9. Graham, The Custer Myth, 187; Hammer, Custer in ’76, 80, where Gibson said that “Benteen told him to keep going until he could see the valley of the Little Bighorn.” See note 27. (back to text)
10. Graham, The Reno Court of Inquiry: Abstract, 157. However, accounts of this scout to the left by Edgerly, Benteen, and Gibson are not consistent. (back to text)
11. Gray, Custer’s Last Campaign, 262. See also Darling, Benteen’s Scout-to-the-Left. Some historians have maintained that the only view Gibson had at his last vantage point did not provide sight of the valley of the Little Bighorn (Dale Kosman, Custer researcher, conversation with author, January 9, 2006). But Gibson, an ardent admirer and defender of Benteen’s, emphatically claimed that he could see the valley. In Gibson’s account, published in the February 20, 1897, New York Evening Post, he wrote: “I got to the valley and found it as quiet as the grave itself. Up the valley I could see a long distance, but in the direction of the village only a short one, owing to the turn in the valley, and the broken character of the country. I hurried back to Benteen, and told him there was no use going any further in that direction.” In a letter to Godfrey, written on August 8, 1908, Gibson wrote, “I crossed an insignificant little stream running through the valley, which I knew was not the Little Big Horn, so I kept on to the top of it. I could see plainly up the Little Big Horn valley for a long distance with the aid of the glasses; but in the direction of the village I could not see far on account of the sharp turns in it and I hurried back and reported so to Benteen who altered his course so as to pick up the trail” (quoted in Carroll, The Anders-Cartwright Letters, vol. 1, 15). Edgerly also made the same claim (O’Neil, The Gibson-Edgerly Narratives, 9), as did Godfrey, who told Walter Camp: “Gibson signaled Benteen that he could see up and down the valley of the Little Big Horn [really South Reno] and could not see any village. When Benteen got this information he made for the main trail, on middle fork of Reno Creek, without going further” (Camp IU Notes, 446). (back to text)
12. According to Henry M. Brinkerhoff, “Benteen afterwards said he thought Custer had sent him fishing, for no Indians had been reported in that direction” (“California Veteran Writes ‘True Story’ of Battle of Little Big Horn in 1876,” undated newspaper story, probably Billings Gazette, clipping file, Billings Public Library). (back to text)
13. Brady, Indian Fights and Fighters, 404; Godfrey, Custer’s Last Battle, 22; Nichols, Reno Court of Inquiry, 479. Godfrey testified that when they turned toward the trail, their “gait was pretty rapid. My company was in the rear and I had quite often to give the command ‘trot’ to keep up with the rest of the command.” This was likely due to Benteen’s fast-walking horse. (back to text)
14. Kuhlman, Legend into History, 88. The regulation cavalry walk, mounted, was four miles an hour. (back to text)
15. Hammer, Custer in ’76, 75. (back to text)
16. Ibid., 69; Camp IU Notes, 79. Some historians have maintained that Boston Custer was assigned to the pack train until he left it to overtake his brother’s battalion. But he was employed as a guide, and guides usually rode forward of or with the vanguard of a cavalry column. Besides, if Custer’s nephew Autie Reed was allowed to ride with the General, it is hard to believe that Boston was not. Camp wrote, “Boston had two ponies, and was returning to the pack train to get his other pony,” but this note is unattributed. (back to text)
17. Godfrey, Custer’s Last Battle, 22. (back to text)
18. Ibid. (back to text)
19. Hammer, Custer in ’76, 93, 75. (back to text)
20. Godfrey recorded their pace in his diary: “After we watered we continued our march very leisurely” (Godfrey, Field Diary, 11). Two and a half years later, however, he testified that “our gait was increased to a trot” only after meeting Martin (Nichols, Reno Court of Inquiry, 481), and even later he wrote that previous to that, “the column had been marching at a trot and walk, according as the ground was smooth and broken” (Godfrey, Custer’s Last Battle, 25). Edgerly testified that after they left the water hole, they moved “at a fast walk all the distance” (Nichols, Reno Court of Inquiry, 442). It should be kept in mind that horses were rarely galloped unless absolutely necessary, to “husband the powers of our horses as to save them for the real work of the conflict” (Custer, My Life on the Plains, 86). On this day, Custer himself had tried not to overexert the animals. He had told Benteen to slow down soon after the Captain had taken the lead at the divide, and he had kept the pace at no more than a walk until they reached the two tepees. (back to text)
21. Graham, The Custer Myth, 299. (back to text)
22. Two and a half years later, at the Reno court of inquiry, Benteen testified that Martin had told him that the Indians were “skedaddling” (Graham, The Reno Court of Inquiry: Abstract, 137). In interviews years later, Martin claimed never to have used the word (Hammer, Custer in ’76, 101), and it seems an unlikely word for a recent Italian immigrant to use. In an interview thirty-two years after the battle, Martin claimed that Benteen asked him, “Is [Custer] being attacked or not?” Martin replied, “Yes, [he] is being attacked” (Hammer, Custer in ’76, 101). See also Graham, The Custer Myth, 219, for Edgerly’s statement, in which he related what Martin said. (back to text)
23. Godfrey, Field Diary, 11. (back to text)
24. Hammer, Custer in ’76, 54–55. (back to text)
25. Graham, The Reno Court of Inquiry: Abstract, 137. (back to text)
26. Martin told two different stories of what happened at this time. This version is what he testified to at the Reno court of inquiry in 1879 (see Nichols, Reno Court of Inquiry, 391–92). Forty-seven years later, in another account, he disavowed his original testimony, insisting that he had only exchanged his horse for a fresh one and joined his company. He claimed: “I didn’t speak English so good then, and they misunderstood me and made the report of my testimony show that I took an order to Captain McDougall. But this is a mistake.” His original testimony encompassing his orders to McDougall went on for ten questions and answers, and then another question referring to McDougall several minutes later (see Graham, The Custer Myth, 290–91). Neither Benteen nor McDougall ever corroborated Martin’s assignment. (back to text)
27. See note 9; see also Nichols, Reno Court of Inquiry, 405. Edgerly testified that after Martin arrived, the gait was “the same” as before, which was a fast walk (ibid., 442). Godfrey testified that the gait was increased to a trot after meeting Martin and that they kept it up until just before they met the Crow Indians (ibid., 481). Trooper William Morris later wrote: “Miller, of his [Benteen’s] troop, who occupied an adjoining cot to mine in the hospital at Fort Abraham Lincoln, told me that they walked all the way, and that they heard the heavy firing while they were watering their horses”; Morris also said that “Benteen, arriving about an hour later, came up as slow as though he were going to a funeral” (Brady, 404). Martin testified that after he gave Benteen the message, Benteen “went a little livelier” (Nichols, Reno Court of Inquiry, 392). (back to text)
28. Ibid., 90, 397. (back to text)
29. Hammer, Custer in ’76, 80. (back to text)
30. Godfrey, Custer’s Last Battle, 25. (back to text)
31. Graham, The Custer Myth, 181. (back to text)
32. Lonich, “Blacksmith Henry Mechling,” 31. (back to text)
33. Carroll, The Seventh Cavalry Scrapbook, no. 4, 9. (back to text)
34. New York Evening Post, February 20, 1897. I have quoted almost verbatim from this account personally written by Francis Gibson, one of only two officers present at the Battle of the Little Bighorn who were not called to testify at the Reno court of inquiry in January 1879. The other officer, Thomas French, was in the middle of his own court-martial proceedings and thus could not attend the inquiry. (back to text)
35. Forrest, Witnesses at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, 5. (back to text)
36. These orders and Benteen’s response to them — including whether he followed them corre
ctly and whether he was justified in acting the way he did — have been debated since the battle. The fact is that Custer ordered Benteen to come quickly to his aid, and Benteen did not do so. In the Reno court of inquiry, however, recorder Jesse M. Lee seemed to accept that Benteen had placed himself under Reno’s direction at the time, and his assumption was not disputed in court or in print. (back to text)
37. Nichols, Reno Court of Inquiry, 189, 399; Godfrey, “Custer’s Last Battle,” 182. (back to text)
38. Mackintosh, Custer’s Southern Officer, 69. (back to text)
39. Edgerly, Graham, Reno Court of Inquiry: Abstract, 160; Nichols, Reno Court of Inquiry, 443. (back to text)
40. Hardorff, Indian Views of the Custer Fight, 21. When McLaughlin’s five-year hitch expired six weeks later, in August 1876, he reenlisted — but this time in the infantry. In March 1886, he was admitted to the North Dakota Hospital for the Insane, and he died there ten months later. (back to text)
41. Ibid., 55. (back to text)
42. Bates, Custer’s Indian Battles, 33. (back to text)
43. According to Reno’s report, as quoted in Stewart, Custer’s Luck, 393. Reno later changed his story and said that he had heard no volleys. The only officers on the hill who claimed not to have heard volleys were Reno, Benteen, and Wallace. In his fine biography of Reno, In Custer’s Shadow, Ron Nichols suggests a seemingly simple reason for this: Reno’s and Benteen’s service during the Civil War had caused them “considerable hearing loss” (209 n. 23). The problem with this explanation is that nowhere in the voluminous literature on the subject is there even a suggestion — by Reno, Benteen, or anyone else — that this was the case. It’s hard to believe that their deafness, if indeed true, would not have been mentioned or noticed during the Reno court of inquiry or any other time. (back to text)
44. Nichols, Reno Court of Inquiry, 352, 361, 365. (back to text)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: SOLDIERS FALLING
Epigraph: Two Moon, quoted in Graham, The Custer Myth, 103.
This narrative of the battle, from the skirmish at Medicine Tail Coulee through the fighting at Calhoun Ridge (the southern end of the long ridge), is primarily drawn from several accounts in Hardorff, Cheyenne Memories, Indian Views of the Custer Fight, Lakota Recollections, and Markers, Artifacts and Indian Testimony; Powell, People of the Sacred Mountain and Sweet Medicine; Stands in Timber, Cheyenne Memories; Grinnell, The Fighting Cheyennes; Michno, Lakota Noon; Graham, The Custer Myth; Hammer, Custer in ’76; and Marquis, Custer on the Little Bighorn, sec. 6, “She Watched Custer’s Last Battle.”
1. Hardorff, Cheyenne Memories, 49–50. (back to text)
2. Several Indian accounts make clear that the soldiers rode toward the river on the bluffs along Medicine Tail Coulee. See Marquis, Wooden Leg, 226; and Marquis, Custer on the Little Bighorn, 37. (back to text)
3. Michno, Lakota Noon, 200; “Yellow Nose Tells of Custer’s Last Stand,” Indian School Journal (November 1905), 40. Yellow Nose told George Bent that he obtained the guidon at Last Stand Hill (Bent to George Hyde, April 10, 1905, Coe Collection). Another Cheyenne, Brave Bear, told Bent that he saw Yellow Nose with the flag during the attack on Calhoun Hill and Keogh’s position, but it’s unclear whether he meant that Yellow Nose already had the flag or seized it there (Bent to George Hyde, December 1, 1905, Coe Collection). (back to text)
4. Bordeaux, Custer’s Conqueror, 57; Joseph White Cow Bull interview, McCracken Research Library. (back to text)
5. There is abundant oral testimony and archaeological evidence that part of Custer’s battalion reached the ford and fought there. See Powell, People of the Sacred Mountain, 1023; Hammer, Custer in ’76, 206; and Greene, Evidence and the Custer Enigma, 20–26. He Dog said that the soldiers were six hundred feet away, though other accounts vary from right up on the river’s edge to three-quarters of a mile away. Tall Bull said that the soldiers “got onto flat near Ford B within easy gunshot of village” (Hammer, Custer in ’76, 212). Hollow Horn Bear said, “In the early start of fight, soldiers in front were dismounted and many of their horses were killed” (Hardorff, Lakota Recollections, 181). (back to text)
6. Indian accounts of this skirmish, particularly those of the Cheyennes, proudly state that they prevented the soldiers from crossing the river and attacking the village. But Lights, a Minneconjou Lakota, said later: “The Indians were swarming out of their tepees in such great numbers that he [Custer] appeared to be looking out for the safety of his men more than he did for a chance to cross the river at some other point than at ‘B’ ” (ibid., 166) — further evidence that a crossing was never planned there. (back to text)
7. Richard A. Fox Jr., “West River Story,” in Rankin, Legacy, 152. (back to text)
8. Scott, “Cartridges, Bullets and Bones,” 28; Scott and Bleed, A Good Walk, 37; Hardorff, Cheyenne Memories, 36. (back to text)
9. “An officer was killed where Custer made his first stand — nearest the river. This officer had a pair of field glasses, and a compass — (wooden box)” (Brust, “Lt. Oscar Long’s Early Map Details Terrain,” 8). In Hardorff, Cheyenne Memories, 126, Two Moon says of the action at Medicine Tail Ford: “Here some soldiers were killed and were afterward dragged into the village, dismembered and burned at [the] big dance that night.” White Cow Bull, who was also there, said: “One white man had little hairs on his face and wearing a big hat and a buckskin jacket. He was riding a fine-looking horse, a sorrel with a blazed face and four white stockings. On one side of him was a soldier carrying a flag and riding a gray horse. . . . The man in the buckskin jacket seemed to be the leader of these soldiers, for he shouted something and they all came charging at us” (quoted in Miller, “Echoes of the Little Bighorn,” 33). A white scout for General Miles who talked with several Indians present at the battle reported, “Lieut. Sturgis was knocked off his horse, shot and knifed, his body stripped and thrown into the river. It must be Sturgis’s death which is thus described, as the Indians tell of this poor fellow as a young warrior who rode with a buckskin coat strapped to his saddle, and it is known he was so equipped” (quoted in Hutchins, The Army and Navy Journal, 148). It seems likely that this man was killed near the water, not up on the hill a half mile away. Other Indian accounts mention one or more men shot at or near this ford. One of these men was likely young Lieutenant James Sturgis, of the Gray Horse Troop, whose body was never found or identified. His permanent assignment was to M Company, but that day he had been detailed to serve with E Company. M Company, Sturgis among them, rode light bay horses, which could easily have been mistaken for sorrels (Smalley, More Little Bighorn Mysteries, 18–5). Sturgis had been detailed as acting engineering officer with the Reno scout down the Tongue River two weeks earlier and probably possessed the field glasses and compass to perform his duties. The compass in a wooden box was likely a government-issued one, not a personally owned pocket compass. Private George Glenn told a researcher that one of the heads found in the Indian village “looked to me [to be] that of Lieutenant Sturgis” (quoted in Hardorff, The Custer Battle Casualties II, 47). Private Theodore Goldin wrote: “We found a large fire at the lower end of the village, two or three scarred skulls burned beyond recognition, and one of the men picked up a piece of blue flannel shirt with the initials J.C.S. or J.G.S. embroidered on it; this was near where this fire was located” (Theodore Goldin to Walter Mason Camp, July 1908, Camp BYU Collection). If Glenn and Goldin were correct and the head belonged to Sturgis, it is likely that he was killed near the river, since all the other bodies and/or heads found in the village belonged to men from Reno’s battalion. It is doubtful that any trooper killed a mile or more from the village would have been carried there. Additionally, Sturgis’s buckskin shirt, blue flannel undershirt, underdrawers, and spurs were found in the village, circumstantial evidence that they were taken from his body nearby (Hardorff, The Custer Battle Casualties II, 45–47). His sister wrote in 1926 that “his drawers and shirt were found, the shirt with collar button still in the neck” �
� the inference being that Sturgis had been decapitated, since the collar button was still in place (quoted in Willert, “Does Anomaly Contain Sturgis’s Body?” 15). See Willert’s article for more circumstantial evidence that Sturgis’s head was found in the village, including apparent private disclosures of this fact by Charles Varnum and Francis Gibson. (back to text)
10. Hardorff, Indian Views of the Custer Fight, 140. (back to text)
11. Stands in Timber, Cheyenne Memories, 197–98. See also Fox, Archaeology, History, and Custer’s Last Battle, chap. 11, “The Cemetery Ridge Episode.” (back to text)
12. Godfrey, Custer’s Last Battle, 26. (back to text)
13. Camp BYU Notes, Reel 5, 569. (back to text)
14. Nichols, Reno Court of Inquiry, 206. In a letter to his father dated July 4, 1876, Porter wrote that there were “ten or fifteen wounded” (quoted in Carroll, “The Battles on the Little Big Horn,” 3). (back to text)
15. Camp IU Notes, 579. (back to text)
16. Godfrey, quoted in Rickey, Forty Miles a Day on Beans and Hay, 291. (back to text)
17. Gray, Custer’s Last Campaign, 291. (back to text)
18. Meketa, Luther Rector Hare, 22. (back to text)
19. Nichols, Reno Court of Inquiry, 444. Edgerly rendered several accounts of this scene, each with slight differences in wording and timing. (back to text)
20. Michno, Lakota Noon, 153. (back to text)
21. Merington, The Custer Story, 236–37. (back to text)
22. Dixon, The Vanishing Race, 182; Stands in Timber, Cheyenne Memories, 199–200. (back to text)
23. Stands in Timber, Cheyenne Memories, 199. (back to text)
24. There are several Indian accounts of the Indian resistance here. See Hardorff, Lakota Recollections, 80, for Red Feather’s map, which shows many warriors congregating at Squaw Creek, north of the Cheyenne camp. (back to text)
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