The truth was, as it often is, more complicated. Custer’s marches, except those of the final night and morning, were hard but not severe. When he was fifteen miles from the battlefield, he originally planned to rest his force an entire day while reconnoitering the village. But once the column’s presence was detected by the Indians, Custer saw no choice but to attack immediately — a decision that any aggressive cavalry commander would have made given the circumstances. And Terry’s ill-advised march, away from Tullock’s Creek across the divide’s rough terrain, had been a disastrous choice. By the time his infantrymen had reached the valley of the Little Bighorn, they were exhausted and late. These and many other embarrassing facts — including Gibbon’s unforgivable failure to keep tabs on the large Sioux village despite its sighting on two separate occasions by Lieutenant Bradley and his Crow scouts — were deliberately ignored in Terry’s official reports, a tactic shared by his staff; Benteen, Reno, and other officers of the Seventh Cavalry; and the army’s top brass. The natural human tendency to avoid blame after a mistake — developed to an especially fine point in the military — combined with other factors to obscure the truth. The complexities of the campaign were subsumed under a simpler message: blame the dead Custer, whose reputation for sudden charges conveniently dovetailed with the official story. (Terry made clear his feelings two months after the battle, while still in camp at the mouth of the Powder River. He showed a correspondent a copy of his orders to Custer and the accompanying maps and said, “General Custer arrived ahead of time. If he had lived he would, necessarily, have gone before a court-martial.”)25 To be sure, Custer had made mistakes on June 25. For example, his early division of the regiment into four widely separated bodies before accurately assessing the enemy’s numbers, location, and disposition allowed the Indians to defeat him one contingent at a time. But these errors were not, ironically, those he was accused of.
Not every newspaper toed the line. A few questioned the quickness with which Terry blamed Custer.26 The antiadministration New York Herald, which had led the way in reporting government scandals, wasted no time in lambasting the Grant administration and the scandal-ridden Bureau of Indian Affairs. The same day that the paper splashed the news of the tragedy across the front page, an editorial inside proclaimed: “It would hardly be too severe to say to President Grant, ‘Behold your hands! They are red with the blood of Custer and his brave three hundred.’ ”27 Nine days later, the paper asked, “Who Slew Custer?” and then provided the answer: “The celebrated peace policy of General Grant, which feeds, clothes and takes care of their noncombatant force while the men are killing our troops — that is what killed Custer. . . . That nest of thieves, the Indian Bureau, with its thieving agents and favorites as Indian traders, and its mock humanity and pretence of piety — that is what killed Custer.”28 Several other papers, many of them southern or western, followed the Herald’s lead. Later the army would attempt to blame the loss on inaccurate reports from the Indian agents, who benefited from underestimating their charges’ defections. But the army knew full well that every spring saw an exodus of agency Indians to their free-roaming brethren to hunt and socialize, so that argument held little water. It was not the size of the hostile camp but the scattering of the bands that the top brass had been worried about.
Even the Seventh’s commanding officer joined in the chorus, with coruscating ferocity. A week after the news reached the East, a St. Louis reporter interviewed Colonel Samuel Sturgis, the father of young James, who had died with Custer. The grieving Sturgis delivered a bitter diatribe against his second in command, accusing Custer of deliberately sacrificing young lieutenants first, since he preferred to keep the older officers as a guard for himself. He declared that Custer was no Indian fighter, contradicting a statement he had made years earlier that “there is perhaps, no other officer of equal rank on this line who has worked more faithfully against the Indians, or who has acquired the same degree of knowledge of the country and the Indian character.”29
“He was guilty of disobedience and of sacrificing good men’s lives to win notoriety for himself,” the Colonel added. “If a monument is to be erected to Gen. Custer, for God’s sake let them hide it in some dark valley, or veil it, or put it anywhere where the bleeding hearts of the widows, orphans, fathers and mothers of the men so uselessly sacrificed to Custer’s ambition can never be wrung by the sight of it.”30 After his words saw print, Sturgis claimed in a letter to the editor that his strong language was “the result of an unfortunate misunderstanding,” but then went on to criticize Custer once again.31 He would never forgive Custer for his son’s death.
SHORTLY AFTER THE battle, the Seventh Cavalry and the combined Montana-Dakota column went into camp on the Yellowstone at the mouth of the Bighorn. While they awaited supplies and reinforcements, one of the Seventh’s noncommissioned officers began a petition addressed to the President and the “Honorable Representatives of the United States” calling for Reno’s promotion to Lieutenant Colonel of the regiment and Benteen’s to Major. By the book, such promotions were strictly by seniority, but the petition noted that these officers had “by their bravery, coolness and decision . . . saved the lives of every man now living of the 7th Cavalry who participated in the battle.” Two hundred and thirty-six signatures were affixed to it — about 80 percent of the battle’s survivors — and the letter was sent downriver by the next steamboat on July 16. General Sherman denied the request in Washington a few weeks later, pointing out that the proper promotions had already been made by the President and approved by the Senate.32
Reno also wrote a letter on July 4, one to Sheridan that skipped regular military channels. In it he managed the neat job of castigating two of his superior officers on the expedition. “I think Custer was deceived as to the number of Indians and that he did not give consideration to the plan of campaign that the subject demands. He went in hastily and with one of his usual hurrahs . . . but after all, the expedition would not have been a failure had Gibbon used then the cavalry force at his disposal. . . . The truth is he was scared. . . . I have said this in my official report but I tell you it is true that he was stampeded beyond any thing you ever heard of.” After more criticism of Gibbon, he returned to the subject of his commanding officer: “I think Custer was whipped because he was rash.”
He also brought up the issue of “hard marching.” “He runs his command down and attacked with tired and exhausted horses and men,” he said of Custer, “a very large and strong village of Indians. . . . However strong as they were, I believe the 7th Cavalry would have whipped them properly handled — if I could stand them off with half the Regt. should not the whole whip them.” There seemed little doubt whom he had in mind to handle the regiment properly.33
Reno’s criticism bespoke a convenient disingenuousness or forgetfulness. In the middle of June 1870, Reno led four companies of cavalry 60 miles in 20 hours after Indians in Nebraska and Kansas, from midnight until late evening of the following day. (He caught nary a one, though it must be added that he had no experienced guides.) He bragged about it in his report, writing that “the endurance of horse & man was put to the utmost.”34 From 5:00 a.m. in the morning of June 24 to about 3:00 p.m. the next day — about 34 hours — Custer led his regiment about the same distance. His troopers and mounts were certainly tired by the time they went into battle, but no more so than many another cavalry command’s on an enemy’s trail. Indeed, just a few months before, in early March, Crook’s column had marched 54 miles in 24 hours in much more severe conditions — with temperatures of twenty-six degrees below zero and his men allowed only two blankets each. Three weeks after Custer’s defeat, Lieutenant Colonel Wesley Merritt marched his Fifth Cavalry 85 miles in 31 hours to intercept Cheyennes heading northwest from Red Cloud Agency. In 1879 he would lead his command 170 miles in 66 hours.35 Hard marching was to be expected occasionally when maneuvering against the enemy.
The military establishment did not object to Reno’s excoriation of Cust
er; it had its own reasons for casting blame on a dead man. The calamitous results of the campaign — the lauded forces of two of the country’s top Indian fighters checked or defeated within the space of eight days, leaving Crook and Terry paralyzed for a month or more while they awaited orders and reinforcements — could prove highly detrimental to the army. Every year the military’s appropriations bill faced intense debate before it was approved, often after heavy budget cutting. Six days before the battle, the Democratic House had voted for a significant reduction in the army’s numbers and budget. A nation still recovering from the grievous losses of the Civil War was not persuaded of the necessity of a standing army of any size. Any further light cast on the army’s dirty linen — particularly its disastrous management at the highest levels of the recent campaign — could mean even more severe cuts. Far better to blame as much as possible a single man, a lightning-rod officer such as Custer, notorious for his “attack first” reputation. The army’s precarious position was indicated by the fact that there was no move to hold a formal, internal inquiry into the reasons for the disaster, despite there having been such investigations following the Fetterman affair a decade earlier.
The plan worked: within a week of the news of Custer’s defeat, despite opposition from some of the southern states, a new appropriations bill was approved that called for the addition of 2,500 soldiers and the construction of the two forts in Indian country Sheridan had been lobbying for since 1873. The military was given full control of the agencies, and an embargo on arms and ammunition sales to the Indians was immediately instituted. The ponies and guns of all Indians returning to their agencies were confiscated — and just for good measure, so were those of their reservation brethren. Conditions on the agencies deteriorated, and many formerly peaceful Sioux left to join their free-roaming friends before they lost their horses and arms. An Indian appropriations bill in mid-August tied the delivery of any further supplies to the agencies to several draconian conditions. These terms were presented without debate to a group of chiefs at Red Cloud Agency early in September. The agreement stripped the Sioux of a large chunk of their reservation, including the coveted Black Hills, and the unceded lands to the west. With legal backing for virtually anything it desired, the army proceeded to round up the “trespassing” Indians, many of whom were already straggling into the agencies to surrender. By the end of May 1877, only Sitting Bull would remain at large, in the British possessions to the north, the Great Mother’s land.
DESPITE THE HARSH criticism, there was also some outpouring of affection for Custer, as well as outrage at his manner of death. In certain ways, the charge of rashness seemed, if anything, to endear Custer all the more to a public battered by scandals and starved for heroes. Volunteer troops throughout the country, many of them Civil War veterans on both sides, offered to organize and march against the Indians at a moment’s notice. The U.S. Marines volunteered to send 800 to 1,000 men, almost half of their personnel, to join the forces in the West.36 But the congressional appropriations bill obviated any need for militia groups. “Custer Avengers” joined the cavalry in impressive numbers and were quickly shipped west to join the fighting — some of them without arms until arriving at the main camp on the Yellowstone.37 The stage was set for a major campaign that, in theory, would end the Indian problem once and for all. Whereas only a small-town stringer had accompanied Terry’s column in May, reporters now flocked to be in on the kill. But there was little fighting to be had.
Terry’s command remained at the base camp on the Yellowstone awaiting reinforcements, supplies, and orders until the end of the month, when they moved downstream to the mouth of the Rosebud. There they found a trader’s store and made good use of it. Reno’s heavy drinking apparently increased: in a twenty-two-day period beginning August 1, he bought an eye-opening seven gallons and two demijohns (four more gallons) of whiskey. No other Seventh officer came close, not even Lieutenant French, another heavy drinker, who purchased a gallon of whiskey and two quarts of brandy during the same period.38 (French had found other ways to forget his problems. While on the Yellowstone, he had taken an overdose of opium that he had stolen from the farrier and had fallen down in front of Hare’s tent and turned blue. Hare and his tentmate had thought he was dead, but he had recovered.)39 The Major became more unpleasant as he drank. One fresh young Lieutenant described Reno charitably as “most unlovable” and remembered that Reno publicly ridiculed him because he did not drink.40 Other officers of the Seventh who had survived the battle, including some who had petitioned for his promotion, grew unhappy with Reno for another reason: in his official report, he mentioned only one man, Benteen, and recommended not a single officer for a brevet.41
Benteen also indulged in the bottle. One day he called Sergeant Charles Windolph to his tent. He commanded Windolph to tell the other officers that they were all a pack of cowards, with the exception of Captain French. He then ordered Windolph to load his gun and shoot anyone who approached Benteen’s tent.42 (Windolph relayed the message, though no one was shot.) And after Thomas Weir rendered an opinion on the conduct of Reno and Custer during the battle, Benteen told Weir he was a damned liar. Weir said that meant blood. Benteen had been born and raised in Virginia, though he had fought gloriously for the North. Now the southerner, ill with dysentery, challenged Weir to a duel.
“Well, there are two pistols in my holsters on saddle, take your choice of them,” Benteen said. “They are both loaded, and we will spill the blood right here!”
Weir declined, and the surrounding crowd of officers left, Weir with them. The challenge was a direct violation of the Articles of War and merited dismissal from the army. The next time they met, Weir graciously offered his hand to Benteen.43
Reno and Benteen were not the only ones drinking more than usual. There didn’t seem to be much else to do, since there were no hostile Indians in the neighborhood and the biggest excitement in camp was the baseball games between the officers and the daily horse races, sometimes three a day, held on a course set up behind the cantonment.44 E. A. Garlington, a newly commissioned Seventh Cavalry Lieutenant, remembered that three of the regiment’s officers in succession reported for duty as officer of the day under the influence of liquor, only to be sent to their tents under arrest. And at one point during the summer, a court-martial was convened, with Captain Weir appointed President of the court. The session was held under a cottonwood tree, the members sitting on roots or stumps. Weir kept a two-gallon demijohn of whiskey between his knees and drank from it at regular intervals.
But Reno and his conduct during the battle were the center of discussion. Garlington noticed that “there seemed to be a suppressed feeling, at least among a portion of the officers of the 7th Cavalry, that Major Reno had not met the trying emergency suddenly thrust upon him with the most heroic spirit.”45 That opinion was echoed and given broader public exposure by Custer’s former battlefield foe and longtime friend, Thomas Rosser, who wrote a letter published in the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Tribune that was reprinted three days later in the New York Herald. The Minnesota paper had blamed Custer for the debacle, citing his “reckless indiscretion”; Rosser rode to his friend’s defense, referring to Terry’s orders, then charged that Reno “took refuge in the hills, and abandoned Custer and his gallant comrades to their fate.” He also mentioned Custer’s military need to “strike them wherever he found them.”46
Rosser’s accusation did not reach the Seventh Cavalry, encamped on the Yellowstone, until late July. An annoyed Reno wrote a well-crafted reply that was published in the Herald on August 8. He defended his actions, pointing to the ten-to-one odds against his battalion — “overwhelming numbers” that forced him to retreat to a more defensible position.47
Another letter from Rosser was published two weeks later. Though Reno did not reply, the debate by that time had gained a momentum that would in time prove unstoppable. Over the next couple of years, it would be brought to a boil primarily by the efforts of two writers, one a
n Irishman, the other English-born.
The Irishman was a big, well-traveled man named James J. O’Kelly, correspondent for the New York Herald, who arrived at the expedition’s new encampment on the Yellowstone on August 1 along with some Seventh Cavalry recruits. O’Kelly was no pasty-faced scribe. He had already fought as a soldier of fortune on three continents, both in the French foreign legion and the French army. Captured while fighting for Maximilian in Mexico, he had escaped, crossed the Rio Grande into Texas in a dugout canoe, and made his way back to Ireland. A few years later, he had arrived in New York and accepted a job with the Herald. After a thrilling adventure in Cuba, where he had barely avoided being shot as a spy, he had been assigned to cover the Sioux War.48 The engaging veteran had little problem gaining the confidence of military men.
The day after his arrival, August 2, O’Kelly interviewed Terry about the new campaign — the reinforced expedition was to move up the Rosebud and join with Crook before pursuing the Indians — then talked to Reno. The newspaperman’s initial assessment was favorable. “Colonel Reno is of middle stature,” he wrote, “very strongly built, has a swarthy complexion and dark eyes, combined with a certain rapid action and frankness of manner which makes a favorable impression.” He reported the Major’s annoyance “at the unfair criticism passed on the surviving officers of the Seventh by the people who knew nothing of the battle,” meaning Rosser’s letter, though the only officer Rosser had criticized was Reno.49
But after spending several weeks with the men of the Seventh Cavalry and other commands50 — the staff officers of Terry, Gibbon, and Nelson Miles, who had arrived with six companies of the Fifth Infantry — and listening to their candid off-the-record admissions, O’Kelly’s opinion changed. The talk around the campfires — and there was a lot of it — dwelled largely on the battle and the performance therein of the Seventh Cavalry and its officers. On September 21, a lengthy opinion piece by O’Kelly appeared in the Herald. In no uncertain terms, and in language surprisingly direct, he wrote:
A Terrible Glory Page 36
