A Terrible Glory

by James Donovan

  From the ridges to the east and the north, Indians kept up a relentless fire. From the wide ridge the column had just left, and from the ravines and ridges to the southwest, arrows rained down on the few still alive.46 The troopers hunkered down behind their makeshift breastworks and returned the fire, but the Indians were difficult targets, raising their heads from cover only to shoot a quick round, then ducking down to move to another spot before the soldiers could aim below the small burst of telltale black powder smoke. The bowmen remained well hidden in the gullies and behind the ridges surrounding the hill. Horsemen circled the hill at a distance; beyond them, even farther out of range, a crowd of women, old men, and young boys gathered on horseback, the outcome no longer in doubt. An occasional warrior galloped up near the hill, then angled off, the soldiers picking off one or two as they emerged from the thick cloud of dust and gunpowder, but that was little help given the situation.

  The dead horses provided meager protection from the hail of bullets and arcing arrows. Men yelled and screamed as casualties began to mount. It was impossible to keep the Indians at a distance. There was simply not enough firepower. They had too few guns and too few men to use them efficiently. There were some accurate shots on the hill, and the General was putting his Remington sporting rifle to good use,47 but the fact was that most of the troopers had never had the training or the practice to develop into marksmen. Anything beyond point-blank range was a guess for the Indians, since they knew little of making adjustments for wind and distance, but the number of their weapons made up for their poor shooting.

  Custer took a shot in his right breast that knocked him back. He dropped his rifle and drew his English bulldog pistols. Many of the men around him were dead when another bullet smashed into his right temple and killed him instantly. Mitch Boyer jumped up, yelled to the remaining men, and headed down the slope toward the river. Most of the survivors who could walk — no more than ten men total — threw down their rifles, pulled out their Colts, and followed him. Tom Custer lay motionless, but Boston and his nephew Autie ran down the hill. They got only a hundred yards before they were shot dead. Boyer and some of the troopers somehow made it halfway to the Little Bighorn before they were overcome. Warriors wielding clubs and revolvers fell upon them from all sides. A few of the men reached the deepest part of the ravine and were killed among their comrades. As had happened on other parts of the field, some of the soldiers killed themselves just to get it over with. No white man wanted to be alive when he fell into the hands of Indians.48

  WHEN THEY REACHED the sugarloaf ridge, Weir and Edgerly ascended the south crest and dismounted. The men were deployed in a skirmish line around the heights, and they strained to see what was going on. There was some kind of commotion on a long ridge about three miles north. They could only glimpse hundreds of horsemen on and around the far end of the ridge — “a great many,” remembered Edgerly, “riding around and firing at objects in the ground and several guidons flying.”49 But they assumed it was Custer’s rearguard action they were witnessing, and that the General was escaping north toward Terry and Gibbon.

  Weir sent Edgerly and his troopers another half mile out, where they deployed in a skirmish line.50 Then he scanned the area to the north again. “That’s Custer over there,” he declared, and mounted and prepared to ride in that direction.

  One of his Sergeants, a tall Civil War veteran named James Flanagan, said, “Here, Captain, you had better take a look through the glasses; I think those are Indians.”51

  Through the binoculars, Weir could see that the figures were indeed Indians, riding around and firing at objects on the ground.52 He dismounted and stood on the hill. Custer had never lost a flag during the war; a unit’s colors were protected at the cost of life itself. If those objects were cavalry guidons, then the General had suffered a serious setback, probably the loss of at least two or three of his companies.

  Then they spied a single trooper galloping away from the commotion. A group of Indians cut him off and felled him from his horse.53 Not far behind them were more Indians starting south toward the cavalry, a huge mass of warriors two or three miles away.

  AFTER THE LAST of the wasichus ran down from the hill, hundreds of warriors overwhelmed the position, counting coup and finishing off the wounded. Just below the hill, White Bull leaped from his horse to wrestle a big soldier who threw his pistol at him when it jammed. After a fierce struggle, White Bull finally smashed the soldier’s skull several times until he let go, then counted first coup and shot him. It was one of seven coups he earned that afternoon.54

  Crazy Horse also reached the area before the fighting was over. When a soldier lit out east on foot, Crazy Horse jumped on his pony, galloped after the soldier, and took him down.55 Gall, too, arrived on the hill just in time to help dispatch the last of the wounded soldiers. Many of the “suicide boys” had died in the charge they had made that had broken the bluecoat line. Lame White Man was found a short distance down the ridge, dead and scalped by a Lakota who had mistaken him for an Arikara army scout.56

  One of Inkpaduta’s sons, Sounds the Ground as He Walks, insisted that the fine-looking sorrel he claimed was Long Hair’s. Though none of the warriors present had ever seen Long Hair, they had heard of this great fighter. But they could not find anyone on the hill dressed as an officer with long blond locks.

  They stripped the bodies and scalped some of them, though most of the soldiers had hair too short for the effort. Then, as the men of the village threw themselves on their ponies and rode south toward the bluecoats standing on the high point near the river, the women, boys, and old men who had waited on their ponies out of range arrived to help kill the wounded and begin the important task of mutilation. Many warriors had died, but far more wasichus lay dead along this ridge. There were skulls to crush, eyes to tear out, muscles and tendons to sever, limbs to hack off, and heads to separate from bodies.57 These soldiers would not move through the next world in comfort.

  FIFTEEN

  The Hill

  The men expected orders every minute to march toward the firing.

  SERGEANT STANISLAS ROY

  Varnum had commandeered some troopers and a couple of spades from the first two mules and begun descending the bluffs toward the river to bury Benny Hodgson. Before he reached the river, he saw Herendeen leading eleven thankful troopers, most of them from G Company, up to safety. The frontiersman had persuaded them to wait in the timber for a better chance to escape. A few of them had been badly wounded, and they had only five or six mounts. After things had cooled down and most of the Indians had cleared off, Herendeen had carefully led them out of the woods and across the river upstream.

  Benteen had seen Weir’s company riding north and assumed the entire command was moving out. After his men had restocked on ammunition — Hare had returned in twenty minutes, followed by two mules carrying ammo boxes, and some cartridges had been distributed — he ordered H, K, and M companies after Weir. Captain French also led his men north, the only company of Reno’s battalion to do so. If Reno was issuing orders, no one was noticing or obeying them.

  Captain McDougall, with B Company and Mathey’s pack train, reached the Major a few minutes later. An apparently inebriated Reno saluted Mathey by raising a flask of whiskey. “Look here, I got half a bottle yet,” he said, though he didn’t offer any to the Frenchman.1 McDougall mentioned that he had just heard the two loud volleys. Reno paid no attention, replying, “Captain, I lost your lieutenant, he is lying down there.”2 McDougall left the Major and ordered his troop to throw out a skirmish line, since no one had replaced Weir’s after he had left.

  Varnum had no sooner reached Hodgson’s body than Lieutenant Wallace called him back. Varnum and his detachment made the long climb back to the bluffs to find that all except Moylan’s company — A, to which Varnum belonged — had moved out. He stayed with his troop commander and helped with the wounded. Meanwhile, a mile north at the promontory, Hare arrived with an order from the Major: Weir was
to open communications with Custer. Reno would follow as soon as the pack train arrived. To the north, Hare could see about 1,500 warriors moving in their direction.

  On the bluffs behind them, Reno ordered a trumpeter to sound the command to halt, and he did so continually. Weir ignored the order, as did Benteen and his officers, who continued toward Weir with their companies. When there was no reaction to his order, Reno commanded the remaining troops, including the pack train and the injured, to move north after Benteen and rode forth himself. McDougall’s company and then Moylan followed, his men carrying the seven casualties on horse blankets, six men to a blanket. A few other wounded troopers managed to mount and ride.3

  WHEN BENTEEN AND his three companies arrived at the peaks a mile to the north, he ordered his men to dismount and deployed them in a skirmish line on the ridges around the area. The Captain climbed to the top of the left hill. On the ridge to the north, the air was full of dust, but now there was only the occasional shot. Benteen took his troop guidon and jammed it down into some stones. If anyone was alive in that direction, they might see it and the horses and make for them.

  It quickly became apparent that the only people coming toward them were more of Sitting Bull’s warriors, and they were coming fast. “This is a hell of a place to fight Indians,” said Benteen. “I am going to see Reno and propose that we go back to where we lay before starting out here.”4

  With that, he descended the hill and led his troop back toward the Major, who was about half a mile back, in front of the pack train and Moylan and the wounded. Weir followed him, alone, leaving his troop in the care of Edgerly. French, the only senior officer left, remained with his company.

  The closest Indians were now about seven hundred yards away and closing fast on the regiment’s forward position. The two companies under Edgerly and French dismounted in a skirmish line around the forward peak. Many of the men, understandably unnerved, began to shoot. The Indians, now armed with two hundred additional Springfields, returned their fire.

  When Benteen reached Reno, he suggested that they fall back to their previous position, because Weir’s hill, despite its superior height, was a poor one for defensive purposes. There was little or no cover, since no part of it was completely protected. Reno agreed and began issuing orders to withdraw to their previous position. But perhaps because nobody trusted Reno any longer, no trumpeter blew the recall, and Reno himself did not bother to order a rear guard.

  As Benteen neared the position, McDougall rode up to him. After talking with another officer, he had decided that Reno was completely incompetent and drastic action needed to be taken. “Say old man,” he asked Benteen, “what is going to be the outcome of this unless we have a commanding officer here pretty damn soon? You are the senior captain, and we would like to see you take the lead in affairs.” If they were not careful, McDougall added, there would be a second Fort Phil Kearny affair, referring to the Fetterman Massacre.

  Benteen only smiled and said nothing. But he followed McDougall’s suggestion, and when they reached their position, he directed his men to set up a defense on one side of the site and then helped form the defense on the other side — Reno’s side.5 From that point on, Benteen quietly and unobtrusively took control of the command from Reno. Henceforth, most of the orders regarding the defense of the hill, whether they came officially from Reno or Benteen, were suggested by Benteen.6

  The retreat went smoothly for the most part. One runaway mule loaded with ammunition tore off and made it halfway toward the oncoming Indians. Only the quick pursuit of Sergeant Richard Hanley and Private John McGuire of C Company prevented the animal from falling into enemy hands.7

  Edward Godfrey’s company was in line along a ridge closer to the river and south of Weir’s position on the hill. He had been so busy instructing his men that he was startled to realize that Reno, Benteen, and the command were out of sight over the hills to the south; he had expected them to be deploying to fortify this new defensive position. Hare rode over and delivered the retreat order to Godfrey,8 who pulled his men in, got them mounted, and began to march south.

  In the confusion, French had received no orders to withdraw, but he finally mounted his men, yelled over at Edgerly to retreat, and led his company at a gallop over the bluffs past Godfrey. Edgerly’s troop followed soon after, though the lieutenant and his orderly, Private Charles Sanders, remained behind on top of a hill. Some two hundred Indians were swarming over the ridges the soldiers had just abandoned, and Edgerly could not resist taking a shot at one. He missed, and the rifle report startled his horse, which kept swinging away when he tried to mount. The closest Indians were only twenty paces away and firing at the lieutenant and his orderly, who grinned broadly the entire time. With Sanders’s help, Edgerly finally got on his horse, and the two galloped away. (When the lieutenant found time the next day to ask Sanders what he’d been smiling at, the trooper replied that it had been the atrocious marksmanship of the Indians when so close to them.)9

  Edgerly and Sanders had only made a couple of hundred yards when they came upon the troop farrier, redheaded, Swiss-born Vincent Charley, crawling on his knees and one hand. He had been shot through the hips and unhorsed, and his head was bleeding where he had hit the ground. He begged them not to leave him. Edgerly stopped and told him to find a ravine to hide in, and he would come back for him as soon as they could get reinforcements. Then the Lieutenant and his orderly rode away south after his troop. After riding a while, they looked back and saw the Indians finishing up Charley.10

  Indians appeared on the top of the hill and started down the slope, firing into the retreating troopers. Godfrey was only a short distance from the hill, and almost half a mile from Reno and the bulk of the command, when M and D troops passed him at a full gallop. The Indians were close behind them.

  Godfrey had graduated from West Point in 1867 and had served with the Seventh Cavalry since then. He had not made much of an impression his first year or so. His company commander had said of him, “He is very slovenly and lazy and unmilitary . . . of very little account in the company.”11 But “God,” as his friends called him, had shaped up as an officer. He had fought Indians with Custer on the Washita and the Yellowstone, and he had learned a few things along the way — particularly about retreat tactics. During the Battle of the Washita in 1868, with only a platoon of men facing hundreds of attacking Indians, he had handled a tricky rearguard action and come through with no casualties. He was well aware that Indians liked few things better than chasing down a fleeing enemy. He knew that if a proper rear guard was not implemented, the command’s retreat could turn into another buffalo chase, much like Reno’s in the valley below.

  Godfrey turned to Hare. “If this continues, the Indians will follow us right into the main camp, and I am going to try and stop it.”

  Hare hesitated — his position as orderly required him to return to Reno’s side — and then said, “All right, adjutant or no adjutant, I’m going to stay with you.”

  “I may need you,” said Godfrey. He had been told of Reno’s disorganized retreat from the valley, and it was vivid in his mind.

  Godfrey dismounted his thirty-odd men — all but the number fours, whom he sent with the horses back to the main command. He quickly formed the remaining twenty-two troopers into two squads, each under the direction of an experienced noncom. As the first of the Indians galloped toward them over a rise, he ordered his men to fire into the approaching hostiles, who held up and retreated to cover. Godfrey withdrew his men methodically, by the book, pulling each platoon back a short distance, alternately halting, kneeling, and firing as he had at the Washita. Despite his discipline, the men started to panic and bunch up, and then some began to run through the knee-high grass. Only with Hare’s help was Godfrey able to halt them and organize the lines. When the Indians started forward again, another volley drove them back to cover.

  As all this was going on, a messenger from Reno galloped up with orders to hurry back. Godfrey yelled,
“Double time, march!” then watched his men ignore him and start off like sprinters. He pulled his revolver and swore at his troopers, threatening to kill any man who ran away. The men turned and looked at him for a moment, but they obeyed. He managed to organize an orderly retreat, continuing to fire at the growing number of Indians.

  A few hundred yards from the safety of the regiment’s position, the small rear guard began to pass a high ridge over toward the river. Godfrey noticed some Indians making for it and realized that its superior height would make it an excellent defensive site. He ordered Hare to take ten of the men and hold the hill. But just as the detachment began to move in that direction, a trumpeter rode up with orders from Reno to fall back as quickly as possible. Godfrey recalled Hare and shouted, “Every man for himself and hurry back!” They needed little encouragement. A few minutes later, the men tumbled past the perimeter Reno had set up, without a single casualty.12 Behind them galloping over the hills came a thousand or more Indians.13

  SIXTEEN

  “Death Was All Around Us”

  We were thus surrounded and our little squad of men being killed and wounded by twenty times their number of Indians, and with no prospect of relief and expecting every moment to be murdered and, perhaps, tortured and burned.

  DR. HENRY R. PORTER

  KCompany’s measured rearguard action had bought precious time for the rest of the regiment, enabling Benteen and Reno to deploy their troops fairly well as they filtered into the lines. Benteen took one side, Reno the other, and they detailed each company to a length of the perimeter, though for the most part each commander handled his own once locations were assigned.1 Wallace was among the first officers back to position, and Benteen ordered him to place his company on the line.