The Last Days of George Armstrong Custer

by Thom Hatch

  Seven

  Prelude to War

  While the Sioux and their allies held meetings to discuss this grievous intrusion into the Black Hills, George Armstrong Custer and Libbie visited Monroe, Michigan, for six weeks before settling in for another winter at Fort Abraham Lincoln. The social season was once again quite agreeable to the Custers as the post maintained its normal routine of drills and monotony. In addition, Armstrong put his free time to good use by writing about his remarkable career.

  One of Custer’s classmates at West Point, J. M. Wright, wrote that the “greatest surprise in Custer’s whole career in life was that he should turn out to be a literary man. If any one had said in the four years before the Civil War that Cadet Custer would in fifteen years be a scholar of artistic tastes and writer of graphic contributions to the magazines, the prediction would have been derided.”

  To consider that this devil-may-care cavalier could gain fame as an author may have seemed preposterous given his lack of attention to academics, but Custer did indeed turn out to be a literary man, and an accomplished one at that.

  Custer’s initial foray into the publishing world was with a New York–based weekly sportsman’s journal called Turf, Field and Farm, which suited his taste for horses, hounds, and hunting. His first article or “letter,” which he wrote under the pseudonym Nomad, was submitted on September 9, 1867—just six days before his court-martial convened at Fort Leavenworth. In spite of the pseudonym, readers knew that Nomad was actually the famous General Custer. He would write a total of fifteen letters describing his adventures to this publication between September 1867 and August 1875.

  Custer, convicted by court-martial, served out much of his one-year suspension with Libbie while residing in Phil Sheridan’s quarters at Fort Leavenworth. It was during this period of time that Custer began work on his Civil War memoirs, and six years later at Fort Lincoln he was still working on this subject. Unfortunately, he never finished these memoirs, completing only the period from his reporting for duty at Bull Run in July 1861—three days out of West Point—to the May 5, 1862, Battle of Williamsburg where he was said to have captured the first battle flag taken by the Union army.

  In 1872, while stationed at Elizabethtown, Kentucky, Custer began writing a series of articles for a magazine called Galaxy. In 1874, Sheldon & Company, the owners of the magazine, published selected articles in book form titled My Life on the Plains or, Personal Experiences with Indians, which remains in print today. The book, which detailed his activities on the Great Plains from 1867 to 1869, established Custer as a bestselling and respected author.

  Also in 1874, Custer became embroiled in a literary feud of sorts with Colonel William Hazen over the merits of the land that the Northern Pacific Railroad was attempting to sell along its route. The sale of this property was vital to the future of the railroad, but Hazen responded in a letter to the New-York Tribune on February 7, 1874, with a pessimistic view, claiming that the land in that region was not worth “a penny an acre.”

  Custer received a request from friend Tom Rosser to aid the cause. Custer obliged with an April 17 letter published in the Minneapolis Tribune that refuted Hazen’s assertions and presented a glowing picture of the future of the railroad and the agricultural opportunities along its route. He added that “the beneficial influence which the Northern Pacific Railroad, if completed, would exercise in the final and peaceable solution of the Indian question, and which in this very region assumes its most serious aspect, might well warrant the general Government in considering this enterprise one of National importance, and in giving to it, at least, its hearty encouragement.”

  Custer’s letter was reprinted in a booklet published by the railroad and widely circulated. He wisely ignored Hazen’s rebuttal and declined to engage in a full-scale literary duel. Instead, Custer relied on the public to determine whose opinion was more credible—and Custer was a respected and famous man whose word was golden.

  Predictably, Custer was treated like a VIP by the railroad and richly rewarded for his loyalty. He was presented with a spacious wall tent, which had been stenciled with “NPRR.” Custer and Libbie traveled on the Northern Pacific compliments of free passes, occasionally in a private coach, and were once provided a special train.

  He also was known to write speculative political pieces without a byline for leading Democratic papers such as the New York World and for his friend James Gordon Bennett, publisher of the New York Herald. In the summer of 1876, Bennett expected to receive anonymous articles from Custer about the Little Bighorn Campaign.

  Perhaps the most entertaining and revealing, if not informative, writing by Custer, however, is his letters to Libbie and others and her letters to him. This correspondence, which was edited into a book by Marguerite Merington, one of Libbie’s closest friends, reveals the intrigue of their courtship, the terror of the Civil War, the adventures and dangers of frontier life, and an inside story of the politics that ruled the day. The subject of each letter could range from the most mundane to an outburst of personal intimacy but most of all showed the devotion that these two lovers shared throughout the years.

  The only other excitement at that time was the arrest, capture, and escape of Sioux warrior Rain-in-the-Face, who had boasted about killing sutler Augustus Baliran and veterinarian Dr. John Honsinger during the Yellowstone Expedition of 1873.

  The killing by the Sioux of Baliran and Honsinger, which occurred on August 4, 1873, during the Yellowstone Expedition, was not on anyone’s mind until scout Charley Reynolds visited Standing Rock Agency during the winter of 1874. While observing a scalp dance, Reynolds overheard Sioux warrior Rain-in-the-Face brag to a large audience of his peers that he had killed the two men. Reynolds immediately relayed that information to George Armstrong Custer at Fort Abraham Lincoln.

  Custer summoned his friend Captain George Yates and ordered him to assemble fifty men for an unspecified detail. This detachment from companies F and L, along with First Lieutenant Tom Custer, proceeded to Fort Rice, where it was joined by another fifty-man detachment from the Seventh Cavalry commanded by trusted Seventh Cavalry captain Thomas H. French.

  “Tucker” French was born on March 5, 1843, in Baltimore. His father passed away from a fever when Tucker was fifteen. In January 1864, French enlisted in the Tenth Infantry, and he fought in the Petersburg siege and the Battle of Weldon Railroad and was wounded at Chappell House, Virginia. In 1868, he accepted a captaincy in the Nineteenth Infantry on March 26, 1868. When the army was reorganized he was assigned to the Seventh Cavalry on January 1, 1871, and gained a reputation as a crack shot with the .50-caliber “Long Tom” Springfield infantry rifle that he carried. French had distinguished himself on August 11 during the Yellowstone Expedition of 1873 while commanding two companies dispatched by Custer to thwart an attempt by the Sioux to cross the Yellowstone River. His detachment successfully prevented the Indians from crossing and closing with the main body. French had also commanded Company M during that summer’s Black Hills Expedition of 1874.

  Now, on December 13, 1874, the temperature was fifty-four degrees below zero as the column moved along the frozen Missouri River. After traveling twenty miles as instructed, Yates opened the sealed envelope that contained Custer’s orders. Yates was directed to Standing Rock Agency to arrest Rain-in-the-Face for the murders of Baliran and Honsinger. Total secrecy was to be maintained; Custer feared that if the Indian agent learned of the mission he would warn the Sioux warrior. Charley Reynolds would travel ahead of the column to ascertain the whereabouts of the fugitive.

  After arriving at Standing Rock that evening and spending a freezing night in an unheated warehouse, Yates learned that Rain-in-the-Face was located in a Hunkpapa Sioux camp some three miles away. It was ration day, and all the Indians would be visiting the Hatch Trading Store at the agency to draw provisions. As a diversion, a forty-man detachment was dispatched to another Indian camp ten miles away to inquire about some other Sioux who were wanted for depredations on
the Red River. Yates and the remaining men then rode to the traders’ store.

  Tom Custer, Charley Reynolds, and several others entered the store while the remaining troopers waited outside the entrance. Reynolds pointed out Rain-in-the-Face to Custer, who grabbed the surprised warrior and threw him to the floor. Rain-in-the-Face’s hands were bound, and he was escorted outside and strapped on a waiting horse.

  Due to the lateness of the hour, the cavalrymen and their captive remained at the agency that night. They departed on the morning of December 15 and struggled through eighteen-inch-deep snow to arrive at Fort Lincoln the next day.

  Rain-in-the-Face was confined in the wooden guardhouse in the company of a civilian caught stealing grain from the government. Custer, through an interpreter, patiently interrogated his prisoner for hours. Finally, Rain-in-the-Face confessed to the murders in the presence of all the officers, his account matching the conclusions of the military.

  Rain-in-the-Face and the white thief remained chained together in the guardhouse for several months until friends of the thief tore through the wall one night and freed them both. Rain-in-the-Face later said that he had been released by a sympathetic “old soldier,” who had waited until he was safely away before firing his weapon to sound the alarm. Whatever the circumstances, the Sioux warrior fled to Sitting Bull’s camp, where Rain-in-the-Face vowed revenge for his arrest—promising to someday cut out Tom Custer’s heart and eat it. As fate would have it, both Tom and Rain-in-the-Face would meet one day in the future.

  The interminable winter on the Northern Plains finally turned into springtime and afforded an opportunity for its inhabitants to move about the territory. In spite of government warnings to the contrary, by the summer of 1875 more than eight hundred prospectors had invaded the Black Hills to seek their fortune. This provoked the Sioux, led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, to retaliate by attacking these invaders and raiding wagon trains, mail routes, and settlements in the unceded territory. Soon the miners were demanding that the government protect them from Indian attacks.

  Brigadier General George Crook was dispatched to uphold the provisions of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 and chase off the miners. And if anything could be done to pacify the miners, Crook was the man who could do it.

  George Crook was born on a farm near Dayton, Ohio, on September 8, 1828. He had graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1852, near the bottom of his class, and was assigned to an infantry regiment in the Pacific Northwest. In addition to escort duty and building military posts, Crook was involved in the Yakima War of 1855–56 in eastern Washington Territory, as well as the simultaneous Rogue River War in southern Oregon. He received a poisoned arrow in the hip during one engagement with the Pitt Indians.

  At the outbreak of the Civil War, Crook was made colonel of the Thirty-sixth Ohio Infantry, which was assigned to western Virginia, and by applying lessons learned on the frontier successfully fought guerilla actions against Confederate interests. He was wounded at Lewisburg in May 1862 and promoted to brigadier general three months later. Crook commanded the Kanawha Division at South Mountain and the September 1862 Battle of Antietam. He was then placed in command of the Second Cavalry Division and participated in the heavy fighting of the August–September 1863 Chickamauga Campaign. In February 1864, Crook assumed command of the Kanawha District and led a series of raids between Lynchburg, Virginia, and eastern Tennessee. He was given command of the Department of Western Virginia in the summer of 1864 and was part of Major General Phil Sheridan’s Shenandoah Valley Campaign, where Crook distinguished himself on numerous occasions and became known as Uncle George.

  Crook was promoted to major general in October 1864 and was at his headquarters at Cumberland, Maryland, on February 21, 1865, when he and Brigadier General Benjamin F. Kelly were captured by Southern partisans. He was released one month later, just prior to the end of hostilities.

  George Crook returned to the regular rank of lieutenant colonel after the war and commanded the Twenty-third Infantry in Idaho Territory, where he fought against Northern Paiutes during the Snake River War of 1866–68 in the deserts of southern Idaho and eastern Oregon—eventually forcing a surrender. In 1871, at the request of President Ulysses S. Grant, Crook was placed in command of the Department of Arizona to contend with Chiricahua Apache. Crook won great acclaim by developing a successful strategy of using small, mobile detachments and recruiting surrendered Apache to track renegade Apache. By 1873 the Apache had been relatively subdued, and the following year Crook was rewarded with a brigadier general’s star.

  Now, in 1875, he was given command of the Department of the Platte and assigned the dubious task of removing the miners who had been trespassing in the Black Hills to prospect for gold.

  Late in July, Crook called a meeting with the miners and issued an ultimatum, which diplomatically suggested that the miners would have an opportunity to prospect the area once it had been opened in the near future, but for the present they must depart. The miners were quite impressed with Crook’s forthrightness, and most agreed to comply. They even drew up a proclamation that thanked the general for “the kind and gentlemanly manner with which his command have executed his (the President’s) order.”

  Crook’s ability to reason with the miners can be attributed in part to his folksy, if not somewhat eccentric, personality. He was an imposing man, standing well over six feet, braided his parted blond whiskers, wore canvas coveralls rather than a uniform, and preferred riding a mule instead of a horse.

  Nevertheless, newspapers, especially those from nearby Dakota towns, ignored the ban on mining and jumped on the golden bandwagon and promoted these towns as the ideal places from which to outfit and enter the Black Hills.

  There remained skepticism in some circles, however, over the validity of Custer’s discovery, which was partially due to high-profile people such as geologist Newton Winchell and Fred Grant, the president’s son, claiming not to have personally observed any gold. The government therefore authorized another expedition into the Black Hills in the summer of 1875 to confirm Custer’s conclusions.

  This expedition was headed by New York School of Mines geologist Walter P. Jenny, with escort provided by six cavalry and two infantry companies under Lieutenant Colonel Richard I. Dodge. Although Jenny reported that it would be difficult for individual miners to extract enough gold with primitive pan and rocker to make it worth their while, he confirmed that the Black Hills did indeed hold rich mineral deposits that could be profitable if sophisticated mining equipment was utilized.

  Jenny’s guarded opinion meant little to the public. Gold had been confirmed, and the rush to strike it rich commenced in earnest.

  Red Cloud, Spotted Tail, and other Lakota Sioux chiefs were invited to Washington, D.C., in that summer of 1875, believing that the meeting would pertain to agency business. To their surprise, the government requested that they sign over the title to the Black Hills. The chiefs refused, saying they lacked authority to make such an important decision.

  The government, however, promised to reward the Lakota well should they sell the Black Hills. Spotted Tail was asked to estimate the worth of the region, which he subsequently set at between $7 and $40 million and enough provisions to provide for seven generations of Sioux.

  The tribe was split over that proposal to sell the Black Hills to the United States government. Those members who resided on the reservation approved of the idea, thinking only of the rewards that they would receive. Another faction, led by medicine man Sitting Bull and warrior Crazy Horse, vowed that this sacred land would be sold only over their dead bodies.

  The Allison Commission, named for its chairman, Iowa senator William B. Allison, convened near Red Cloud Agency in September 1875 to discuss the sale. The commission members were greeted with a show of hostility from the younger warriors, who disrupted the proceedings and threatened severe reprisals against any chief who dared sign a treaty giving away the Black Hills.

  Senator Allison
proposed that the Sioux accept $400,000 a year for mining rights or the United States would buy the Black Hills for $6 million. The offer was declined.

  The commission returned to Washington empty-handed and recommended that Congress simply offer whatever value they judged was fair. If the Lakota refused to sell at that price, rations and other provisions should be terminated.

  Prior to the Civil War, the government had established an Indian policy that called for removing offending tribes to the Great Plains, where they could live on one big reservation in a region where the whites had no interest. After the war, however, whites became interested in the Plains—both for crossing to points to the west and for settling—and Indian resistance was dealt with by military force. At that point, the government had two choices when setting policy with respect to the Indian—annihilation or assimilation. On the one hand, the military, including George Armstrong Custer, were predictably proponents for war, which did not sit well with President Grant. On the other hand, Grant was becoming frustrated with his failing peace policy.

  The Lakota Sioux did not make it easy for the proponents of assimilation to maintain their stance. Warfare was fundamental to the way of life for young males in the tribe. Warriors gained status by brave deeds performed in battle with their enemies. Warfare was both a sport and ceremony and closely related to the supernatural.

  Young men would journey alone to a mountaintop and meditate without food or rest until a vision appeared to them. This image would become an important part of a warrior’s protection and preparation for battle for the remainder of his life. Crazy Horse, for example, would never enter battle without painting his body with white hail spots, a streak of lightning on one cheek, and a brown pebble tied behind his ear.

  Horses were the Sioux medium of exchange. An individual’s wealth was measured by the number of horses he possessed. Therefore, stealing horses from rival tribes became the primary target of raids. All-out war was generally waged only to defend their village or hunting ground. Counting coup was the act that brought the most glory upon a warrior. This meant closing with an enemy and, with a sacred stick or hand-to-hand, striking the first blow or wound. A coup could also be awarded for saving a life or stealing a horse. The reward for each coup was an eagle feather that could be worn in the warrior’s war bonnet on future raids.