A Terrible Glory

by James Donovan

  3. McClernand, 53. (back to text)

  4. Though most accounts agree on this date as the day Terry was to “meet” Custer, some accounts by officers in Terry’s command gave other dates. One lieutenant (Lieutenant John F. McBlain) and a doctor (Holmes Paulding) with the column said the 27th, and another officer (Lieutenant Charles F. Roe) said the 25th. Reno, in his official report, wrote that on the morning of the 27th, upon viewing a large cloud of dust and then a large but unidentifiable force of men down the valley: “There was no certainty for some time what they were, but finally I satisfied myself they were cavalry, and if so could only be Custer, as it was ahead of the time I understood that General Terry could be expected” (quoted in Overfield, The Little Big Horn, 1876, 48). Whom Reno received his information from is unknown; it could have been Custer, or it could have been another officer with either column. What is clear is that there was very little agreement as to when, how, or where Custer would “meet” Terry, a state of affairs summed up by another officer in Terry’s command (Captain Henry B. Freeman) unintentionally in his diary: “It having been arranged that we were to meet him [Custer] at nearly the spot where the battle was fought on the 26th, or 7th at latest.” Precisely. (back to text)

  5. McClernand, 20. (back to text)

  6. Bradley, 149; Stewart, Custer’s Luck, 290–98. (back to text)

  7. Noyes, “The Battle of the Little Big Horn,” 10. (back to text)

  8. Ibid. (back to text)

  9. Roe, Custer’s Last Battle, 4. (back to text)

  10. Los Angeles Times, November 8, 1884. (back to text)

  11. Carroll, The Two Battles of the Little Big Horn, 149–50. (back to text)

  12. Roe, Custer’s Last Battle, 5. (back to text)

  13. Most of the Crow scouts rejoined the expedition three weeks later (Freeman, Diary, 23). See also Dixon, The Vanishing Race, 157, and Graham, The Custer Myth, 16. The Crows were so rattled that when they came upon another band of Crows on the way home, “supposing each other to be Sioux, they had a fight for some time, but no one was hurt” (Hammer, Custer in ’76, 246). (back to text)

  14. Account of Private George C. Berry, 7th Infantry, Winners of the West, September 28, 1942. (back to text)

  15. Roe, Custer’s Last Battle, 7. (back to text)

  16. Freeman, 17. (back to text)

  17. McClernand, 27. (back to text)

  18. Hudnutt, “New Light on the Little Big Horn,” 353. (back to text)

  19. Godfrey, Custer’s Last Battle, 36. (back to text)

  20. Hammer, Custer in ’76, 249–50. (back to text)

  21. Wagner, Old Neutriment, 181. (back to text)

  22. Nichols, Reno Court of Inquiry, 322. (back to text)

  23. Graham, The Custer Myth, 220; Hardorff, The Custer Battle Casualties II, 15, 17. (back to text)

  24. Langellier et al., Myles Keogh, 155. (back to text)

  25. Stewart, Custer’s Luck, 469; Graham, The Custer Myth, 345. (back to text)

  26. Hardorff, The Custer Battle Casualties, 100. (back to text)

  27. New York Herald, July 14, 1876, quoted in Wengert, The Custer Despatches, 66; Camp IU Notes, 602. Sergeant John Ryan claimed to have seen “five or six shells” underneath Custer’s body (Barnard, Ten Years with Custer, 303), and Lieutenant John Carland wrote that he found “17 cartridge shells by his side” (Frost, General Custer’s Libbie, 246). Since Ryan was assigned to bury the General, and thus was one of the last men to see his body before burial, there may have only been five or six left by that time, the others having been picked up. Private Henry Mechling told Walter Camp that where Custer lay, there were “a good many extra shells” (Hardorff, Camp, Custer, and the Little Bighorn, 77). (back to text)

  28. Hardorff, The Custer Battle Casualties II, 20–21. (back to text)

  29. Hardorff, “Some Recollections of Custer,” 16. (back to text)

  30. Though many accounts claim that Dr. Lord’s body was not identified, and he is traditionally listed among the missing, at least two of Terry’s staff officers who knew the doctor (who had been commissioned a first lieutenant on June 25, 1875) later recalled that they had recognized him. See Noyes, “Custer’s Surgeon, George Lord.” (back to text)

  31. McBlain, “With Gibbon on the Sioux Campaign,” 147. (back to text)

  32. Henry Jones to W. M. Camp, June 2, 1911, Camp BYU Collection. (back to text)

  33. Gibbon, “Hunting Sitting Bull,” 665. (back to text)

  34. Godfrey to J. A. Shoemaker, March 2, 1926, Roll 4, Elizabeth B. Custer Collection. (back to text)

  35. Godfrey to John Neihardt, January 6, 1924, Hagner Collection. (back to text)

  36. Barnard, Ten Years with Custer, 303. (back to text)

  37. Carroll, The Seventh Cavalry Scrapbook, no. 1, 15. (back to text)

  38. Barnard, Ten Years with Custer, 304. Gibson gave a different version of their burial. See Fougera, With Custer’s Cavalry, 271–72. (back to text)

  39. Graham, The Custer Myth, 364. (back to text)

  40. Taunton, Custer’s Field, 23. (back to text)

  41. Hammer, Custer in ’76, 58; Hardorff, The Custer Battle Casualties II, 176. (back to text)

  42. Carroll, The Benteen-Goldin Letters, 147. Gibbon also received estimates from the Seventh officers of an Indian force numbering between 1,800 and 2,500 (Overfield, 33). In his article “The Campaign Against the Sioux in 1876,” Terry’s brother-in-law Captain Robert Hughes wrote that when Terry asked the surviving Seventh Cavalry officers to supply an estimate of the number of Indian warriors, “the replies pivoted about the figure 1,500, and I can recall Colonel Benteen’s reply almost verbatim which was as follows: ‘I have been accustomed to seeing divisions of cavalry during the war, and from my observations I would say that there were from fifteen to eighteen hundred warriors.’ No one in the group at that time, put this estimate above eighteen hundred” (reprinted in Graham, The Story of the Little Big Horn, 196). Colonel John Gibbon, in his first written account of the battle, sent on June 28, said, “The Indians were in great strength and were estimated at from 1,800 to 2,500 warriors” (Overfield, The Little Big Horn, 1876, 33). Scout Billy Cross estimated that the village contained about 800 or 900 lodges, which would dictate 1,600 to 1,800 warriors, though there were also many wickiups, used by single men (New York Times, July 13, 1876). The Cheyenne Two Moon said that after the battle, the women moved the camp from the bend and “pitched tents helter skelter — some on hills to the west,” which points to the little-known fact that many or most of the lodges were moved and then repitched. Later estimates of the number of lodges in the village based on lodge circles were therefore erroneous (Two Moon interview, Campbell Collection). For more recent discussions based on other sources of information, see Stewart, Custer’s Luck, 309–12; Marshall, “How Many Indians Were There?”; and Gray, Centennial Campaign, chap. 29, “The Strength of the Little Big Horn Village.” (back to text)

  43. Graham, The Reno Court of Inquiry: Abstract, 34. (back to text)

  44. Nichols, Reno Court of Inquiry, 522. (back to text)

  45. An officer with Gibbon’s column wrote, “I conversed with most of the officers of that command at one time or another, while in the field, and nearly all were pronounced in their severe criticism of Reno” (Brady, 385). Another wrote: “It was in leadership that Custer’s lieutenant [Reno] failed, and that he had so failed . . . was heard on all sides from his subordinates when Terry arrived. Many of the criticisms heard were severe. Later, before the Court of Inquiry which followed, many were toned down” (McClernand, 48–50). Herder and New York Sun correspondent Dick Roberts later wrote, “From the officers on the steamer I learned very minute details of the battle and appearance of the field and even at that early date they branded Reno and others, cowards” (Roberts, Reminiscences of General Custer, 19). Finally, another officer later wrote that two other officers with Terry’s command told him that “when they reached Reno’s defensive line on the bluff all of Reno’s officers talked wi
ldly and excitedly about the fight, and of Reno’s cowardice, etc.” (Captain Robert G. Carter, memorandum, July 6, 1923, Box 4, Folder 8, Kuhlman Collection). (back to text)

  46. Wheeler, Tales from Buffalo Land, 56; Brady, 35. (back to text)

  47. Hardorff, The Custer Battle Casualties, 122; Hammer, Custer in ’76, 79, 136. Several other accounts place Kellogg on the hill near Custer; see Barnard, I Go with Custer, 146–48. (back to text)

  48. Hammer, Custer in ’76, 241; W. H. Sipes to Walter M. Camp, February 1909, Camp BYU Collection. Sipes said that Curly wore a blanket, but not a Crow blanket — a red Sioux blanket. Crow Indians, he said, wore light-colored blankets. (back to text)

  49. Hanson, The Conquest of the Missouri, 274. (back to text)

  50. Ibid., 275–76. (back to text)

  51. Ibid., 295–96. Besides the testimony in this biography by the book’s subject, Captain Grant Marsh, there are corroborating accounts of Comanche’s presence on board. There has been some controversy as to whether Comanche was actually taken aboard the Far West on its trip to Bismarck. In a letter from W. A. Falconer to Captain Edward Luce (December 9, 1939, Kuhlman Collection), Falconer, a resident of Bismarck at the time, wrote: “When Comanche was taken off the Far West at the Bismarck river landing on the night of July 5, 1876, he was put in John W. Mellett’s livery stable. I used to deliver oats to this livery stable, and saw Comanche every week until he was taken over to Fort Abraham Lincoln in September 1876.” And researcher Walter Camp talked to a trooper named Albright who told him: “Ramsey [Charles Ramsey, of Keogh’s I Company] rescued old Comanche by carrying water to him in his hat. Ramsey begged to carry him on the boat and Benteen agreed” (Camp IU Notes, Box 2, Folder 10). Finally, a soldier with Gibbon’s command, A. F. Ward, later wrote, “The old warrior was placed upon the Far West with the wounded men and we can assure you he was handled as careful and tenderly as any living being could have been handled. A blacksmith led the old warrior to the boat and in crossing over the gang plank while the tears rolled down his cheeks he said this is all that is left of Custer” (Ricker, The Settler and Soldier Interviews, 118). (back to text)

  52. Hanson, The Conquest of the Missouri, 298. (back to text)

  53. Overfield, 36–38. (back to text)

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: “ALL THE WORLD HAS GONE”

  Chapter title: Chicago Daily Tribune, July 10, 1876. In a letter to the editor, a doctor who claimed to have known Libbie Custer from childhood wrote: “I well remember the morning on which he [Custer] started from Winchester for Appomattox. I was standing on the porch. He had kissed his wife goodby and mounted his horse. I shook his hand, and turning into the house, found her sobbing. I said, “Well, Libbie, he has gone.’ ‘Yes,’ said she, ‘all the world has gone.’ ”

  Epigraph: Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks, 98.

  1. Billings Times, June 10, 1931. (back to text)

  2. Chicago Daily Tribune, July 16, 1876. (back to text)

  3. O’Neil, Custeriana, vol. 5, 4–5. This account by the telegrapher Carnahan contradicts Lounsberry’s self-glorifying account, in which he claimed that he was the first to send out the news of the disaster. Official army business would naturally come first, making Carnahan’s account ring true. (back to text)

  4. Hanson, The Conquest of the Missouri, 307–08. (back to text)

  5. Utley, “The Custer Battle in the Contemporary Press,” 81. (back to text)

  6. Hanson, The Conquest of the Missouri, 306–8. (back to text)

  7. Hammer, Custer in ’76, 241. (back to text)

  8. Farioli and Nichols, “Fort A. Lincoln,” 13. I have based the Bismarck and Fort Lincoln scenes primarily on the following sources: Hanson, The Conquest of the Missouri, 311–14; Frost, General Custer’s Libbie, 227–28; Parmalee, “A Child’s Recollection of the Summer of ’76,” in Coffeen, The Teepee Book, part 1. (back to text)

  9. Camp IU Notes, 431. (back to text)

  10. Farioli and Nichols, 14, 15. (back to text)

  11. The number of widows has been mentioned as anywhere from twenty-six to thirty-two, though it is not always clear whether the figure includes all the widows of the regiment or just those whose husbands were stationed at Fort Lincoln. Dr. Kenneth Hammer listed thirty-eight widows of all the men dead in the battle, regardless of station and including scouts such as Mitch Boyer (Little Big Horn Associates Newsletter, February 1987). (back to text)

  12. Hanson, The Conquest of the Missouri, 314. (back to text)

  13. Merington, The Custer Story, 323. However, in an October 2, 1876, letter from Lieutenant Carland to Libbie Custer, he wrote: “Poor dear Mrs. Calhoun . . . followed [me] out of your quarters to ask if I had nothing to say to her,” which leads to the possibility that Carland returned with the Far West and accompanied McCaskey’s small group to notify Libbie that morning (Merington Papers). (back to text)

  14. Hanson, The Conquest of the Missouri, 281–82, 300. (back to text)

  15. Utley, Custer and the Great Controversy, 32–35. (back to text)

  16. New York Herald, July 7, 1876. (back to text)

  17. Sheridan to Sherman, telegram, July 6, 1876, LBBNM Files. (back to text)

  18. Meketa, “The Press and the Battle of the Little Big Horn,” 3–4. (back to text)

  19. New York Herald, July 7, 1876. (back to text)

  20. New York Times, July 6, 1876. (back to text)

  21. Sheridan, quoted in Graham, The Custer Myth, 117. (back to text)

  22. Sheridan, quoted in Sarf, The Little Bighorn Campaign, 265. (back to text)

  23. Ibid., 265–66. (back to text)

  24. New York Herald, August 2, 1876. (back to text)

  25. Diehl, The Staff Correspondent, 107. (back to text)

  26. Utley, Custer and the Great Controversy, 43. (back to text)

  27. New York Herald, July 7, 1876. (back to text)

  28. Ibid. (back to text)

  29. Colonel Samuel Sturgis, quoted in Whittaker, A Complete Life of General George A. Custer, 475. (back to text)

  30. New York Times, July 17, 1876. (back to text)

  31. Ibid., July 18, 1876. (back to text)

  32. Much later, serious doubt was cast on the legitimacy of the signatures, as Godfrey discovered in talking to survivors of the battle that many of them could not remember signing the petition. He concluded that they may have been coerced or “ordered” to do so. Eventually, an FBI investigation in 1954 indicated that the petition was padded with the names of “soldiers discharged in May, deserters, and several outright forgeries.” At least seventy-six — one-third — were “probable forgeries,” likely signed by one man: First Sergeant Joseph McCurry, of Benteen’s H Company (Overfield, The Little Big Horn, 1876, 74). (back to text)

  33. Nichols, In Custer’s Shadow, 217–18. (back to text)

  34. Ibid., 99. (back to text)

  35. Swift, “General Wesley Merritt,” 836. (back to text)

  36. Hutchins, The Army and Navy Journal, 85. No one knew at the time that a Marine had died with Custer. Private John Burke, alias Oscar Pardee, had deserted from the Marine Corps in 1873 and enlisted in the Seventh Cavalry the next day (Little Big Horn Associates Newsletter, May 1967). (back to text)

  37. Cozzens, Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, vol. 4, 399. (back to text)

  38. O’Neil, GarryOwen Tidbits, vol. 6, 27. Reno may have shared his liquor with his fellow officers, though judging from his stinginess atop the hill during the battle, that may be a questionable assumption. (back to text)

  39. Hugh Scott to Hare, November 28, 1919, quoted in O’Neil, GarryOwen Tidbits, vol. 4, 9. (back to text)

  40. “Summary of Talk with General Scott,” Merington Papers. (back to text)

  41. New York Herald, August 13, 1876. (back to text)

  42. R. G. Cartwright’s notes in his copy of Graham’s The Custer Myth, 196, and Kuhlman’s Legend into History, 83, Cartwright Collection; Cartwright to Charles Kuhlman, January 13, 1940, Camp BYU Collection. (back to text)

&n
bsp; 43. Carroll, The Benteen-Goldin Letters, 219; R. G. Cartwright’s notes in his copy of Dustin’s The Custer Tragedy, 142, Cartwright Collection. (back to text)

  44. New York Times, August 18, 1876; New York Herald, August 3, 1876. (back to text)

  45. Carroll, The Lieutenant E. A. Garlington Narrative, 8; Brady, Indian Fights and Fighters, 385; Ghent, “Varnum, Reno, and the Little Bighorn”; Nichols, Reno Court of Inquiry, 522. Also, Captain Robert G. Carter wrote: “General D. S. Brainard told me this date that he has often heard Capt. (later Gen.) Whelan and Lieut. (later Gen.) C. F. Roe, both of the Second U.S. Cavalry and of Terry’s command, say that when they reached Reno’s defensive line on the bluff all of Reno’s officers talked wildly and excitedly about the fight, and of Reno’s cowardice, etc. A little later they shut their mouths like clams and would not talk. It seemed to them . . . that there suddenly sprang up among the Seventh Cavalry Officers an understanding and resolve about that affair which would reflect in any way upon the honor of their regiment or regimental esprit, even if they had to sacrifice their own individual opinions concerning the plan of campaign or the conduct of the battle, either by Reno or Custer. This was later shown by their testimony before the Reno Court of Inquiry, where all but Godfrey refused to charge Reno with cowardice” (memorandum, July 6, 1923, Box 4, MS 1401, Camp BYU Collection). (back to text)

  46. Graham, The Custer Myth, 225. (back to text)

  47. Ibid., 226. (back to text)

  48. Knight, Following the Indian Wars, 221. (back to text)

  49. New York Herald, August 7, 1876. (back to text)

  50. On August 11, O’Kelly elected to travel with Miles for a while. (back to text)