A Terrible Glory

by James Donovan

  As his subalterns argued, Terry sat his horse quietly, biting his lower lip, his eyes fixed on Bradley. Finally, he spoke. “I find it impossible,” he said, “to believe that so fine a regiment as the Seventh Cavalry should have met with such a catastrophe.”12 Then he yelled, “Forward!”

  The infantry had just come up, and now, following Terry’s orders, the entire column continued on. On the horizon to the south rose heavy smoke — evidence of Custer burning the Indian village, it was surmised.

  The Crow interpreter and all of the Crow scouts, Custer’s and Gibbon’s, were last seen galloping north in the direction of their agency a hundred miles away. The excuses provided later for their departure were unconvincing, ranging from worn-out horse hooves and White Man Runs Him’s lack of sufficient clothing to a general belief that the fighting was over. As they left, the interpreter explained to Gibbon that the scouts had been out for too long and had “become hard up for women.” He assured the colonel that they would be back.13

  The column pushed over a divide and into the valley of the Little Bighorn along its west bank. About ten miles later, around noon, they crossed the cold waters, the chill more than welcome after so much time spent in the torrid heat.14 After a rest of a few hours, the troops marched upstream on the Little Bighorn’s east side. Up ahead, Bradley and his eleven men began to see Sioux in small groups and large. The column advanced in fighting order. A short while later, an advance troop ran into a “perfect skirmish line of mounted Indians”15 arrayed across the valley. The Sioux did not move when they saw the troopers. When the troopers spotted, some distance behind the line, three or four hundred more figures, and what appeared to be a troop of cavalry in dark clothes and carrying a guidon, and then another troop, both in cavalry formation, the situation became perplexing.16 It was only upon closer inspection that their true identity was revealed. They were Indians wearing the garb of cavalrymen — many cavalrymen.

  The advance company retreated toward the main column, though the Indians did not pursue. With darkness approaching, Terry decided to bivouac for the evening — a decision not all of his men welcomed. He ordered camp set up in the form of a hollow square. Pickets were set out, and every man slept in his clothes with his rifle beside him. During the long night, the story of the three Crows was reevaluated. Something clearly had gone wrong. By now, most of the infantry officers believed the Crow story, but most of their cavalry counterparts still did not.

  With the dawn came the realization that the body of warriors up the valley had disappeared. The command ate breakfast and resumed the march south in battle formation.

  A couple of hours later, Gibbon’s advance troop rounded a timbered bend of the Little Bighorn and, in a long, mile-wide valley, discovered signs of a large Indian village along the west bank. Now the actions of the Indians seen the previous day were made clear: they were a rear guard protecting the camp while it packed and made off. Most of the grass on the plain had been burned black and still smoldered. On the banks of the stream, a stray horse here and there nibbled at the few patches of green left. Two tepees still stood, each surrounded by a ring of dead horses. Inside each lodge were dead Sioux, five in one and three in the other, dressed in their finest clothes. Scattered robes, pots and pans, cookstoves, kettles, axes, lodgepoles, china dishes, and many more valuables strewn for miles along the river gave evidence of a hastily abandoned camp. When the troopers came across pieces of cavalry equipment — saddles, clothes, the feet of top boots — and then three severed heads of white men, they began to fear the worst.

  As the rest of the column came up, they made more gruesome discoveries, including underwear belonging to the Seventh Cavalry’s Lieutenant Sturgis, the gloves of Captain Yates, and Lieutenant Porter’s buckskin jacket, with a bloody bullet hole under the right shoulder.

  The command continued through the village and around a bend of the river. Now they began to find bodies of white men, all severely mutilated and covered with swarms of flies. Then, on the opposite side of the river, upstream a mile or so, they could see many figures standing on a bluff. Several officers trained their field glasses on the hill, trying to ascertain their identity. Some thought they were Sioux scouts.

  Bradley and his men had been scouting on the east side of the Little Bighorn, along the low hills that sloped up and away from the river, and now rode up with grim news.

  “I have a very sad report to make,” he said, his voice quavery with emotion. “I have counted one hundred and ninety-seven bodies lying in the hills.”

  Someone asked, “White men?”

  “Yes,” said Bradley. “White men.” He added that, though he had never met General Custer, from pictures he had seen, one of the bodies might be his. All along the crest of one hill and around it, on either side for more than a mile, were bodies of white men, stripped naked, most of them hideously mutilated.

  It was about then that two horsemen could be seen riding toward them from the south.

  WHEN, ABOUT NINE o’clock in the morning of the 27th, a pillar of dust was spied to the north of Reno and his command, their first thought was that the Indians were returning. That fear was put to rest when two officers with field glasses recognized the distant column as an army command. Whose troops they were — Terry’s, Custer’s, or Crook’s — was still unclear, but there was a sense of relief that help was at last on the way. As the force in the valley slowly approached and it became clear that it was an army column — Crook’s, they figured at first — the men on the hill gave cheer after cheer and waved blankets and hats and guidons. Reno sent two Arikaras to investigate. They were followed by Lieutenants Hare and Wallace, who were ordered to make contact with the troops.

  The two Seventh Cavalry officers drew up riding bareback, greeting Terry and his men, and pointed out their position on the bluffs upstream.

  “Where is Custer?” someone asked them.

  “The last we saw of him,” said Wallace, “he was going along that high bluff” — he indicated a point downstream from where he had located Reno — “toward the lower end of the village. He took off his hat and waved to us. We do not know where he is now.”

  His eyes filling with tears, Terry said, “We have found him.”17

  THE TWO DOCTORS with Gibbon’s column were ordered ahead to Reno’s position to help Dr. Porter with the fifty-four wounded men. When they reached the summit, Varnum recognized one of the surgeons. “Where is Custer?” he asked. “Is he coming with your column?”

  The doctor told him what Bradley had reported. Varnum turned away and broke down, recalled the surgeon, “crying like a baby.”18 Many of the men did, too.

  No one could believe it. “We were simply dumbfounded,” remembered Godfrey.19 The loss of their comrades was bad enough, but they also had to adjust to the realization that the epic two-day struggle for their lives was much the lesser story. There were few dry eyes on the hill as the news of the fate of Custer’s battalion spread. As Gibbon and Terry approached, the men gave several cheers, but when Terry reached the summit and approached the men of the Seventh, his sad face, lined with tears, silenced everyone.

  A skeptical Benteen asked Terry where Custer had gone. “To the best of my knowledge and belief,” the General said, “he lies on this ridge about four miles below here with all his command killed.”

  Benteen was still unconvinced. “I can hardly believe it,” he replied. “I think he is somewhere down the Big Horn grazing his horses. At the Battle of the Washita he went off and left part of his command, and I think he would do it again.”

  Terry had heard enough. He said, “I think you are mistaken, and you will take your company and go down where the dead are lying and investigate for yourself.”20 He ordered Lieutenant Bradley to guide Benteen to the battlefield. Then he rode over to the hospital, where he greeted every man there with a reassuring word and a handshake. As he made his way through the camp, almost every officer quietly thanked him.

  John Burkman, Custer’s devoted striker, was to
o numb to cry. He had kept busy for much of the siege dragging dead animals to fortify the breastworks around the hospital and tending to some of the live ones. Dandy, Custer’s older mount, had been shot in the neck, and Burkman had taken special care of the little horse. Now he walked off a ways and looked out over the valley, talking to himself.

  “Custer is dead,” he said. “The General is dead.” He recalled later that he thought, “Now I won’t have to tell him that maybe Dandy’s going to die.” And he wished more than anything that he could have been along, that he could have been there at the last.21

  BENTEEN MOUNTED AND rode upstream, taking Weir, DeRudio, and Nowlan with him. Guided by Bradley,22 they followed what appeared to be Custer’s trail north across the bluffs, down a wide coulee to a ford at the river, up into a rough terrain of ravines and ridges, and then on to the south end of a long, high ridge. The first body they came across, not far from the river, was that of Calhoun’s First Sergeant, James Butler. A horse lay nearby. Scattered about Butler’s body were several empty cartridges, mute testimony to the spirited fight the man had put up. He had been known as a fine shot. Almost a mile farther to the northeast, at the southern end of a long, high ridge that ran parallel to the river, they found the remains of L Company, with the bodies of Calhoun and Crittenden just a few feet from each other. Calhoun was scalped, but not badly mutilated. The young infantry officer’s body was shot full of arrows, including one that had stuck in his glass eye and splintered it.23 North of them, in a swale on the east side of the ridge, was Myles Keogh. Close around him lay the dead troopers of I Company, including several of his noncom officers.24 Keogh’s body was naked, save for his socks, but other-wise untouched, and some kind of Catholic medal was still around his neck.25 More corpses led to the far end of the ridge —more than two hundred all told.

  Almost all of the bodies were stripped of their clothing, except for the occasional sock — though even in these cases, the names stitched in them had been cut out. Most were scalped and mutilated — heads, hands, feet, and legs cut off and scattered around the field. After two days in the blistering sun, they were swollen; some were discolored, almost black. Many of their legs had received a slash on the right thigh, the Sioux sign for marking their victims.

  One of Benteen’s troopers motioned him over to a group of bodies. The Captain rode over. On the flat crest at the far end of the ridge lay Custer, naked, leaning in a half-sitting position against two soldiers beneath him. His face wore a peaceful expression — “He looked as natural as if sleeping,” remembered one officer26 — and his body bore two gunshot wounds, one to his left temple and the other near his left breast. His right thigh had received the customary Sioux slash. He had not been scalped, probably because his recently trimmed hair was too short. Under his body and around him were about twenty cartridge shells, at least some of them brass casings from his Remington sporting rifle.27 An arrow had been stuck into his penis.28

  Benteen dismounted, walked over, and looked down. “By God, that is him,” he said. Then he mounted and rode off.29

  Surrounding Custer were five of his officers — his brother Tom, Yates, Smith, Reily, and Cooke, his face half torn off, with only one long dundreary left. On the slope below him were about forty troopers, most of them from F Company. Thirty-nine cavalry horses, some obviously shot to form a roughly circular breastwork, lay around them. Dr. Lord was there,30 and Boston Custer and Autie Reed were found close together about one hundred yards downhill toward the river. Tom Custer’s corpse was one of the most severely damaged. His head was smashed flat and scalped, his throat cut, his eyes and tongue ripped out, his abdomen sliced open and entrails protruding, his genitals hacked off. Many arrows had been shot into his body. Only a tattoo on his arm — the initials T.W.C. — enabled him to be identified.

  After litters were fashioned, the wounded were all moved down to the camp of the Montana column, near the woods Reno had retreated from two days before. Terry and his staff gave up their tents for the wounded.31 The rest of the day was spent burying the hacked-up remains of the men who had died in the valley, among them Hodgson, McIntosh, Reynolds, Bloody Knife, Bobtail Bull, and Dorman, who might have been the worst-looking of all. One trooper described Dorman’s body as “horribly mutilated; looked as though it went through a hash machine.”32 The soldiers were still interring their friends and destroying their unusable possessions when darkness descended over the valley.

  Early the next morning, Terry sent several scouts out to look for any survivors. None were found. Detachments of the Seventh Cavalry marched to the battlefield and resumed burying their dead with the help of a few shovels and spades found in the abandoned village.33 Benteen and Godfrey rode together, away from the rest of the command.

  “Benteen, it’s pretty damn bad,” said Godfrey.

  “What do you mean?” Benteen asked.

  “Reno’s conduct.”

  The moonfaced Captain turned in his saddle and faced Godfrey. “God, I could tell you things that would make your hair stand on end.”

  “What is it? Tell me.”

  At this moment, another horseman approached them. Benteen jerked his head toward the other rider and said, “I can’t tell you now.”

  Godfrey said, “Will you tell me sometime?”

  “Yes,” said Benteen. Five years would pass before Benteen revealed to Godfrey how Reno had, on the night of the 25th, proposed abandoning the wounded and making a forced march back to their supply camp.34

  As the Seventh’s officers approached the area, they could see what appeared to be white boulders shining in the bright morning sun.

  “What are those?” someone asked.

  Godfrey took his field glasses and examined the objects. A moment later, he almost dropped them again. “The dead,” he said.

  Near him Weir said, “Oh, how white they look! How white!” He turned to Godfrey. “My, that would be a beautiful sentiment for a poem.” He said no more, overcome by the thought.35

  The troops divided up to cover different portions of the field. The dry soil made their digging difficult, and only the officers received anything more than a few shovelfuls of dirt and some sagebrush. “In a great many instances,” remembered Sergeant Ryan, “their arms and legs protruded.”36 The stench of decaying bodies and horses was overwhelming, and more than one trooper ran to the river for a drink of fresh water after vomiting, particularly after the skin from one of their comrade’s arms slid off.37

  Twenty-eight dead troopers — most from Lieutenant Algernon “Fresh” Smith’s E Company — were found in a deep ravine, halfway down to the river on the battle ridge’s western slope. On the sides of the coulee, claw marks revealed a desperate attempt to scramble to safety. Most of the dead had been shot in the back of the head or in the side. They were left in the bottom, their interment consisting of several scoops and chunks of dirt thrown down on them from the edge of the ravine.

  The bodies of Custer and his brother Tom were wrapped in canvas and blankets and buried side by side in the same grave, about eighteen inches deep, with a row of stones around the edge — “the best burial on the field,” according to Ryan, who was in charge of the interment detail.38 Each identified officer’s grave was marked by his name on a piece of paper in an empty cartridge shell, which was then driven into the top of a stake;39 the enlisted men were extended no such courtesy. The bodies of three of Custer’s officers — Sturgis, Porter, and Harrington — were never identified, though the head of young Sturgis was discovered in the village.40 And since Porter’s buckskin jacket had also been found there, it was assumed that he had been mutilated beyond recognition and buried with the other unidentified troopers. No trace was found of Harrington.

  Benteen counted seventy dead horses on the field, only a few of them Indian ponies. Now and then, troopers came upon a badly wounded horse, still alive. These were all destroyed except two. A gray horse near the river, named Nap, followed the command when it returned to the Yellowstone, then disappeared, o
nly to show up at Fort Lincoln some time later.41 The other was Comanche, Myles Keogh’s mount, found wandering around the battlefield, bleeding heavily from seven wounds, three of them severe. Private Gustave Korn assumed care of the claybank gelding.

  The Seventh troopers buried 204 men. Despite their best efforts, they missed some of their dead comrades, and over the next fifty years, the remains of several more were discovered on or near the battlefield.

  A COMPANY OF the Second Cavalry was sent south to find where the Indians had gone. The troopers rode toward the Bighorn Mountains for about twelve miles and then found that the trail divided, one camp headed southeast and one southwest. They returned without engaging the hostiles.

  Like the fish that got away, the number of Indian warriors the Seventh had faced seemed to grow larger with each telling. The 1,500 to 2,500 braves the regiment initially believed it had fought quickly doubled to 4,000, then became 5,000.”42 Two and a half years later, Benteen would testify that he had come to believe there were between 8,000 and 9,000 warriors, and Wallace would also claim 9,000.43

  Since their rescue, Reno’s subordinates had shared their experiences with their brother officers in Gibbon’s column. Soon after arriving, Lieutenant Henry Nowlan had asked Mathey about Reno’s conduct, having heard rumors about it from someone else.44 Criticism of his performance, or lack thereof, was severe and frequent — the word “cowardice” was used45 — and would continue in that vein for many months, both within the expedition and in the newspapers. The battle might have been over, but a long war of words against Reno had already begun.

  Preparations had been made to transport the injured troopers to the Far West, which was then at the mouth of the Little Bighorn. Twenty-one men were so severely wounded as to need carrying; the others were able to ride.46 The command moved out late in the afternoon, eight men to a litter, taking turns in shifts.