A Terrible Glory

by James Donovan

  Since the Indians were believed to be on the headwaters of either the Rosebud, Bighorn, or Little Bighorn — Terry’s Crow scouts had reported seeing smoke in the valley of the Little Bighorn3 — Terry had in essence merely shifted the movements of his forces to the west a stream or two. Instead of two equal forces converging on a known location, however, this time a larger, faster strike force would seek the Indians and then drive them against a smaller blocking force — Gibbon’s Montana column. Custer and his entire regiment would ride up the Rosebud to its headwaters, continue south past the Indian trail if it was found to diverge westward (to give Gibbon time to reach the Little Bighorn and to make sure no Indians escaped south or east), and then move over to the Little Bighorn and down that river. Gibbon and his less mobile Montana column (he had several infantry companies) would march up the Yellowstone to the mouth of the Bighorn, where the Far West would ferry them across to the south side. They would then proceed up the Bighorn to the Little Bighorn and hasten up its valley to block the hostiles’ escape to the north, while the steamer made its way up the uncharted Bighorn as far as possible.4 Terry estimated that Gibbon’s slower-moving command could reach the mouth of the Little Bighorn by the 26th, four days after the Seventh Cavalry’s departure. The two columns would rendezvous there, hence Custer’s instructions to proceed farther south than the Indian trail.5

  Sitting Bull’s specific location was unknown and would probably shift within a few days, so a simultaneous attack on a predetermined date by two separate columns that were operating in unknown territory was an impossibility. A flexible plan was needed: thus Custer’s more mobile strike force and Gibbon’s slower blocking force — the hammer and the anvil, though each was considered strong enough to handle an Indian contingent of any size. No one knew the exact whereabouts of Crook’s Wyoming column, but he was believed to be marching north from Fetterman toward the Rosebud. With any luck, his force would be able to participate, and at the very least block any hostile flight to the south. “I only hope that one of the two columns will find the Indians,” Terry wrote in a dispatch to Sheridan the next morning.6

  For his part, Custer was undoubtedly elated to lead his own command — to be able to “swing clear” of Terry — and obtain the honor of striking the Indians first. Glory was hard to come by when fighting Indians — Gibbon would later describe it as “a term upon the frontier, which has long since been defined to signify being shot by an Indian from behind a rock, and having your name spelled wrong in the newspaper”7 — and here was a golden opportunity to gain some, possibly the final such chance, since Sitting Bull’s Lakota camp contained what was thought to be the country’s last large gathering of hostile Indians.

  Gibbon was disappointed, or at least claimed that he was later. He had shown little desire for chasing Indians while guarding the Yellowstone for two months, but he expressed chagrin at now being relegated to a mere blocking force, and so did his subordinates, younger men who had had few chances for battle accolades since the Civil War. They had been in the field chasing the hostiles since February and had developed a proprietary feeling for their opponent.

  At one point during the conference, the commanders called in George Herendeen, a seasoned frontiersman attached to the Montana column, and asked him for information about the area of Tullock’s Creek, west of the Rosebud — the valley of which included a well-used Indian trail — and about the Little Bighorn. Herendeen had recently hired on with Gibbon, who was much impressed with him.

  As Herendeen stepped up to the table, Custer put his finger on the map. “Do you know that place?”

  The scout said he did.

  “You are the man I want,” said Custer.8

  Satisfied that Herendeen knew the country, the commanders agreed that he would deliver a dispatch to Terry from Custer after the Seventh had scouted the head of Tullock’s Creek. He would receive $200 upon completion of this hazardous mission. Brisbin told Herendeen that the scout could find his cavalry near the mouth of the Little Bighorn in a few days.9

  At some point during the conference, Brisbin’s four Second Cavalry companies were offered to Custer, a clear indication that the Seventh was expected to hit the Indian village first. That would have left Gibbon with only a small, two-hundred-man force of infantry and artillery. Custer declined, stating his confidence that the Seventh could handle any Indians they came across. His feelings were echoed by Mark Kellogg, the Bismarck Tribune correspondent, who had taken a cabin on the Far West when the Dakota column had reached the Yellowstone. Kellogg’s dispatch written after the council of war summarized the plan and mentioned the fighting force of the Indians as numbering 1,500.10 He most likely received this new total from Custer, who seems to have been the only officer at the conference who thought there might be that many warriors.

  Terry’s grand strategy no doubt appeared reasonable in the Far West’s cabin, the light of the oil lamps illuminating a map with pushpins in it signifying rates of march. But the Sioux village and its several thousand inhabitants were not permanent map markings to be approached, captured, and herded at the will of Terry and his subordinates. No one knew their present location, which in a few days would probably be their old location. It was highly doubtful that they would remain in one place, waiting patiently for the bluecoats to find and attack them. The last village site Reno’s scouts had reached was now almost two weeks old. Up to that point, its size had remained steady for several weeks at about four hundred lodges — almost all the nontreaty Sioux and Northern Cheyennes. Whether Sitting Bull had been joined by agency Indians, and if so by how many, was unknown. But at the time, little thought was given to their numbers. The overriding concern, wrote Gibbon later, was “to prevent the escape of the Indians, which was the idea pervading the minds of all of us.”11

  Terry’s number-one priority remained the same: find the hostiles and engage them. There would be a battle, or at least an attack. The option of approaching the Indians to discuss their surrender and return to the agencies apparently never came up.

  Custer’s understanding of his mission was somewhat different. As he described it in a last-minute dispatch to the Herald the next morning, he would take up the Indian trail on the Rosebud that Reno had abandoned and “follow the Indians as long and as far as horse flesh and human endurance could carry his command.”12

  Custer refused Terry’s offer of the Gatling gun battery. Each of these heavy, hand-cranked weapons could fire up to 350 rounds a minute, an impressive rate, but they were known to jam frequently. Besides, Reno had taken one along, and it had been nothing but trouble. And during the Black Hills Expedition two years earlier, a Gatling gun had turned over, rolled down a mountain, and been demolished.13 Each gun was mounted on large wheels and drawn by four condemned horses and would surely have been difficult to maneuver. Custer wanted nothing to impede his progress. He planned “to live and travel like Indians; in this manner the command will be able to go wherever the Indians can,” he wrote in his Herald dispatch. When Lieutenant William Low, commander of the artillery detachment, heard that he would not be part of the strike force, he almost wept.14

  When the conference ended, Gibbon told Custer not to be selfish and to give the Montana column a chance to get into the fight. Custer just laughed.15 Terry and Gibbon walked Custer to his tent, pitched just a few feet from the Far West. The three men talked for a few minutes, then Custer had officers’ call sounded as the other two commanders returned to the boat.16

  Custer’s briefing to his officers was terse and brusque, as usual — he was not known for his effusiveness when issuing orders. The command would strip down to the essentials. The pack mules would carry fifteen days’ rations of hardtack, coffee, and sugar, twelve days’ of bacon, and fifty extra rounds of ammunition per man. (Gibbon’s men would draw only six days’ rations before marching up the Bighorn, since they would not be ranging far from the stores on the Far West.)17 In addition to ammunition, each trooper would carry twelve pounds of oats for his horse. Cus
ter also recommended that extra forage be carried on the pack mules. Finally, all battalion and wing organizations were canceled; each troop commander would be directly responsible only to Custer. Supplies would be off-loaded from the Far West the next morning.

  After Custer dismissed his officers, Lieutenant Godfrey and Captain Moylan, the ranker who had once been the General’s adjutant, remained behind. The two pointed out the weakened condition of the pack mules that had accompanied Reno’s strenuous scout and noted that they might break down, especially if they carried extra forage. An impatient Custer replied, “Well, gentlemen, you may carry what you please. You will be held responsible for your companies. The extra forage was only a suggestion, but this fact bear in mind, we will follow the trail for fifteen days unless we catch them before that time expires, no matter how far it may take us from our base of supplies. We may not see the supply steamer again.” Before entering his tent, he added, “You had better carry along an extra supply of salt. We may have to live on horse meat before we get through.”18

  Later that evening, Lieutenant Winfield Edgerly, West Point class of 1870, walked up to regimental headquarters and visited with Cooke, the tall Canadian adjutant. Tom Custer sat down for a while, smoking, until Boston Custer and Autie Reed came by and convinced him to join them at the river for a bath. Custer emerged from his nearby tent.

  Edgerly said to him, “General, won’t we step high if we do get those fellows!”

  “Won’t we!” Custer replied. “It all depends on you young officers. We can’t get Indians without hard riding and plenty of it.”19

  Later on, several officers of the two columns gathered to discuss the possibilities. Custer and Benteen soon were trading gibes, though the exchange seems to have been initiated by Benteen, who said that if a fight occurred, he hoped he would be supported better than he had been at the Washita. Custer in turn taunted Benteen about killing a young boy in that battle, which led Benteen to explain that he had had to do so to protect his own life. The discussion became rather heated. “It was plain to be seen that Benteen hated Custer,” remembered a second lieutenant who was present.20

  Custer returned to his tent to prepare for the next day’s departure. Late that night, he started a letter to Libbie. Outside, the General’s striker, John Burkman, walked guard duty in front of his commander’s tent under a moonless, cloudy sky. Wind gusted through the trees nearby, and scattered raindrops pattered on pup tents. Down at the Indian scouts’ camp, they wailed their death songs. Early the next morning, Burkman found Custer asleep on his cot with just his coat and boots off and his pen in hand.21

  After briefing their Sergeants, the officers returned to their tents, some to write last letters home, others to make out their wills or dispose of some belongings. Lieutenant Cooke entered Lieutenant Gibson’s tent and asked “Gibby” to witness his will.

  Gibson laughed. “What, getting cold feet, Cookie, after all these years with the savages?”

  “No,” said the tall Canadian, “but I have a feeling that the next fight will be my last.”

  Jack Sturgis fell on Gibson’s cot, laughing. “Oh, listen to the old woman. Bet he’s been to see a fortune teller,” he said.22 Within a few days, Sturgis would be the recipient of another officer’s will — that of his troop commander, Thomas French.23

  Others had the same idea as Cooke. Myles Keogh had already entertained sufficient misgivings, even before leaving Fort Lincoln, to make arrangements for his burial. Now he stepped aboard the steamer and sought out Lieutenant John Carland, a Sixth Infantry officer he knew assigned to the Far West. Carland had been a lawyer, and Keogh asked him if he could draw up a proper will.

  “I don’t know what may happen to me, and as I have not disposed of some things I have I want to make a will,” he told Carland. After the will was drawn up, signed, and sealed in an envelope, Keogh handed it over and said, “If anything should befall me open the envelope and send the papers to my sister.”24

  Not all of the Seventh’s officers would be marching out with Custer the next day. Keogh’s good friend and fellow Seventh Cavalry officer, Lieutenant Henry Nowlan, was also on the Far West, but he would not accompany his comrades. A fellow Irishman and a graduate of Sandhurst, England’s elite military academy, the handsome Nowlan had been decorated for gallantry in the siege of Sebastopol (1854–55). Like Keogh, he had arrived in New York in 1862 and fought in the Civil War, and each had served with the Seventh since its inception.25 Nowlan had served Custer splendidly as the regimental quartermaster for several years — a position his father had held in the British regular army26 — and General Terry had appointed him to the same position for the entire expedition. He wanted badly to go with his regiment — also like Keogh, he had done much Indian chasing but little actual fighting — but he would remain with Terry and his staff on the boat.

  THE NEW REGIMENTAL arrangement left Reno without a command of his own. Now it was likely that any glory garnered by the regiment would accrue to its commander, known for leading his men from the front, and not its acting Lieutenant Colonel. After making his preparations for the next day’s march, he began drinking heavily.27 That evening he ended up on the deck of the Far West harmonizing on the lugubrious “Larboard Watch” with Carland and a few other officers, arms about each other’s shoulders.28 Mitch Boyer got good and drunk, too, and bragged to another Crow interpreter how he was going to slaughter the Sioux, his mother’s people.29

  Mark Kellogg, the only reporter on the scene, was up until after midnight finishing his final dispatches and preparing for the journey, for he had just that night decided to ride with Custer and received permission to do so.30 In two canvas saddlebags, he packed his pencils and paper and plenty of sugar, coffee, and bacon. He was well liked by the officers of the expedition and had been given the run of headquarters. In response, his stories extolled everyone he wrote about, with the singular exception of Major Reno after his disobedient jaunt up the Rosebud. Kellogg’s weapon of choice was a Spencer carbine, and he knew how to use it.

  The indefatigable Captain Marsh was up early the next morning, hours before sunrise, directing the off-loading of supplies from his boat. He ran into Charley Reynolds, whom he had given a cabin. The soft-spoken scout had twice had a presentiment of his own death31 during the march from Fort Lincoln and had become convinced that he would not return from the expedition. His friend Fred Gerard had finally persuaded him to ask General Terry for permission to leave the column. Terry had talked him out of it. Reynolds’s haggard face betrayed his pain and lack of sleep; for some time now his left hand near his thumb had been badly infected, and it had not improved despite the efforts of the column’s acting assistant surgeon, Dr. Henry Porter of Bismarck. Marsh tried to talk Reynolds out of going, to no avail. Later that morning, he attempted the same with Boston Custer, whom he had taken a shine to. Bos seemed persuaded by the Captain, but by the time he returned to his cabin to finish a letter to his mother, he had changed his mind. “I am feeling first-rate,” he told her. After relating the Seventh’s plans, he continued:

  I hope to be able to capture one or two Indian ponies and a buffalo robe for Nev [the fourth and remaining Custer brother, a farmer in Monroe]. There are something like eight hundred Indians and probably more, But be the number great or small I hope I can truthfully say when I get back that one or more were sent to the happy hunting-grounds. . . .

  Autie Reed is going. He will stand the trip first-rate. He has done nicely and enjoying it. . . . Tell Annie [Autie’s mother, Lydia Ann] he is standing the trip nicely and has not been sick a day. . . .

  Goodbye my darling mother. This will probably be the last letter you will get till we reach Lincoln. Goodbye and believe me

  Still your affectionate son

  Boby32

  His brother Armstrong was finishing his letter to Libbie at midmorning when one of Terry’s aides delivered the General’s written orders. The former lawyer had crafted a carefully worded set of instructions — a curious combi
nation of specific directives and surprising largesse that reflected the uncertainties involved. Whereas Terry’s orders to Reno twelve days earlier had been terse and direct, with repeated use of the common military imperative “You will,” these seemed more like suggested movements couched in flattering language designed to placate his subordinate, whose feelings and reputation had so recently been battered by Grant and his allies in the press.33 Terry could hardly give Custer free rein after the President had made clear his views of his subordinate’s behavior. Terry needed to retain responsibility — or at least its appearance.34 But the inexperienced Terry also felt that he had to trust a subordinate more knowledgeable in Indian fighting to make the right decision if the opportunity arose. Whatever the reasoning, Custer was so pleased that he copied some of the orders into Libbie’s letter:

  “It is of course impossible to give you any definite instructions in regard to this movement, and, were it not impossible to do so, the Department Commander places too much confidence in your zeal, energy and ability to impose on you precise orders which might hamper your action when nearly in contact with the enemy.”35

  The day before, Boyer had helped select six of Lieutenant Bradley’s best Crow scouts to accompany Custer’s command, leaving Gibbon without a guide who knew the country. (Since the Montana column was following known waterways to the mouth of the Little Bighorn, it was assumed they could get by.) The Crows knew the area much better than the Arikaras, who were hundreds of miles away from home. They were familiar with some of the trails along the Yellowstone, however, and would act as couriers and outriding scouts on the flanks of the column. The hostile Sioux were likely on Crow land, as granted to the Crows by the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. The upper reaches of the Rosebud lay on the western edge of the reservation, although Sitting Bull and his free-roaming brethren had previously pushed the Crows west beyond the Bighorn River.