A Terrible Glory

by James Donovan

  No tribe on the northern plains had resisted the Sioux invasion as the Crows had, even after the Sioux had permanently driven them from the Powder River country. Though the Sioux outnumbered them dramatically — the Crows counted between 4,000 and 5,000 men, women, and children36 — they were prodigious warriors. They had been fortunate to avoid most of the cholera and smallpox epidemics that had ravaged the sedentary Missouri River tribes such as the Arikaras, whose population had declined by almost 90 percent to less than 1,000, and left them helpless before the raiding Sioux. (These diseases had almost halved the Sioux population, too.) Almost every spring or summer in the past decade or so, the Crows and Sioux had met in battle in this area, almost as if by tradition. Though large, the fights were rather mild, with few serious casualties. It appeared that more than anything, the clashes provided an opportunity for young warriors to increase their stature by winning honors. Except for those instances in which there were vastly superior Sioux numbers, the Crows gave as good as they got.

  Besides the Sioux, the Crows were surrounded by other enemies, so much so that white fur traders had years ago written the Crows off as being doomed and had abandoned their forts in Crow country. But the Crows had survived. They had seized their hunting grounds from the Shoshones a century earlier and had fought that tribe since, although the two nations had recently made peace. Another traditional enemy, the Blackfoot, lay to the west.37

  The Crows had befriended the whites from the beginning, since the first French fur traders met them in the mid-eighteenth century. Indeed, many whites in southern Montana Territory saw the Crows as their protectors against the Sioux. One business firm wrote to the Crow agent begging him to supply the Crows with plenty of ammunition, and in 1871 a Bozeman newspaper praised them for their resistance against the Sioux.38 Most of the Crows still avoided whiskey and punished those who used it. And their standards of cleanliness and deportment were somewhat closer to white expectations, unlike, say, the Arikaras, who were compared to “antiquated Negro washerwomen” by General Gibbon.39

  The six Crow scouts — Half Yellow Face (their leader), White Swan, Goes Ahead, Hairy Moccasin, White Man Runs Him, and the youngest, White Swan’s eighteen-year-old cousin Curly40 — were ferried across the river on the Far West, then escorted to Custer’s tent. He shook hands with each and welcomed them. The scouts were dressed in their traditional native garb, but each wore a red armband above their right elbow to help the soldiers differentiate them from the hostiles. The Crows were tall, with features closer (compared to other Indians) to what whites considered handsome, and they bore themselves proudly. Custer was much impressed; in a letter he wrote the next day to Libbie, he called them “magnificent-looking.”41 They were equally impressed with him, especially after Custer told them (via their interpreter, Boyer, since none of the Crows spoke English) that he was known as “Charge the Camp,” that he had “cleaned up” an Indian village down south years ago and would do the same to the Sioux, and that the Crows could keep all the horses they could capture.42 Custer reminded the Crows that they would not fight, only scout, which was the standard arrangement with Indian “wolves,” as scouts were known.

  The Crows had not been pleased by what they had perceived as Gibbon’s reluctance to fight, and when they heard that Custer followed an enemy trail to its end, they were overjoyed. “There is a kind, brave, and thinking man,” Curly thought when he met the General, and noticed that “Son of the Morning Star” — their name for him — had “kind eyes.”43

  The taciturn George Herendeen would also ride with Custer. He was a highly capable, jack-of-all-trades frontiersman who had spent the previous winter wolfing and living in a dugout up on the Yellowstone near Fort Pease, the crude little civilian stockade that its founders, Herendeen among them, hoped would develop into a successful trading settlement as steamboats ventured farther up the river. Before that, he had embarked on a variety of schemes that had invariably intruded into Sioux territory and as a result usually involved Indian fighting. Herendeen was a good man with a gun and dependable in a tight spot.

  After the supplies had been strapped to the pack mules and the men downed a late breakfast of bacon and coffee, the regiment formed and marched in column of fours through sagebrush toward the Rosebud. Custer rode ahead and fell out next to Terry, Gibbon, a few of their staff officers, and Kellogg. He was in high spirits, chatting freely, evidently proud of his regiment’s appearance as it passed by.44 The Arikaras, who had just finished the customary singing of their death songs, led the procession. They were happy to be following Long Hair, for he understood them. On the march from Fort Lincoln, Custer had often come to their bivouac to eat meat and talk with them. “Custer had a heart like an Indian; if we ever left out one thing in our ceremonies he always suggested it to us,” remembered one Arikara.45

  A band of trumpeters sounding a march came next, wheeling out of the column as they came up and continuing to play as the command passed by. The pack train followed the regiment, and a rear guard was last.46 Terry, thoughtful as ever, addressed each officer pleasantly as he returned their salutes.

  After the last trooper had passed, Custer shook hands with the two commanders and mounted his horse Dandy, one of two he had brought with him. Terry said, “God bless you,” and then Custer galloped after his column.

  As he left, Gibbon called out, “Now Custer, don’t be greedy, but wait for us.”

  Custer laughed as he had the evening before when Gibbon had said much the same thing, then waved and replied, “No, I will not.”47

  Right behind him rode Kellogg, his two canvas saddlebags bouncing atop the mule he rode. (The 175 pack mules, many of them still weary from the Reno scout and most determinedly uncooperative, gave evidence of future problems from the start: several packs fell off before they got out of camp.) Trotting along beside the column were two of Custer’s favorite dogs, Tuck and Blucher, and a small yellow bulldog named Joe Bush that belonged to Keogh’s I Company.48

  Back on the boat a few minutes later, Terry said to interpreter Fred Gerard, who had stayed to start some Arikara couriers to the Powder River depot with the mail, “Custer is happy now, off with a roving command of fifteen days. I told him if he found the Indians not to do as Reno did, but if he thought he could whip them to do so.”49 Terry knew his subordinate and also knew that no written suggestions would prevent Custer from following a fresh Indian trail if he happened to strike one.

  TEN

  The Trail to the Greasy Grass

  We marched 12 Miles and went into Camp every man feeling that the next twenty four hours would deside the fate of a good manny men and sure enough it did.

  PRIVATE THOMAS COLEMAN

  In the early spring, Sitting Bull had sent word out to all the agencies: come join us on the Rosebud, for the white soldiers are on the move.1 Some of the Lakotas had become too accustomed to their new lives, wretched as they were, to fight again, and few of the Dakotas and Nakotas east of the Missouri answered the call; only some of the renegades under the allegiance of the aged Inkpaduta joined their brethren.2 Most of the Indians at the two big agencies below the Black Hills remained there in allegiance to their chiefs, Red Cloud and Spotted Tail, who had pledged peace and would keep their word. Crazy Horse’s close friend Touch the Clouds, the tall Minneconjou chief by birth who had spent many years roaming the country with him, had elected to remain at the Cheyenne River Agency with his band and negotiate a peace with the wasichus.3 But hundreds of lodges from those agencies and others made the journey west and north and reached the village after the great victory on the Rosebud.

  The camp remained at that site on the Greasy Grass — what the whites called the Little Horn or the Little Bighorn — for six days, a long time for such a large gathering, since the needs of sanitation, grazing for the huge pony herd, and game to feed so many stomachs necessitated frequent moves. A shift up the valley toward the Bighorn Mountains was planned, but then scouts brought reports of many antelope in the other direction
. Thus, on the sixth morning, the Cheyennes on the lower end led the Sioux tribes north down the valley. Eight miles away, beside the river swollen with snowmelt, a new village was established, with six large tribal circles, five Lakota and one Cheyenne. Here the stream, from thirty to fifty feet wide and four to five feet deep, ran cold and clear as it snaked its way past frequent clumps of cottonwoods and scattered ash and willow trees. To the west, the valley stretched flat for almost a mile to low grass-covered benchlands, where many of the horses could graze. The terrain on the east side offered a contrast: sheer, rugged cliffs two hundred to three hundred feet high, looming above the water, cut through here and there by deep ravines and coulees. The steep bluffs hid most of the village from anyone approaching from the east. The only significant relief near the camp was a flat area with an easy ford giving access to the center of the village, which stretched almost two miles along the banks, its northern end nestled above a large loop of the river that extended almost halfway across the valley.

  Arrivals within the past week had almost doubled the size of the gathering to more than a thousand lodges and a few hundred wickiups (small, temporary shelters made with bushes stuck in the ground, their tops fastened together, over which the Indians draped canvas or buffalo robes or blankets) containing single men — at least 8,000 people in all and 2,000 men of fighting age.4 Most of the greatest leaders and bravest warriors of the Sioux and Northern Cheyenne nations were there. Many of the older fighters were veterans of more than a decade of constant battling and skirmishing with the whites and their soldiers. All but the very youngest had gained combat experience fighting traditional enemies such as the Crows and other tribes on the northern plains.

  Two of the Hunkpapas’ most respected warriors had just arrived. Gall, the tough, stocky subchief who had been a friend of Sitting Bull’s since childhood, had spent a good part of the previous year drawing rations at Standing Rock Agency.5 Though not the recalcitrant free roamer that Sitting Bull was, Gall was nonetheless recognized as fearless and ferocious. The tall, fiery Crow King was equally respected. His band of eighty warriors6 included several of his brothers. Gall and Crow King led 120 lodges between them.

  Another Hunkpapa present was Rain in the Face. He had been arrested by Tom Custer the previous year for killing two civilians during the 1873 Yellowstone Expedition. After three months of imprisonment at Fort Lincoln, he had escaped — almost surely with the help of one of the guards or a white prisoner. Rain in the Face had vowed vengeance on Tom and his brother the General.

  Some Assiniboines, longtime enemies of the Lakotas and Cheyennes, had intermarried with Nakotas and Dakotas fleeing from the Minnesota uprising years before and were now encamped with the Hunkpapas.7 A few warriors from other tribes that had sided with the Sioux, such as the Gros Ventres, were also there. The only Arapahos present were a small war party of five men looking for Shoshones to fight. When they rode into camp, they were thought to be scouts for the wasichus. Their guns were taken, and they were made prisoners. Only after Two Moon, a Cheyenne war chief, intervened were their lives spared and their arms returned. They were not, however, allowed to leave the village.8

  Every tribe of the Lakotas, a few of the eastern Nakotas and Dakotas, and perhaps a hundred lodges of Northern Cheyennes were there. Their leaders were Big Road, Crazy Horse, and Knife Chief of the Oglalas; Black Moon, Gall, Crow King, and Sitting Bull of the Hunkpapas; Hollow Horn Bear, Low Dog, and Little Hawk of the Brulés; Lame Deer, Hump, and Fast Bull of the Minneconjous; Spotted Eagle, Red Bear, and High Bear of the Sans Arcs; Runs the Enemy of the Two Kettles; Scabby Head of the Blackfeet; and Inkpaduta with his ragged Wahpekute and Yanktonais. Those leading the Cheyennes included Dirty Moccasins, Old Bear, Ice, Brave Wolf, and Lame White Man, a brave Southern Cheyenne war chief who had lived a long time with his Northern brethren. Only the tiospayes of Dull Knife and Little Wolf were missing, and the latter was expected to arrive soon.

  Though most of the men in the village still carried the bow and arrow in battle and on the hunt, over the past decade the sale and trade of arms to the Indians had increased significantly. Some guns issued to agency Indians for hunting had made their way to their free-roaming brethren, but there were many other ways a warrior could acquire a rifle. Post traders on some reservations supplied illegal arms to nontreaties; so did unlicensed traders — primarily the half-breed Canadian Métis gunrunners to the north and unlicensed white traders in the desolate area known as the Burning Grounds below the Black Hills. The latest Winchester magazine rifles were available for the right price: a horse or mule for a repeater, and buffalo hides for ammunition. Many men carried older guns — muzzle-loaders, for which some molded their own bullets; Henry and Spencer repeaters; Springfield, Enfield, and Sharps breechloaders; and many different makes of pistols. All told, between one-third and one-half of the gathering warriors owned a gun.9

  All of those present acknowledged Sitting Bull as their spiritual leader. His crowded lodge stood on the southern edge of the Hunkpapa tribal circle, his tiospaye blessed with the addition of his two twin sons born just a few days earlier.10

  Throughout the afternoon and early evening, women and children attended to the many chores involved in erecting the lodges and preparing camp. Young boys herded their families’ horses away from the village, mostly to the low hills to the west and north where the grazing was good. Some warriors rode out in groups to hunt buffalo and antelope — a gathering this huge required constant game to supply the Indians’ heavy meat diet.

  As the sun dipped toward the western horizon, Sitting Bull took his nephew and adopted son One Bull (nineteen years before, the grieving holy man had taken him into his lodge at the age of four after his own young son had died of disease) across the river and climbed a high hill overlooking the bustling village. There he stood and prayed to Wakantanka, offering several possessions — a buffalo robe, buckskin-wrapped bundles of tobacco — as he beseeched the Great Spirit to save his tribe. The victory over the bluecoats a week earlier had been glorious, but Sitting Bull’s vision of soldiers falling into camp had not been fulfilled, and troops were known to be in the area. He left the offerings on the hill and returned to the village with One Bull.

  The Sioux and Cheyenne chiefs met in council that evening. Scouts had reported soldiers somewhere to the northwest. Sitting Bull’s fighters had galloped out to meet troops a week earlier; they decided that this time they would wait for the enemy to approach. If the whites wanted to talk peace, the chiefs would listen. If they wanted war, the Indians would oblige.

  As darkness descended, a group of about twenty young Sioux and a few Cheyennes, most of them in their teens, pledged to die in the next battle. One of these “suicide boys,” Noisy Walking, the son of Ice, was only fifteen. Some of them had lost relatives in the Rosebud fight and had decided to avenge them in death. As the young men prepared to dance and sing in the Dying Dancing, people gathered around the dance circle to honor these brave young boys.11 Men sang their strong-heart songs, and women trilled their accompaniment, while an old man encouraged the boys. Should they die fighting, he said, their names would be remembered for a long time.12

  After sundown, two young Cheyenne cousins, Wolf Tooth and Big Foot, took their horses north of the village and hobbled them, then returned to camp. The Kit Fox akicita, the warrior society assigned as camp police that day, had sent lookouts to high points up and down the river to prevent eager young men from slipping away and attacking the whites on the Rosebud too early, before it was known what they wanted.13 When it was fully dark, the two Cheyennes sneaked back to their ponies, quietly made their way down to the river, and hid in the brush along the east side. The next morning, they would make a circuit north and then east around the camp. If the soldiers on the Rosebud came this way, they would earn the honor of striking them first — or at least warning the camp.14

  A CAVALRY REGIMENT was authorized to have almost 900 officers and enlisted men — not counting the 17 band members15 — but be
tween those deserting, mustering out, and on detached service, no regiment was anywhere near full strength. The Seventh’s numbers had been further depleted by the 150 troopers left at the Powder River depot on the Yellowstone. When the regiment left the camp on the Yellowstone on June 22, Custer rode at the head of 31 officers, 578 enlisted men, 45 scouts and guides, and several citizens in various capacities — all told, about 660 men.16 Over five strenuous weeks, they had covered 350 hard miles. A color Sergeant carrying the General’s personal headquarters flag — a swallow-tailed guidon of red over blue with crossed swords, the same he had used during the Civil War — followed him closely. Thirty-seven Arikaras, four Sioux, and a few half-breeds scouted on the flanks, while the six Crows, more familiar with the country, ranged far ahead.17

  As a rule, dress regulations were relaxed in the field, and the Seventh was no exception. Even a disciplinarian like Custer realized the foolishness and impossibility of adhering to such rules when far from even the crude civilization of a frontier post. Except for the company guidons and the standard-issue dark blue flannel blouses that most of the troopers wore — by this time usually stained green or purple by rain and sweat — an observer might have initially mistaken the column for a band of brigands. They sported hats of several colors and styles. Many of the men — Privates, noncoms, and officers alike — had recently bought light straw hats from a trader who had floated down the Yellowstone with a boatful of goods in search of a quick profit. Others wore standard-issue black wool campaign hats or more expensive store-bought slouches, usually gray. Their sky blue pants were by this time badly faded and worn, usually reinforced in the legs and seat by whitish canvas. Some had replaced ragged shirts with checkered hickory shirts bought from the trader, and others doffed their heavy blouses and wore only long-sleeved gray undershirts under their suspenders. Beards and shaggy hair were the rule rather than the exception.