these men’s story, went west, then south, then east, and kept breaking up into small parties so that no one could follow. They said, too, that a good many bloody rags were scattered over their trail. I next found the Crow scouts that Colonel Gibbon had loaned to Custer, that is, those that fought with Reno. I found Half Yellow Face and Fighting Lion both together in a sort of tepee. Lion was trying to string some beads with one hand, as he had been wounded in the other arm and was putting the beads on his sore arm, while Half Yellow Face was outside of the tepee rounding up some ponies that he had captured.
George Herendeen, whom I met later, had a plan of battle of his own which I thought visionary, since his idea was to capture Indian ponies first and then go after the camp, but as there were more Indians than the troops could handle, anyway, it seemed to me that the plan followed was the best. I asked him how many ponies he thought there were, and he said about 10, 000. I also asked him what was the cause of the Indians pulling out in so much of a hurry when they found our command so close, and he said he thought they were out of ammunitio
n. As I remember now, all of the camp equipage left by the Indians was piled together and burned, at least we were told so, and none of it was in sight when we passed that way on our road out with Reno’s wounded, of which he had about fifty. Our first attempt at this chore was by hand litter. These litters were made of green quaking aspen poles, with the hide of the wounded horses that had to be killed, cut in strips and wound around these poles so as to carry a man. Now the weather was pretty warm and clear, and it was planned to pack out the wounded only after sundown. Two men were supposed to carry one wounded man, and the infantry were assigned to this job. My partner said he weighed 125 pounds and I didn’t weigh much more at that time.
We were given to carry the first night a man who said that when he was well he weighed 185 pounds. He was badly wounded, too, as he was shot in the small of the back and didn’t want to be put on the ground any oftener than could be avoided, but we had to set him down pretty often in order to rest, as there was no road, and after dark we kept tripping over weeds and sagebrush. Pretty soon the cavalry were dismounted and told to help with the litter, four carrying and four resting. Even then we made but three miles the first night. However, a change was made the next day, while we were lying in camp, and mules and horses were used instead of men to carry the litters—that is, one horse or mule was put in front and one behind, and in that way the outfit moved more rapidly; in fact, we made about seventeen miles that night, and reached the steamboat which Captain [Grant] Marsh had run up the Big Horn River somewhere near where the Little Horn runs into that stream. It was between two and three o’clock in the morning when we arrived at the steamboat, and was daylight shortly after that, and if my memory serves me right the boat pulled out as soon as it got good daylight for Fort Abraham Lincoln, Dakota, which was at that time the headquarters of the Seventh Cavalry.
I nearly forgot to mention that one of the men who came down off the hill with Reddy Stephenson the morning we camped on Reno’s battleground had two bullet marks on one side of his face and one on the other. That is, that the bullets had gone close to his head to plow marks as described. That, I thought, was one fellow that had luck. Many of the soldiers that came down from the hill were without shoes, some using gunnysacks to cover their feet. Their clothes were torn. They had been a long time on the march. They were a sorry looking lot.
Memories of the Little Bighorn, 1876 (By Jacob Hetler, formerly of Troop D, Seventh U. S. Cavalry. From Winners of the West, November 30, 1935)
I enlisted in Chicago after the big fire, on February 30, 1872. I was immediately transferred to Jefferson Barracks, St. Louis. Later I was transferred to D Company [Seventh U. S. Cavalry, ] at Chester, South Carolina, where our duties were gathering up Ku Klux Klan and destroying illicit distilleries. We then moved to Opalica, Alabama, where we remained until September. I was then transferred to Montgomery, Alabama, to put down an election disturbance. We were there six weeks before returning to Opalica. We then moved to Memphis, and from there up the river to Cairo, Illinois, and by rail to Fort Snelling, Minnesota. In June [1873] we were sent to the end of the Northern Pacific Railroad, which was at Breckenridge, by rail.
We marched seventy miles to Fargo, North Dakota (then called the Dakota Territory) and a week later marched thirty miles to Fort Assinniboine [sic—Abercrombie?] and on to Fort Pemberton [Pembina], which was seventy miles further. We landed there the 25th of June for the purpose of guarding the government surveyors against unfriendly Indians. Our territory was a large one, running from the Lake of the Woods to Chief Mountain Lake, a distance of 500 miles. We spent two winters here with headquarters at Fort Totten. I was then sent to Fort Abraham Lincoln and remained there the years of’ 75 and’ 76, and it was in June [May] of the latter year that we started the Sioux Campaign which ended so tragically for Colonel Custer and his men.
On the morning of June 22nd, 1876, we started a hurried march toward the Little Bighorn. We had nothing but a pack train and our most valuable bit of equipment was four demijohns of whiskey, which was taken along for officers only—although I did get a little of it while I was in a hospital tent. On the evening of that day we made camp off the banks of the Yellowstone, and the following morning we began a forced march with a pack [train] and one piece of field artillery, a small cannon known as [a] Rodman gun [Gatling gun]. We carried this until we came to a chain of bluffs where we had to take it apart and carry it through in pieces. Colonel Custer thought this took too much valuable time and it was his order which left the cannon behind, an order which many believe may have cost him his life, for if we had taken the cannon with us, we might have held the Indians at bay and saved Custer the last march which led to his death.
On this march we slept in our saddles and ate one meal. We arrived at the Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876, at 11:00 a.m. When we arrived [with Captain Benteen’s battalion], Major Reno had already had an engagement with the Indians and had been repulsed on the bluffs, and [we were] just in time to save six men who had been cut off from their detachment during the melee. We gave the tired, thirsty soldiers water from our canteens—the first they had had in hours. I saw six videttes (signal men) stationed on a bluff, and next I saw Custer and a group of men going out of sight over the hills. This was the last time I ever saw my leader alive. For an hour and a half after that, Captain Thomas B. Weir of my company asked Major Reno for permission to go after Custer, and this was granted. We had heard firing and knew there was trouble and we hoped to arrive in time to aid Custer, but as the world knows now, we were too late. We were badly outnumbered when we finally came in sight of the scene of the massacre, and were fortunate to find a way to retreat back to the main company [command]. Only one man was lost on that march. Three of us were sent out for water, and as we got to the top of the ridge two of us were shot by Indians from ambush. I was sent to the hospital tent for medical aid.
The next morning, June 26th, while I was out getting fresh air, I heard a sergeant yell for more men, and I grabbed a gun and ran toward the ridge where he was stationed. But no sooner had I reached his side than I was again shot in the back. Until noon, the Indians tried to break in on us from three different points of attack. We held them until 4 o’clock in the afternoon when General Terry and his forces loomed up on the horizon and the Indians retreated in short order. We were hours without water, and kept bits of stone and gravel in our mouths to keep from getting thirsty. When we finally reached water on the eve of the 27th[26th], we had been two full days without water. On June 28th there was a quiet but dramatic interlude when we buried Colonel Custer and piled brush over his slain soldiers, weighting it down with dirt. Sadly and quietly we marched back to Fort Benton [Buford?] on the Missouri River, where many of the warring Sioux [eventually] came and gave up their ponies and guns. We herded 2, 500 ponies up [down] the river to Fort Abraham Lincoln. When our company marched back to Fort Rice, I received an honorable discharge.
Artist A. R. Waud’s depiction of Custer’s last stand at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, 1876. The event came to symbolize the Indian wars for most Americans. Editor’s collection
Some Thoughts about the Battle of the Little Big Horn (By Theodore W. Goldin, formerly of Troop G, Seventh U. S. Cavalry. From Winners of the West, August, 1924)
By way of introduction, I will say that I was a member of Troop G, Seventh Cavalry, in 1876, and took part in the fight at the Little Big Horn on June 25th and 26th, and later was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for the small part I played in that great tragedy. Prior to the start of the expedition, I was on extra duty as clerk at regimental headquarters and on the campaign served as one of the headquarters orderlies, leaving Custer’s column probably a little over an hour before he was hemmed in on the bluffs and massacred. This statement will possibly serve to connect me with that fatal engagement.
It is not my purpose to write anew the story of that day, but rather to state a few facts…[about the battle.] A few words as to Curley. Curley the Crow was with Lt. Colonel Custer when I
left the column; he [was] with Mitch Boyer and several other Crows, only one of whom is living today and whom I saw on a visit to the battlefield on the forty-eighth anniversary in June last [1924]. I also saw Curley after the fight and heard his story, in fact several of them. There has always been a doubt in the minds of officers and men who were in the battle as to just when Curley left Custer. However, in no statement ever made by Curley did he claim to have covered himself with a Sioux blanket and lain down on the field as if dead. Dozens of imaginative reporters from time to time have written of Curley, evidently allowing their imagination full rein regardless of facts…. Curley did say that he made use of a Sioux blanket to disguise himself and aid him in making his escape. He told in his original story things that happened after Custer was driven to the ridge where he fell, that were after corroborated by Gall and other leaders of the hostiles, but I believe the later and more general impression is that he saw the most of that final struggle while hiding in the immediate vicinity of the ridge awaiting an opportunity to complete his escape, yet near enough to easily see the things he told. So much for Curley.