30.See for example, “Tilden Out of the Contest,” New York Times, June 23, 1876, 1.
31.“Lively Interview with Gen. Custer,” 4.
32.For Hancock’s political career, see generally David M. Jordan, Winfield Scott Hancock: A Soldier’s Life (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), chapters 24 and 26.
33.“Lively Interview with Gen. Custer,” 4.
34.GAC to EBC, April 8, 1876, in Merington, The Custer Story, 284.
35.See generally, “Rascalities of the Army Traders,” New York Times, March 30, 1876, 1.
36.“A Report Which Gen. Custer Claims to Have Made Is Nowhere to Be Found,” New York Times, April 19, 1876, 1.
37.“Gen. Custer and Gen. Merrill,” New York Times, April 19, 1876, 1.
38.“Gen. Custer’s Testimony,” New York Times, May 5, 1876, 1.
39.GAC to EBC, April 1876, in Merington, The Custer Story, 289.
40.GAC to EBC, April 28, 1876, in ibid., 292.
41.W. T. Sherman to John Sherman, November 17, 1875.
42.W. T. Sherman to John Sherman, October 23, 1874.
43.GAC to EBC, April 1, 1876, in Merington, The Custer Story, 281. Grant went through three secretaries of war after Belknap: George M. Robeson, who was secretary of the navy, acted as war secretary ad interim, March 2–6, 1876; Alphonso Taft, March 8–May 22; and James D. Cameron after May 22.
44.Sherman in The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant: 1876, John Y. Simon, ed. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003), 72.
45.Belknap in The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 60.
46.“Marriage of Lieut. Grant,” New York Times, October 21, 1874, 8.
47.S. L. A. Marshall, Cimsoned Prairie (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1972), 103.
48.Sherman in The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant: 1876, 71.
49.Robert Utley, Cavalier in Buckskin: George Armstrong Custer and the Western Military Frontier (Norman: University of Oklahma Press, 1991), 162.
50.New York Times, May 6, 1876, 5.
51.Reprinted as “Custer’s Grievance,” Burlington Hawkeye, June 1, 1876, 1.
52.Indiana (PA) Democrat, May 4, 1876, 2.
53.Custer quoted in Sarf, 65.
54.New York Herald, quoted in the Fitchburg Daily Sentinel, May 12, 1876, 4.
55.Reprinted as “Custer’s Grievance,” Burlington Hawkeye, June 1, 1876, 1.
56.Quoted in L. G. Walker, Dr. Henry R. Porter: The Surgeon Who Survived Little Bighorn (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008), 45.
57.Quoted in Utley, Cavalier in Bucksin, 163.
CHAPTER 28
1.Marguerite Merington, ed., The Custer Story: The Life and Intimate Letters of General George A. Custer and His Wife Elizabeth (New York: Devin-Adair, 1950), 296.
2.Tom Custer, quoted in ibid., 296.
3.GAC to EBC, April 17, 1876, in ibid., 290.
4.For information on the Sioux Campaign generally, see John S. Gray, Centennial Campaign: The Sioux War of 1876 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1976); Wayne Michael Sarf, The Little Bighorn Campaign, March–September 1876 (Conshohocken, PA: Combined Books, 1993); and Robert M. Utley, Custer and the Great Controversy (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998); as well as other works cited below.
5.Palo Alto (IA) Reporter, March 11, 1876, 1.
6.Reprinted as “The Black Hills,” Titusville (PA) Herald, March 28, 1876, 1.
7.Leander P. Richardson, “A Trip to the Black Hills,” Scribner’s Monthly, April 1877, 754. Richardson visited the area a month after the Little Bighorn battle.
8.Nebraska Advertiser, May 4, 1876.
9.Reprinted as “The Black Hills Gold Fraud,” Tiffin (OH) Tribune, April 13, 1876, 1.
10.See for example, “A Vain Search for Gold,” New York Times, April 30, 1876, 10.
11.Bismarck Weekly Tribune, February 23, 1876, 3.
12.“Custer Interviewed,” Bismarck Tribune, September 2, 1874, 1.
13.Quoted in Evan S. Connell, Son of a Morning Star: Custer and Little Bighorn (New York: North Point Press, 1984), 106.
14.“Gen. Custer,” St. Cloud Journal, May 11, 1876.
15.Peter Thompson, Peter Thompson’s Narrative of the Little Bighorn Campaign, 1876: A Critical Analysis of an Eyewitness Account of the Custer Debacle, Daniel O. Magnussen, ed. (Glendale: A. H. Clark, 1974), 59.
16.Boston Custer to his mother, June 8, 1876, in Merington, The Custer Story, 300–1.
17.Custer quoted in Sarf, he Little Bighorn Campaign, 135.
18.In S. L. A. Marshall, Cimsoned Prairie (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1972), 127. Also see J. W. Vaughn, With Crook at the Rosebud (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1994).
19.In Marshall, Cimsoned Prairie, 129. Henry barely survived the wound and continued his distinguished career, being awarded a Medal of Honor in 1893 for his heroism at Cold Harbor in 1864, rising to the rank of brigadier general and serving as military governor of Puerto Rico in 1898.
20.Terry quoted in Marshall, Cimsoned Prairie, 118–19.
21.See Anson Mills, My Story (Washington, D.C.: Byron S. Adams, 1918), 450.
22.Marshall, Cimsoned Prairie, 122.
23.Reno was a good friend of West Point washout and painter James McNeill Whisler, and joked with him that if Whisler made a career of the Army, no one would have ever heard of his mother.
24.GAC to EBC June 1876, in Merington, The Custer Story, 305.
25.Quoted in Gray, Centennial Campaign, 140.
26.Eyewitness conversation as related in Nelson Appleton Miles, Personal Recollections and Observations of General Nelson A. Miles (Chicago: The Werner Company, 1896), 204–5.
27.Edward C. Bailly, “Echoes from Custer’s Last Fight: Accounts by an Officer Survivor Never Before Published,” Military Affairs, Winter 1953, 176. See also Edgerly in Merington, The Custer Story, 309.
28.Boston Custer to his mother, June 21, 1876, in Merington, The Custer Story, 306.
29.EBC to GAC, June 22, 1876, in ibid., 307.
30.GAC to EBC, June 22, 1876.
31.Quoted in Gray, Centennial Campaign, 151.
32.A. Ward, “The Little Bighorn,” American Heritage, April 1992; Sarf, The Little Bighorn Campaign, 160; F. W. Benteen, “An Account of the Little Big Horn Campaign,” typescript copy, USMA Archives, 1.
CHAPTER 29
1.Custer, “War Memoirs,” Galaxy, March 1876, 319–20.
2.John F. McBlain, “With Gibbon on the Sioux Campaign of 1876,” Journal of the United States Cavalry Association, June 1896.
3.Godfrey quoted in Wayne Michael Sarf, The Little Bighorn Campaign, March–September 1876 (Conshohocken, PA: Combined Books, 1993), 175.
4.Diary of Troop Pat Coleman, USMA Archives.
5.Ibid.
6.Godfrey quoted in Marguerite Merington, ed., The Custer Story: The Life and Intimate Letters of General George A. Custer and His Wife Elizabeth (New York: Devin-Adair, 1950), 313. Godfrey later challenged the idea that June 26 was the predetermined date for the columns to meet. He said that if Custer had followed Terry’s order to the letter, he would have been hard pressed to get back that far north by the twenty-sixth. He also pointed out that they had taken fifteen days’ rations, of which they used less than a week’s worth. Godfrey to Roe, February 28, 1918, Godfrey papers, USMA Special Collections.
7.Godfrey in ibid., 315.
8.“Custer’s Last Fight,” St. Paul Globe, April 26, 1897, 6. Custer wanted Porter to ride with his command group, but Chief Surgeon Dr. George Edwin Lord refused, thus saving Porter’s life and sacrificing his own.
9.Marcus Reno led A, G, and M troops; Frederick Benteen led D, H, and K troops; Custer had C, E, F, I, and L troops; and B troop guarded the mule train.
10.Benteen quoted in S. L. A. Marshall, Cimsoned Prairie (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1972), 138.
11.Edgerly in Edward C. Bailly, “Echoes from Custer’s Last Fight: Accounts by an Officer Survivor Never Before Published,” Military Affairs, Winter 1953, 173.
12.Letter to General Edwa
rd S. Godfrey, August 17, 1908, USMA Archives. O’Neill was Lieutenant McIntosh’s cook. He later was a sergeant. He died in 1914 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
13.“Sergeant John M. Ryan,” Hardin Tribune, June 22, 1923. Ryan was first sergeant for Company M.
14.See testimony of Sergeant Edward Davern, F Company, 7th Cavalry, in The Official Record of a Court of Inquiry Convened at Chicago, Illinois, January 13, 1879, by the President of the United States upon the Request of Major Marcus A. Reno, 7th U.S. Cavalry, to Investigate His Conduct at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, June 25–26, 1876 (Pacific Pallisades, CA: W. A. Graham, 1951), 286.
15.Custer historian Michael Donahue has done numerous site tests of the “hat waving” theory and concluded that the distances make the story impossible to believe. He points out that the story did not come from Reno but others. Correspondence with the author, April 3, 2014.
16.Reno in Merington, The Custer Story, 318.
17.Letter to General Edward S. Godfrey, August 17, 1908, USMA Archives.
18.“Account of Battle at Little Bighorn, by Two Moon,” History Resource Center (Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group) document number BT2352000951.
19.Reno quoted in Joseph Henry Taylor, Sketches of Frontier and Indian Life on the Upper Missouri and Great Plains (Bismarck: J. H. Taylor, 1897), 164.
20.“Custer’s Last Fight,” St. Paul Globe, April 26, 1897, 6.
21.Letter to General Edward S. Godfrey, August 17, 1908, USMA Archives.
22.Charles Francis Roe, “Custer’s Last Battle,” a monograph published by the National Highways Association, New York City (1927), 9.
23.Reno quoted in Taylor, Sketches of Frontier and Indian Life on the Upper Missouri and Great Plains, 164.
24.From an interview with W. A. Graham in 1922., published in “Come On! Be Quick! Bring Packs!,” Cavalry Jounral, July 1923, and reprinted in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth: A Source Book for Custeriana (Harrisburg: Stackpole, 1953), 287–94.
25.Kanipe in Sarf, 212.
26.John Martin, interview with Walter Mason Camp, October 24, 1908, Camp MSS, field notes, John Martin, folder 3, Lilly Library, Indiana University.
27.Ibid.
28.In Sarf, 213–14.
29.Edgerly in Sarf, 216.
CHAPTER 30
1.See generally, Richard G. Hardorff, ed., Lakota Recollections of the Custer Fight (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991).
2.“The Custer Fight,” New York Times, August 10, 1881, 2, from the Fort Yates correspondent of the Cincinnati Commercial.
3.“The Death of Gen. Custer: Sitting Bull Tells the Story of the Fight,” New York Times, May 7, 1881, 3.
4.“Another Story of Gen. Custer’s Death,” New York Times, January 7, 1883, 5, reprinted from the Mile City (MT) Journal.
5.Letter by Frederick Benteen to William J. De Gresse, December 22, 1868, reprinted in the New York Times February 14, 1869, originally appearing (unsigned) in the St. Louis Democrat. A thorough attempt at reconstruction is in John S. Gray, Custer’s Last Campaign: Mitch Boyer and the Little Bighorn Reconsidered (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991).
6.E. J. McClernand, “The Fight on Custer Hill,” in Charles Francis Roe, “Custer’s Last Battle,” a monograph published by the National Highways Association, New York City (1927), 38. McClernand received the Medal of Honor for bravery at Bear Paw Mountain during the Nez Perce War a year after the Custer battle.
7.Nelson Appleton Miles, Personal Recollections and Observations of General Nelson A. Miles (Chicago: The Werner Company, 1896), 290.
8.Ibid.
9.“Account of Battle at Little Bighorn, by Two Moon,” History Resource Center, Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group, Document Number BT2352000951.
10.“The Story Told,” Worthington (MN) Advance, July 20, 1876, 1.
11.See Richard Allan Fox Jr., Archaeology, History, and Custer’s Last Battle: The Little Big Horn Reexamined (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993).
12.Hardorff, Lakota Recollections of the Custer Fight, 162.
13.Miles, Personal Recollections and Observations of General Nelson A. Miles, 288–89.
14.Ibid., 290.
15.F. W. Benteen, “An Account of the Little Big Horn Campaign,” typescript copy, USMA Archives, 9.
16.W. A. Graham, “The Lost Is Found: Custer’s Last Message Comes to Life,” Cavalry Journal, July–August 1942, reprinted in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth: A Source Book for Custeriana (Harrisburg: Stackpole, 1953), 296–300.
17.Godfrey in Marguerite Merington, ed., The Custer Story: The Life and Intimate Letters of General George A. Custer and His Wife Elizabeth (New York: Devin-Adair, 1950), 318–19.
18.Graham, “The Lost Is Found,” in Graham, The Custer Myth.
19.Gibson in Merington, The Custer Story, 316.
20.Herndon quoted in Frances Fuller Victor, Eleven Years in the Rocky Mountains and Life on the Frontier, Part 2 (Hartford: Columbian Book, 1877), 51.
21.Godfrey to Roe, February 28, 1918, Godfrey papers, USMA Special Collections. Granted, Godfrey heard this secondhand from Benteen.
22.“Custer’s Last Fight,” St. Paul Globe, April 26, 1897, 6.
23.Ibid.
24.“A Talk With Sitting Bull,” New York Times, August 7, 1881, 2.
25.The stand on Reno Hill compares favorably to the Battle of Rorke’s Drift in the Zulu War, which would take place three years later.
26.John F. McBlain, “With Gibbon on the Sioux Campaign of 1876,” Journal of the United States Cavalry Association, June 1896.
27.“The Custer Massacre,” Nebraska Advertiser, September 21, 1876, 1.
28.McBlain, “With Gibbon on the Sioux Campaign of 1876.” See also the press account reprinted in Major Sir Rose Lambart Price, The Two Americas: An Account of Sport and Travel (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1877), Appendix C.
29.Gibson in Merington, The Custer Story, 317.
30.Ibid.
31.“General Custer’s Last Moments,” Bristol (VA) News, July 25, 1876, 1.
32.For detailed information on the locations of the bodies on the field, see Douglas D. Scott, P. Willey, Melissa A. Connor, They Died With Custer: Soldiers’ Bones from the Battle of the Little Bighorn (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998).
33.H. W. Longfellow, “The Revenge of Rain-in-the-Face,” West Point Tic Tacs (New York: H. Lee, 1878), 113–14.
34.See Charles A. Eastman, “Rain-in-the-Face: The Story of a Sioux Warrior,” Outlook, October 27, 1906, 507–12.
35.Benteen quoted in Evan S. Connell, Son of a Morning Star: Custer and Little Bighorn (New York: North Point Press, 1984), 78.
36.“The Custer Fight,” New York Times, August 10, 1881, 2, from the Fort Yates correspondent of the Cincinnati Commercial. Other accounts say that Custer had an arrow through his penis and a slash on his left thigh that may not have been visible to eyewitnesses who say that his body was not desecrated.
37.Ibid.
38.Ibid.
39.“Gen. Custer’s Murderer,” New York Times, February 12, 1881, 1.
40.“Survivor Tells of Custer Fight,” Washington Herald, September 21, 1913, 7. Among other problems with the story: Custer was not carrying a saber that day, nor was anyone else; “Curley” says the moment he described is portrayed in one of the famous Custer paintings, probably Otto Becker’s wholly imagined Custer’s Last Fight, which was distributed as a promotional lithograph by the Anheuser-Busch brewing company, and in which he is fighting with saber raised; and “Curley” said he was sometimes known as Bloody Knife, who was another person entirely and killed at Little Bighorn.
41.Thomas B. Marquis, Keep the Last Bullet for Yourself (New York: Reference Publications, 1976).
42.“Custer’s Slayer,” Washington National Republican, July 22, 1881, 1; and “Custer’s Last Fight,” St. Paul Globe, April 26, 1897, 6. In later accounts Sitting Bull claimed to have personally led warriors against both Reno’s first attack and Custer.
CONC
LUSION
1.“General Custer’s Burial,” New York Times, September 13, 1878. See also Douglas D. Scott, P. Willey, and Melissa A. Connor, They Died with Custer: Soldiers’ Bones from the Battle of the Little Bighorn (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999).
2.“Custer’s Last Fight,” in St. Paul Globe, April 26, 1897, 6. See also Marguerite Merington, ed., The Custer Story: The Life and Intimate Letters of General George A. Custer and His Wife Elizabeth (New York: Devin-Adair, 1950), 320–21.
3.“Custer’s Last Fight,” in St. Paul Globe, April 26, 1897, 6. Also Merington, The Custer Story, 321–23.
4.Elizabeth Custer, Boots and Saddles (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1913), 255.
5.“Montana Papers Got Scoop: Tribune Not First to Print News,” Bismarck Tribune, July 6, 1976.
6.Glazier, 229, 275.
7.“The Causes and Consequences,” New York Times, July 7, 1876, 1.
8.“What Is Thought in Washington,” New York Times, July 8, 1876, 1.
9.“Another Ex-Confederate Offers to Avenge,” Bristol (VA) News, July 25, 1876, 1.
10.Briston (TN) News, August 15, 1876, 2.
11.“Politics Run Mad,” New York Times, July 8, 1876, 4.
12.Grant quoted in Utley, 44.
13.Ibid.
14.Interview with Sturgis, originally printed in the Chicago Tribune, reprinted in the Army and Navy Journal, July 29, 1876. See also Sturgis in “Gen. Custer’s Death,” New York Times, July 17, 1876, 5; “Gen. Custer’s Death,” New York Times, July 18, 1876, 5; and “Sturgis on Custer,” New York Times, July 21, 1876, 8.
15.Crittenden letter quoted in James B. Fry, “Comments by General Fry on the Custer Battle,” The Century, January 1892, 387, fn 2.
16.George McClellan, McClellan’s Own Story: The War for the Union, the Soldiers Who Fought It, The Civilians Who Directed It, and His Relations to Them (New York: Webster Publishers, 1886), 365.
17.Godfrey to Roe, February 28, 1918, USMA Archives.
18.Terry’s communiqués were reprinted in the New York Times, July 7, 1876, 1.
The Real Custer Page 46
