CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
BATTLE ON THE YELLOWSTONE
In the summer of 1873, Custer returned to the West as part of an engineering and surveying party to explore a route between Bismarck and Bozeman, up the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers. The Northern Pacific, the planned second transcontinental railroad, was projected to lay 6,800 miles of track starting on the Great Lakes and terminating at Puget Sound. The effort was supposed to be financed through proceeds from a forty million–acre land grant authorized by Congress in 1864. Track laying only began in 1870, however, and after several false starts, the railroad began to make progress with the backing of famed financier Jay Cooke, whose investment house had made a fortune selling government bonds to underwrite the Union war effort.
Cooke energized the effort, and the railroad reached Fargo in the Dakota Territory by 1872. Nevertheless, there were still endemic managerial problems, terrain challenges, and periodic attacks by local Indians. The railroad relied on Army escorts for its workers, and in the summer of 1873, ten companies of the 7th Cavalry under Custer joined a larger force of infantry to guard engineers and surveyors venturing deep into traditional Indian lands along the Yellowstone.1
The expedition set off on June 20, 1873, with 79 officers, 1,451 men, 353 civilians, and 7 scouts. Frederick Dent Grant, the president’s son, went along as an observer. He was only three years out of West Point but had been frocked to the rank of lieutenant colonel to serve on Sheridan’s staff. This caused some disquiet among Grant’s critics—the Chicago Tribune called it “one of the most shocking instances of injustice and nepotism which has ever characterized the action of the President,” since Fred had done little in his career since graduating close to the bottom of his West Point class.2 But he and George got along well during the expedition, exchanging Academy stories, no doubt of the “goaty” variety.
The Yellowstone expedition also reunited Custer with an old friend and rival. One afternoon he was resting when he heard someone asking which was General Custer’s tent.
“Halloo, old fellow!” Custer said. “I haven’t heard that voice in thirteen years, but I know it. Come in and welcome!” In walked the chief engineer of the survey party, his former schoolmate, companion, and battlefield adversary, Thomas L. Rosser.
Rosser had been in Fitzhugh Lee’s command at the close of the Civil War. He had commanded Confederate forces on the first day of the Battle of High Bridge a few days before Appomattox, the last engagement Lee’s army would ever win. The morning of April 9, 1865, Rosser led a successful charge through Union lines to the Lynchburg Road, and he and his men were still outside the pocket when the surrender took place. Rosser was among those cavalrymen “who took a professional pride in getting around the enemy,” Porter Alexander explained, “and could not resist the opportunity.”3
There was some debate over whether the Confederate cavalry who had broken the noose around Appomattox were included in Lee’s capitulation, and it was decided that only those in the immediate vicinity could be considered surrendered. Rosser stayed briefly in the field, then retired to his home near Hanover Courthouse. Weeks later, while en route from Richmond to Washington, Custer made a detour to pay Rosser a visit. He pulled up his command and sent a note to the door:
Dear Friend,
The house is surrounded. You can’t get away. Come on out and surrender yourself.
Regards,
G.A.C.
After the war Rosser worked as a civil engineer on several railroads before being hired to head up the Northern Pacific project. “Fanny” and “Tex” renewed their friendship and spent many hours together reliving old memories. Captain Myles Moylan, whom Rosser had captured during the Civil War, also joined in the discussions. “We talk over our West Point times and discuss the battles of the war,” George wrote Libbie. They lay under the fly of Custer’s tent on a buffalo robe, and it “seemed like the times when we were cadets together, huddled on one blanket and discussing dreams of the future.”4
Professor William F. Phelps, who was along on the expedition and spent time with Custer and Rosser, described George as “of medium height, slender, slightly stooping, sharp featured, with a penetrating eye, large nose and long, light, curly hair resting almost upon his shoulders. In manner he is quick and nervous but singularly frank, sprightly and agreeable. In conversation his voice is usually high keyed and his style gay and rollicking.” Phelps said Custer was dressed in “light-blue army pants tucked into high cavalry boots coming nearly to the knees, . . . with a dark blue round-about coat, unbuttoned and trimmed according to his rank, no vest, a blue flannel shirt, and collar turned upon a red necktie, and an immensely broad-brimmed black hat.” Phelps had expected more spit and polish and said, “Custer presented to my mind at the time anything but the picture of the ideal soldier.” But the “peculiarities of person, costume and manner were soon lost in the charm of the conversation and the exceeding interest of the occasion.” Phelps was more impressed with the six-foot-two Rosser, whom he described as erect, bronzed, calm, quiet, deliberate, firm, and thoughtful. “He is emphatically a man of power, and one well calculated to exert a commanding influence over others in whatever relation he may be placed,” Phelps wrote.5
Colonel David S. Stanley of the 22nd Infantry regiment led the Yellowstone expedition. Stanley was an 1852 West Point graduate and, like Custer, a wartime major general. Stanley fought in the West, and his heroism at the Battle of Franklin in 1864 would be recognized with the Medal of Honor in 1893. Lieutenant Charles W. Larned wrote that Stanley “seems to be very much liked and impressed me favorably when I met him. Large, handsome and dignified.”6
But Stanley and Custer did not get along. Custer is a “cold blooded, untruthful and unprincipled man,” Stanley wrote his wife. “He is universally despised by all the officers of his regiment excepting his relatives and one or two sycophants. . . . I will try, but am not sure I can avoid trouble with him.”7 Custer’s view of Stanley was a mirror-image. “General Stanley is acting very badly, drinking, and I anticipate official trouble with him,” George wrote Libbie. “I should greatly regret this, but I fear it cannot be avoided.”8
Despite Stanley’s fondness for whiskey, he did not want to risk having spirituous liquors available in the field and ordered Fred Grant to find all the alcohol stores and have them destroyed. “Not a drink was left in the camp an hour after the order was issued,” the Boston Globe reported. “The infantry sutler lost six barrels and the cavalry sutler seven.”9 Or so the reporter thought. Custer noted that Fred Grant was “greatly mortified” by the order, which would have cost their sutler, Augustus Baliran, thousands of dollars. So while waiting for the wagons to reach them, Fred announced he was going to take a nap and that he hoped “the Sutler will have anything of the kind hidden before I come to inspect.” Custer and other teetotaling officers helped conceal the barrels until Stanley had a change of heart and rescinded the order. “Never were temperate officers so well supplied with intoxicants,” George observed.10
Stanley sought to keep Custer contained during the expedition and ordered him to stay back with Rosser and his engineers, advancing slowly while the infantry pushed forward to the Yellowstone. The rear was an unaccustomed position for Custer, and an illogical place for the more mobile cavalry, so he decided to push forward anyway. “Custer having been given a little tether must needs throw off Stanley’s shackles altogether and start off with heels-in-the-air on his own hook,” Larned noted in his diary.11
One day, rather than assisting the baggage train over the Muddy River, he pressed out into the van, sending a note to Stanley requesting rations and forage. “After a march of eleven miles with considerable delay on account of the heavy condition of the prairie from hard rains,” Larned noted, “an orderly courier from Stanley overtook our ‘flaxen haired’ chieftain presenting him with a billet doux to the effect he should halt on the spot.”12 Stanley angrily told Custer not to act without orders again.
Custer “was just grad
ually assuming command,” Stanley wrote, “and now he knows he has a commanding officer who will not tolerate his arrogance.”13 The incident became a national news story, exaggerated in the retelling. The Dubuque Herald reported that “the gallant Gen. Custer was, for some reason not present known, placed under arrest by Gen. Stanley while on the march through the wilderness. Custer marched in the rear one entire day. The event created much excitement.”14 The Boston Globe embellished the story, saying that “a stir was created on the Yellowstone expedition by the arrest of General Custer by General Stanley, I did not learn true cause of the arrest, but Custer marched in the rear of his command one whole day before he was released. Custer’s men denounced the arrest as an act of tyranny, while Stanley’s men sustained their commander.”15
But relations between Custer and Stanley soon settled down. After the colonel asserted his authority and Custer assented, Stanley grew more conciliatory. He named a brook they discovered Custer’s Creek as a gesture, and he also allowed Custer’s cavalry to forge out ahead of the column on scouting missions, which George led personally. Stanley wrote that in the days following the incident, Custer “has behaved very well, since he agreed to do so, went ahead every day to look up road and select the best camps.”16 Custer was looking for more than just campsites, however; if there was action to be had, he would find that, too.
The railroad route ran close to Indian lands, if not right through them. Article XVI of the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie stipulated that “the country north of the North Platte river and east of the summits of the Big Horn Mountains shall be held and considered to be unceded Indian territory, and also stipulates and agrees that no white person or persons shall be permitted to settle upon or occupy any portion of the same; or without the consent of the Indians, first had and obtained, to pass through the same.” It is unclear where the northern terminus of the unceded lands was—probably at the Yellowstone by Sioux reckoning. The unceded lands were understood to be places where Indians could hunt game if they wanted or needed to. But the area became a haven for dissenters who refused to settle on the reservation and who continued to practice the traditional ways of life. Around three thousand Sioux and four hundred Cheyenne settled in this area, the former led by the Hunkpapa chief Sitting Bull.
“The country was comparatively unknown to any but our Indian guides,” a reporter wrote. It was hard and monotonous going, with “extensive swells and billows of land, rolling away to the infinite distance; the same broken, cheerless buttes rising barren and treeless,” though areas close by the rivers were greener and dotted with copses of woods. “This was the supposed region of the buffalo and where he is the Indian may be found living upon him for subsistence, and either roaming openly in defiance or lurking in ambush.” The previous year a surveying party was attacked by Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors at Pryor’s Creek near Pompey’s Pillar.17 Bloody Knife, the half-Sioux, half-Arickaree scout, predicted that they would meet some opposition in the Tongue River area. Seasoned plainsman Charley Reynolds said, “Probably the first that we know of Indians around us will be when someone straggling behind the column is found with his hair gone.”18
On August 4, Custer, with A and B troops under command of Myles Moylan, was scouting west of the main column at Honsinger Bluff, seven miles west of the juncture of the Tongue and Yellowstone Rivers. Tom Custer and James Calhoun were also along, and the group totaled around one hundred men. It was a hot, sunny day, the temperature over 95 degrees. The day was uneventful, and after finding a suitable camp for the column on the floodplain of the Yellowstone with plenty of wood, he and his men relaxed, eating, napping, fishing, and grazing their horses.
After noon, Custer’s pickets spied six Indians approaching. He was napping under a tree and awoke to the shout of “Indians! Indians!” followed by gunfire.19 Custer ordered his men to mount, and he, Calhoun, and an orderly immediately gave chase, with Tom Custer following with a platoon of horsemen. Moylan then began to come up with the rest. The Indians headed for a wooded area two miles west of where Custer had stopped. But they were not fleeing very vigorously, and George sensed a trick.
Custer stopped the pursuit, and the fleeing Indians paused. Then over 250 mounted warriors broke from the woods, charging toward the cavalrymen. Indian scouts had spotted Custer’s men earlier in the morning, and Hunkpapa Sioux from Sitting Bull’s encampment of four hundred to five hundred lodges, west near Locke Bluff, had gathered in the woods for battle. Among them were war leader Rain-in-the-Face, a contingent of Oglala Sioux, and some Miniconjou and Cheyenne. By some accounts, the Sioux were led by Crazy Horse.
Tom Custer formed a skirmish line and opened up on the charging as George and the other two raced back. This slowed the Indian advance, giving time for the command to set up a defense in the woods where they had been resting. The dismounted cavalrymen formed an arc along a former streambed and opened fire with the Indians at four hundred yards. The Indians stopped and began exchanging fire with the troopers, to little effect on either side.
The Indian ambush had failed, but they had come to fight, and they sought various ways to break Custer’s defense. A group tried to sneak up the riverbank and into Custer’s rear to stampede the horses but were detected and driven off. They set fire to the grass to raise a smoke screen to cover their movements, but this also failed. The battle became an exchange of potshots that wore on for hours. Custer hunkered down, waiting for the advancing column to respond to the sound of the fight.
Some miles downstream from the battlefield, veterinary surgeon Doctor John Holzenger and sutler Augustus Baliran were hunting for fossils. Two privates were nearby, John Ball and another named Brown, the latter of whom was napping. Scout Charley Reynolds rode up and warned them there were Indians in the area and they should make for safety. But the area was rich in fossils, so they kept up their hunt. A short time later, several Indians, part of a scouting party led by Rain-in-the-Face, jumped from hiding, dragged Doctor Holzenger from his horse, and shot him. They then killed Baliran and Ball. Brown, roused from sleep, saw what was happening and leapt on his horse bareback, tearing back toward the column.
Stanley had heard firing ahead, but a scout had seen buffalo tracks heading in that direction and told him he thought the ruckus was caused by a hunt. Then Stanley heard gunfire much closer, and shortly after Private Brown barreled into sight crying, “All down there are killed!” Stanley sent the rest of the cavalry forward.
Meanwhile, Custer was in a difficult situation. He had been fighting for three hours, and ammunition was beginning to run low. Each man carried one hundred rounds, and they had exhausted most of their supply. Custer did not even know if relief from Stanley was coming. The Indians maintained “a perfect skirmish line throughout,” according to Lieutenant Larned, “evincing for them a very extraordinary control and discipline.”20
But eventually the Indians’ discipline began to break down. The reason became apparent to the cavalrymen as they noticed a huge dust cloud behind the hills to their right, evidence of the relief column. As four squadrons of cavalry galloped into view, it was, George said, “time to mount our steeds and force our enemies to seek safety in flight, or to battle on more even terms.”21 He ordered his men to mount, then without pause charged the Indians. The warriors broke and fled upriver.22 By the time the relief column arrived, the battle was over. Custer had won the field and suffered only a few men wounded.
The survey continued, though the loss of the three men to Rain-in-the-Face’s scouts encouraged tighter security. On August 8, the expedition came across the recently abandoned site of Sitting Bull’s village, and Stanley ordered Custer and 450 men to give chase. They tracked the Indians swiftly up the north bank of the river, and two days later reached a point three miles below the mouth of the Bighorn where the Indians had crossed. Custer attempted to make the south bank but the Yellowstone was too deep and swift.
The next day, “the river had fallen considerably and preparations were being made to cross
over,” Edward S. Godfrey wrote, “when a number of shots were fired from the woods on the opposite bank, and soon after the Indians appeared in force.”23 At first light, friendly Indian scouts came “tumbling down the bluffs head over heels, screeching, ‘Heap Indian come.’” Hundreds of warriors appeared along the bluffs above the south bank of the river, firing at the cavalrymen, who returned fire with enthusiasm. Second Lieutenant Charles Braden was seriously wounded repelling a rush from a group of Indians who closed to within thirty yards of his position. This back-and-forth went on for some time, and while Custer’s men were occupied, three hundred Indians crossed the river above and below their position, a tactic Sitting Bull had used against the surveying party the previous year. The Indians rushed to the high bluffs six hundred yards to Custer’s rear and began to open fire.
The 7th was caught in a crossfire. Custer had a horse shot out from under him—the eleventh of his career—and his orderly, Private John H. Tuttle of Company E, who had been boldly standing in the open showing off his considerable skill as a sharpshooter, was killed. But Custer had been in tougher scrapes than this. He pushed a picket line toward the Indians to his rear, then ordered a charge.
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