A Terrible Glory

by James Donovan

  79. Wert, 283. (back to text)

  80. Brininstool, Campaigning with Custer, 152. (back to text)

  81. Years later, in a letter to a former Seventh cavalryman, Benteen revealed the disingenuousness of his blaming Custer for Elliott’s death: “Elliott, like myself, was ‘pirating’ on his own hook; allowed himself to be surrounded and died like a man.” Carroll, The Benteen-Goldin Letters, 252. (back to text)

  82. Bates, Custer’s Indian Battles, 16. However, historian George Grinnell wrote: “Ben Clark, who was in the fight, stated that when the first people appeared from the lower villages, General Custer ordered Major Elliott to take a few men and disperse those Indians” (Grinnell, The Fighting Cheyennes, 300), though Clark made no mention of any such orders in any other interviews. (back to text)

  83. George A. Custer to Libbie Custer, November 2, 1868, in the James D. Julia auction catalog Outstanding Firearm Auction Spring 2007. (back to text)

  84. Benteen also claimed that he had no idea the letter would be published (Carroll, The Benteen-Goldin Letters, 267, 281). Godfrey’s account supports Benteen’s (Frank Anders to R. G. Cartwright, February 7, 1948, Cartwright Collection). (back to text)

  85. Carroll, The Benteen-Goldin Letters, 267; Sklenar, To Hell with Honor, 36–38. Sklenar’s book, full of fresh insights and conclusions, is one of the best examinations of the Battle of the Little Bighorn yet written. Concerning Custer’s failure to mention any officers by name, even his staunchest defender, Godfrey would admit fifty-one years later: “Personally, I was never a ‘Custerite.’ My grievance was that Custer, in his ‘Galaxy’ articles, did not give me credit for discovering and giving him, at the battle of the Washita, his first information of the ‘big hostile village’ below the battlefield” (E. S. Godfrey to William Ghent, September 8, 1927, quoted in Research Review 11, no. 4 [Winter 1972], 76). (back to text)

  86. Sheridan, Personal Memoirs, 320. Edward Godfrey later wrote, “We were ‘betting’ that we should find Elliot with the wagon train — thinking in following the dismounted Indians of whom I wrote you some months ago, he had, on returning, found the hostiles practically surrounding the village and that he thereupon detoured and went on the back trail” (Millbrook, “Godfrey on Custer,” 78). (back to text)

  87. E. S. Godfrey to William Ghent, September 8, 1927, Hagner Collection; David L. Spotts to William Ghent, May 26, 1933, Hagner Collection. (back to text)

  88. W. A. Graham to E. A. Brininstool, December 21, 1936, Brininstool Collection. (back to text)

  89. In the years after the battle, some historians insisted that Elliott’s death at the Washita had strongly polarized the Seventh, causing a rift that would last until June 25, 1876. There seems legitimate reason to doubt this. Both Godfrey and Spotts, in the letters cited in note 87, stated that they heard no such criticism of Custer for his actions concerning Elliott, and Charles Varnum, who joined the regiment in 1872, later wrote that he had “heard the general story but no criticism of Custer for the abandonment of Elliott” (Colonel T. M. Coughlan to Frederic Van de Water, March 29, 1935, Van de Water Papers). Of course, they may not have talked to the right members of the Seventh. What seems clear is that the rift appeared before the Washita and was more likely the result of the polarizing nature of the antagonistic personalities of Custer and Benteen, exacerbated by Custer’s 1868 court-martial and his retaliatory charges against Captain Robert M. West. Years later, in his copy of Custer’s My Life on the Plains, Benteen penned a revealing note concerning Elliott: “Had party been found after fight of Washita, they would simply have been found dead, as they were two weeks later” — thereby putting the lie to his earlier charges of abandonment (Carroll, Custer: From the Civil War to the Little Big Horn, 14). Custer historian William Ghent stated, “No one, so far as I have been able to learn, then spoke of the withdrawal from the field as an abandonment of Elliott” (quoted in Carroll, The Fred Dustin and Earl K. Brigham Letters, 15). However, Lieutenant James Bell wrote later, “Major Elliott was missed but careful inquiry developed no knowledge of him. . . . The situation being pressing, the command went off, without investigating, a thing for which Custer was sharply criticized in many quarters afterward” (Hardorff, Washita Memories, 167). (back to text)

  CHAPTER THREE: PATRIOTS

  Epigraph: Chips, quoted in Carroll, Who Was This Man Ricker? 48.

  1. Information on the life of Inkpaduta is sketchy and contradictory, both in primary and secondary sources. Mark Diedrich’s Famous Chiefs of the Eastern Sioux is the best-researched account of his life. Other good sources are Peggy Rodina Larson’s “A New Look at the Elusive Inkpaduta”; Joseph Henry Taylor’s “Inkpaduta and Sons”; Mrs. Josephine Waggoner’s unpublished typescript “Inkpaduta” (though she lifted much of the first half of her paper almost word for word from Taylor’s work); and Thomas Teakle’s The Spirit Lake Massacre, probably the best overall account of that event. (back to text)

  2. Teakle, 68. (back to text)

  3. Larson, 25. (back to text)

  4. Lawrence Taliaferro, quoted in Diedrich, Famous Chiefs of the Eastern Sioux, 46. (back to text)

  5. Ibid., 48. (back to text)

  6. Larson, 30. Other death totals listed in other accounts range from thirty-two to forty. (back to text)

  7. Blank, “Inkpaduatah’s Great White Friend,” 17. For more testimonials, both white and Indian, to Inkpaduta’s good character, see Diedrich, Famous Chiefs of the Eastern Sioux, 46. (back to text)

  8. Cited in Larson, “A New Look at the Elusive Inkpaduta,” 33. Respected Sioux missionary Dr. Thomas S. Sullivan, in a letter in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, September 3, 1862, stated that the “utter neglect” of the authorities to punish the Spirit Lake murderers was the “primary cause” of the Great Sioux Uprising of 1862. See also Folwell, A History of Minnesota, 225. (back to text)

  9. Vestal, Sitting Bull, 55, 57; Utley, The Lance and the Shield, 56. (back to text)

  10. This summary of Sitting Bull’s life follows Robert Utley’s superb The Lance and the Shield; Stanley Vestal’s elegant but embroidered Sitting Bull; and Gary C. Anderson’s enlightening Sitting Bull and the Paradox of Lakota Nationhood. (back to text)

  11. Vestal, New Sources of Indian History, 44. (back to text)

  12. Ibid., 64. (back to text)

  13. Hassrick, The Sioux, 15–31. (back to text)

  14. Utley, The Lance and the Shield, 30. (back to text)

  15. Lazarus, Black Hills, White Justice, 24–25. (back to text)

  16. Sajna, Crazy Horse, 135–36. (back to text)

  17. Vestal, Sitting Bull, 102. (back to text)

  18. Utley, The Lance and the Shield, 86–89. (back to text)

  19. Hinman, “Oglala Sources on the Life of Crazy Horse,” 3. (back to text)

  20. Ibid., 14. (back to text)

  21. Vestal, Warpath: The True Story of the Fighting Sioux, 139–43. (back to text)

  22. Hanson, The Conquest of the Missouri, 179. (back to text)

  23. See George A. Custer, “Battling with the Sioux on the Yellowstone,” originally published in Galaxy, July 1876, and reprinted in Cozzens, Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, vol. 4. (back to text)

  24. DeMallie, The Sixth Grandfather, 163. (back to text)

  25. Parker, Gold in the Hills, 130. See also Brown and Willard, The Black Hills Trails; they list about one hundred deaths at the hands of Indians in and around the Black Hills during this period. (back to text)

  26. Milligan, Dakota Twilight, 59. (back to text)

  27. Marquis, Wooden Leg, 159. (back to text)

  28. Robert A. Marshall, “How Many Indians Were There?” in Carroll, Custer and His Times, Book 2, 210–11; Greene, Battles and Skirmishes of the Great Sioux War, 8, 10, 14. Indian accounts (see Marshall’s excellent article for the best discussion of the size of the Indian camp) are fairly consistent in reporting between 50 and 60 Cheyenne lodges in the camp and fewer Sioux lodges. Robert Strayhorn, the newspaperman who rode into battle with the army troops a
t Powder River, mentioned several times in his account of the battle that there were more than 100 lodges in the camp, as did Thaddeus Stanton, another correspondent with Crook’s column. Colonel Reynolds himself claimed 105 lodges in his official report. Also, an officer named Charles Morgan told a researcher years later that he had counted 104 lodges in the village (Camp BYU Notes, Reel 5, 133). However, in a 1910 interview (Hammer, Custer in ’76, 205), He Dog said of the battle, “I was there with a few Sioux,” which doesn’t sound like 40 or more lodges, and scout-interpreters William Garnett and Big Bat Pourier both claimed that there were only 12 or 14 Sioux lodges (Camp BYU Notes, Reel 5, 287). I have estimated 50 Cheyenne lodges and 15 Sioux lodges. (back to text)

  29. Vestal, New Sources of Indian History, 163. (back to text)

  30. Powell, People of the Sacred Mountain, 949. (back to text)

  31. Marquis, Wooden Leg, 182. (back to text)

  CHAPTER FOUR: OUTSIDE THE STATES

  Epigraph: Custer, quoted in Merington, The Custer Story, 277.

  1. George A. Custer to Libbie Custer, telegram, February 4, 1873, Harlan Crow Library. (back to text)

  2. Merington, The Custer Story, 239. (back to text)

  3. Bismarck Tribune, July 16, 1873: “This evening about 70 carpenters arrived from St. Paul, and next week about 80 more will come.” In a report of December 1875, the post surgeon reported that “the men have iron bunks and bedsacks filled with hay which is changed once a month. Each man has four or five blankets. In some of the companies the bedsacks are double and two men sleep in a bed, two bedsteads being placed side by side. This is a bad arrangement, but the objections to it cannot be impressed upon the minds of some company commanders” (quoted in O’Neil, Fort Abraham Lincoln, 8). Also Al Johnson, Fort Abraham Lincoln, conversation with author, January 8, 2007. (back to text)

  4. Herbert Swett to his parents, June 6, 1875, quoted in Bonhams and Butterfields Catalogue of June 28, 2005, 88. (back to text)

  5. John Manion, “Custer’s Cooks and Maids,” in Carroll, Custer and His Times, Book 2, 182. (back to text)

  6. Darling, Custer’s Seventh Cavalry Comes to Dakota, 148. (back to text)

  7. Felix Vinatieri to Department of Dakota, August 31, 1875, Fort Lincoln, Telegrams Sent, National Archives. (back to text)

  8. O’Neil, Custer Chronicles, vol. 1, 22. (back to text)

  9. Barnett, “Libbie Custer and Mark Twain,” 19. (back to text)

  10. General Alfred Terry to Custer, March 27, 1875, Department of Dakota, Letters Sent, 1875, National Archives; James Gordon Bennett to Custer, April 4, 1875, Roll 2, Elizabeth B. Custer Collection. (back to text)

  11. Custer to Cheyenne River Indian Agent, March 9, 1875, Fort Abraham Lincoln, Letters Sent, 1875, National Archives. (back to text)

  12. Herbert Swett to his parents, June 30, 1875, quoted in Bonhams and Butterfields Catalogue of June 28, 2005, 88. However, a story in the June 2, 1875, Bismarck Tribune indicated that Custer was not present at the first treaty signing in late May, which was buttressed by another mention of Custer in the same issue that stated: “Gen. Custer is expected this evening.” (back to text)

  13. Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 45. (back to text)

  14. Bismarck Tribune, June 30, 1875. (back to text)

  15. Custer to Department of Dakota, March 27, 1875, Fort Lincoln, Telegrams Sent, 1875, National Archives. (back to text)

  16. Milligan, Dakota Twilight, 36. (back to text)

  17. Slotkin, The Fatal Environment, 426. (back to text)

  18. Ibid., 427. (back to text)

  19. Rickey, Forty Miles a Day on Beans and Hay, 70. (back to text)

  20. Wooster, The Military and United States Indian Policy, 63. (back to text)

  21. George A. Custer to Libbie Custer, April 10, 1876, Merington Papers; Alberts, Brandy Station to Manila Bay, 222. (back to text)

  22. Utley, Cavalier in Buckskin, 155. (back to text)

  23. Custer to Terry, January 31, 1876, Department of Dakota, Letters Received, 1876, National Archives. (back to text)

  24. Our Great Indian War, 68. (back to text)

  25. Tilford, “Life in the Old Army.” (back to text)

  26. George A. Custer to Libbie Custer, January 14, 1869, quoted in Joe Rubinfine, List 152, American Historical Autographs. (back to text)

  27. The officer was Edward Godfrey; identified in Millbrook, “Godfrey on Custer,” 78. (back to text)

  28. George A. Custer to Libbie Custer, n.d. but probably March 1869, Elizabeth B. Custer Collection. (back to text)

  29. Albert Barnitz, quoted in Wert, Custer, 298. (back to text)

  30. Falconer, “Early Notes and Comments,” 7. (back to text)

  31. Barnett, Touched by Fire, 187–90. (back to text)

  32. Merington, The Custer Story, 277. (back to text)

  33. Sheridan to Sherman, March 25, 1875, quoted in Cozzens, Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, vol. 4, 191. (back to text)

  34. Darling, A Sad and Terrible Blunder, 12–15. (back to text)

  35. Wooster, 161. (back to text)

  36. Darling, A Sad and Terrible Blunder, 93. (back to text)

  37. Ibid., 41. (back to text)

  38. Wooster, 70. (back to text)

  39. Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 4; Board of Indian Commissioners, Annual Reports, 1875, quoted in Gray, Centennial Campaign, 20–21. (back to text)

  40. Gray, Centennial Campaign, 31–32. Perhaps the best book written about the preparations leading up to the Battle of the Little Bighorn. This discussion owes much to it. (back to text)

  41. Ibid., 33. (back to text)

  42. Ibid., 90. (back to text)

  43. Ibid., 40. (back to text)

  44. Ibid., 43. (back to text)

  45. Cortissoz, The Life of Whitelaw Reid, vol. 1, 312. (back to text)

  46. Noyes, “The Guns ‘Long Hair’ Left Behind,” 3. (back to text)

  47. Hynds and Shay, “Reminiscences,” 63. However, a story in the March 22, 1876, Chicago Daily Tribune related that the train “was stopped 26 miles east of Bismarck by a mountain of snow.” (back to text)

  48. Saum, “Colonel Custer’s Copperhead,” 15. (back to text)

  49. Barnard, I Go with Custer, 105. (back to text)

  50. Custer, Boots and Saddles, 214; Wert, The Controversial Life of George Armstrong Custer, 321–22. (back to text)

  CHAPTER FIVE: BELKNAP’S ANACONDA

  Chapter title: New York Herald, March 31, 1876.

  1. Brown, The Plainsmen of the Yellowstone, 133. (back to text)

  2. Ibid., 135. (back to text)

  3. Morris, Fraud of the Century, 24. (back to text)

  4. New York Sun, September 14, 1877; New York Evening Post, January 20, 1879. (back to text)

  5. It seems that few members of Grant’s extended family did not attempt to profit from their relationship to the President. Even a brother-in-law of one of Grant’s brothers-in-law was implicated in the post trader scandal. Chicago Daily Tribune, March 29, 1876. (back to text)

  6. In testimony before the Clymer committee on March 28, 1876, a former sutler implicated Grant in a very early (1868) post trader arrangement, in which he claimed that yet another Grant brother-in-law had arranged his hiring with the then General of the army for a third of the appointment’s profits. The sutler testified that Grant knew all the details. New York Times, March 28, 1868. (back to text)

  7. Buell, The Warrior Generals, xxix. (back to text)

  8. McFeely, Grant, 415. This excellent biography provides a succinct summary of the scandals of the Grant administration and his refusal to admit the malfeasance of his many crooked appointments. See also Prickett, “The Malfeasance of William Worth Belknap.” (back to text)

  9. Nichols, Men with Custer, 154. (back to text)

  10. Sully, No Tears for the General, 204. (back to text)

  11. Walker, Campaigns of General Custer, 45. (back to text)

  12. Noyes, “The Gu
ns ‘Long Hair’ Left Behind,” 3. (back to text)

  13. Weymouth, America in 1876, 90, 104. (back to text)

  14. Custer, My Life on the Plains, 166–68. (back to text)

  15. Wert, Custer, 323. (back to text)

  16. Utley, Cavalier in Buckskin, 159; Kroeker, Great Plains Command, 145; New York Times, March 4, 1876, and March 30, 1876. (back to text)

  17. Stewart, Custer’s Luck, 122–25; Chicago Daily Tribune, March 10, 1876; Nation, March 16, 1876. (back to text)

  18. Merington, The Custer Story, 290. (back to text)

  19. New York Times, March 30, 1876. (back to text)

  20. Hart, Custer and His Times, Book 2, 25. (back to text)

  21. Hutton, Phil Sheridan and His Army, 306. The July 11, 1876, New York Daily Tribune recounted the testimony of a former post trader, Caleb Marsh: “The last payment was made by Marsh in person to the present Mrs. Belknap . . . by direction of Mr. Belknap himself. Some of the deposits were made to Mr. Belknap . . . to his order, some were sent to him by express, and some were paid to him by Marsh personally in bank notes.” Marsh claimed that Belknap always wrote him with directions on how to send Belknap’s share. (back to text)

  22. Hutton, Phil Sheridan and His Army, 17. (back to text)

  23. Johnson, Custer, Reno, Merrill and the Lauffer Case, 13. (back to text)

  24. Carroll, The Benteen-Goldin Letters, 234. (back to text)

  25. Ibid., 275. (back to text)

  26. Johnson, Custer, Reno, Merrill and the Lauffer Case, 11. Another reason for the hostility between the two was that Merrill, in testimony before an army examining board (known as the Hancock Board or Benzine Board), supplied details of Custer’s harsh discipline. Custer likely knew of that testimony. New York Times, April 5, 1876. (back to text)

  27. Stewart, Custer’s Luck, 177. (back to text)

  28. Army and Navy Journal, April 1, 1876, and April 15, 1876. (back to text)

  29. Prickett, “The Malfeasance of William Worth Belknap,” 14. (back to text)

  30. Sherman to General Stewart Van Vliet, March 11, 1873: “In reference to the order for the purchase of horses I can only say that it was drafted by [Quartermaster] Genl Meigs himself, approved by the Secretary of War, & if unlawful, that is their business not mine.” (back to text)