The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  In the last decade or so, largely through the efforts of the superb researcher Richard Hardorff, immense amounts of previously unpublished Native testimony have made their way into print. In 1997, Gregory Michno published Lakota Noon, an account of the battle that relies almost exclusively on Native testimony. In 1999, Herman Viola published Little Bighorn Remembered, the culmination of two decades of collecting oral traditions of the battle from living descendants. More recently, the descendants of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull have participated in documentaries that reveal never-before-disclosed information about their famous ancestors. The Lakota author Joseph M. Marshall has also written several books about the battle that make excellent use of Native oral tradition.

  Just as important as the oral testimony left by Native participants is the visual evidence. Pictographs by Red Horse, Amos Bad-Heart Bull, One Bull, Standing Bear, Wooden Leg, and many others are much more than pretty pictures; they are highly detailed and painstakingly crafted renderings of what happened along the Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876. A warrior remembered in obsessive detail each one of his battle honors or coups, which like “kills” in twentieth-century aerial combat, were corroborated and confirmed by other warriors. With these drawings, the warrior recorded essential and extraordinarily precise information, and they are an immense help to anyone attempting to understand the battle. A good place to start in this regard is Sandra L. Brizée-Bowen’s For All to See: The Little Bighorn Battle in Plains Indian Art. However, as Castle McLaughlin cautions in a review of Brizée-Bowen’s book, Native pictographs are by no means a purely documentary source: “Rather than simply creating ‘literal’ visual records, Plains artists often used rhetorical gestures to convey aspects such as tense, perspective, distance, quantity, and the identity of subjects,” p. 60.

  In addition to studying the Native testimony, I have looked to the relatively recent appearance of a new source of archaeological evidence. In 1983, fire swept across the battlefield, providing a team of archaeologists and volunteers with the chance to comb the site with metal detectors and analyze what they found. This happenstance has provided a most exciting and late-breaking avenue of research, but there are also problems associated with this form of evidence. The battlefield was by no means a virgin archaeological site in 1983. Soldiers had been buried, exhumed, and reburied; beginning with the victorious warriors, artifact hunters had been picking over the site for more than a century. In 1993, Richard Fox, one of the archaeologists on the team that examined the battlefield after the fire, wrote Archaeology, History, and Custer’s Last Battle. Combining the evidence found in the ground with Native testimony, Fox argued that Custer’s battalion pushed much farther north than had generally been believed. Although I find Fox’s insistence that there was no concerted “last stand” more a matter of semantics than a proven fact, I feel that his account does an excellent job of explaining the eventual fate of Custer’s battalion, and I have followed it closely in this chapter. In 1994 Douglas Scott and Peter Bleed conducted an archaeological examination of portions of the battlefield adjacent to the Little Bighorn National Monument (described in A Good Walk Around the Boundary) that corroborated the fact that Custer’s battalion pushed well north of Last Stand Hill and that the firing around the mouth of Medicine Tail Coulee was quite light. (What Scott and Bleed did find in the vicinity of Medicine Tail Coulee was archaeological evidence associated with the movie Little Big Man, which was filmed in this portion of the battlefield, p. 38.)

  Another recent publication that I have found indispensable is Where Custer Fell: Photographs of the Little Bighorn Battlefield Then and Now by James Brust, Brian Pohanka, and Sandy Barnard. Combining historic photographs with the written evidence (much of it from the papers of Walter Camp), Brust et al. have done much to clarify the topographic subtleties of the battlefield. Yet another essential book in this vein is Michael Donahue’s Drawing Battle Lines: The Map Testimony of Custer’s Last Fight. Combining recorded oral and written testimony with the maps drawn by either the battle participant or the interviewer, Donahue’s book is especially helpful in trying to understand what happened during Custer’s thrust to the north.

  One source that may seem noticeably absent from my account is David Miller’s Custer’s Fall. Although it is useful in providing a readable Native-based narrative of the battle, some of Miller’s informants, especially the Oglala White Cow Bull, seem too good to be true when it comes to witnessing certain key events. Not only does White Cow Bull claim that he saw Custer’s Cheyenne captive Monahsetah at the LBH with the son she bore after her relationship with Custer, but he insists that after he saw the action at Reno’s skirmish line he also managed to make it to the river in time to see Custer get shot as he led his soldiers across the ford. Given the testimony of several southern Cheyenne informants, especially that of Kate Bighead (who mentions Custer’s relationship with Monahsetah but does not claim she was at the battle), it seems highly unlikely that Monahsetah and her son were present that day.

  Benteen testified that Custer’s battle “was a panic—rout,” in W. A. Graham, RCI, pp. 145–46. The testimony of the Cheyenne Sylvester Knows Gun appears in Royal Jackson’s An Oral History of the Battle, pp. 67–68. The Cheyenne Ted Rising Sun also learned from his grandparents “that Custer was wounded in the midstream of the LBH. And that some soldiers quickly rode up beside him and propped him up,” p. 67. In an interview, Sitting Bull’s great-grandson Ernie LaPointe also claimed that Custer was killed at the ford at Medicine Tail Coulee and that the battle was over twenty minutes later. In the documentary film The Authorized Biography of Crazy Horse and His Family, Part 3: The Battle of the Little Bighorn, descendants of the Crazy Horse family claim that it was Tom Custer who was wounded at the ford and eventually taken up to Last Stand Hill. In Sandy Barnard’s Ten Years with Custer, John Ryan wrote that Custer had “a Remington Sporting Rifle that used a brass shell” and that “five or six shells . . . were found under General Custer’s body. I picked up those shells and gave them to the captain of my company. They were afterwards sent to Mrs. Custer with a lock of the general’s hair,” p. 303. Richard Fox provides a useful summary of the scenario he developed in Archaeology, History, and Custer’s Last Battle, pp. 333–34. In this chapter I have relied on Fox and others in developing an overall scheme of the battle while using the warriors’ own accounts to drive the narrative.

  Runs the Enemy’s account of first seeing Custer’s battalion and hearing Sitting Bull’s speech about the bird protecting its nest is in Joseph Dixon’s The Vanishing Race, p. 174. Sitting Bull admitted that “[w]e thought we were whipped” in the interview in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 69. According to Red Horse, “A Sioux man came and said that a different party of soldiers had all the women and children prisoners. Like a whirlwind the word went around, and the Sioux all heard it and left the soldiers on the hill and went quickly to save the women and children,” in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 61. John Henley recounted hearing the interchange among Yates and the other two officers after the skirmish in the Yellowstone campaign, in Liddic and Harbaugh’s Camp on Custer, p. 50. Curley told Camp about Boyer’s claim that “the other commands had been scared out” in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 158. Curley told Russell White Bear that Boyer pointed at Custer and said, “That man will stop at nothing,” in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 18; White Bear also told how Boyer encouraged Curley to escape before it was too late, p. 19.

  Wooden Leg’s account of the battle is in Marquis, Wooden Leg, pp. 226–70; Kate Bighead’s account, also told to Thomas Marquis and titled She Watched Custer’s Last Battle, is in The Custer Reader, edited by Paul Hutton, pp. 363–77. My description of the terrain is based, in part, on my own experience riding across the battlefield with the Crow tribal member Charlie Real Bird in June 2007. I also found discussions in July 2009 with author and seasonal ranger Michael Donahue of great value; Donahue directed me to Kill Eagle’s account of a buffalo trail that led from the vicinity of Last Stand Hill
to the LBH River, in Donahue’s Drawing Battle Lines, pp. 139–43. Hanging Wolf’s description of the soldiers’ approach to the river is in John Stands in Timber’s description of the battle in Cheyenne Memories, pp. 194–210. See also Fox’s account of Custer’s northerly thrust in Archaeology, pp. 173–94. There is a striking similarity between Hanging Wolf’s account of the Left Wing’s approach to the north ford (often referred to as Ford D) and the account of Sylvester Knows Gun’s grandmother (and many others) of the Left Wing’s approach to the ford at Medicine Tail Coulee (Ford B). Both accounts describe a trooper in the lead getting wounded, if not killed, as he came to the river. Given the difficulty of pinpointing the exact location of an event during a battle, the possibility exists that these might be descriptions of the same event. Kellogg’s remains were identified by the distinctive shape of his boot heels. Also found with the body were thirty-seven narrow sheets of paper folded to fit neatly into Kellogg’s pocket. The reporter’s diary entries, it was later discovered, went only as far as June 9. See Sandy Barnard’s I Go with Custer, pp. 142–47. John Stands in Timber provides a surprisingly detailed account of how the Left Wing paused for twenty minutes at what is known today as Cemetery Ridge, then deployed in the vicinity of Last Stand Hill, in Cheyenne Memories, pp. 199–200. Runs the Enemy corroborated Wooden Leg’s and Kate Bighead’s claims that there was no firing as the warriors infiltrated the hills: “[W ]hile Custer was all surrounded there had been no firing from either side,” in Joseph Dixon’s The Vanishing Race, p. 175.

  On the demise of C Company and the warriors’ attack on Calhoun Hill, see Fox, Archaeology, History, and Custer’s Last Battle, pp. 143–61. I have also found Brust, Pohanka, and Barnard’s Where Custer Fell extremely helpful in describing these episodes; they claim that Keogh’s Right Wing “probably enjoyed half an hour to forty-five minutes of relative tactical stability, and the deployment of Company C must have been a controlled and seemingly logicalI reaction to the situation as [Keogh] saw it. Most likely the move was intended to check the growing number of Indians gathering on Greasy Grass Ridge,” p. 91. Sitting Bull told of how the dismounted soldiers “swayed to and fro . . . like the limbs of cypresses in a great wind,” in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 71. Yellow Nose described how the Indians “seemed really to be springing from the ground” in “Yellow Nose Tells of Custer’s Last Stand,” p. 40. On Lame White Man’s role in the battle, see the accounts of John Stands in Timber in Cheyenne Memories, pp. 197, 205; Hardorff’s Cheyenne Memories, pp. 170–71; and Wooden Leg in Marquis, Wooden Leg, p. 231, who quotes Lame White Man as calling out, “Come. We can kill all of them.” John Two Moons told of how the warriors finally followed Yellow Nose on his fourth attempt to lead them in a charge, in Hardorff’s Cheyenne Memories, p. 66. White Shield told how Yellow Nose used the captured guidon to count coup, in Hardorff’s Cheyenne Memories, p. 53, which also contains a footnote with extensive biographical information about Yellow Nose. See also Yellow Nose’s own account in Hardorff’s Indian Views, pp. 99–105. White Shield, Little Hawk, Young Two Moons, Long Forehead, and John Stands in Timber all commented on Yellow Nose and the guidon, in Hardorff’s Cheyenne Memories. Gregory Michno in Lakota Noon claims that Yellow Nose took the guidon much earlier in the battle, during his encounter with Yates’s Left Wing as it first made its way toward the river in the vicinity of Medicine Tail Coulee, pp. 127–28, 139. Hardorff, on the other hand, places the event later in the fight, during the warriors’ assault on Calhoun Hill, in Indian Views, p. 102. Since Yellow Nose’s description of how a group of troopers suddenly found itself surrounded corresponds so closely to Wooden Leg’s and Kate Bighead’s descriptions of what happened to C Company in the vicinity of Greasy Grass Ridge, I have placed the guidon taking during the initial attack on C Company prior to the charge on Calhoun Hill, as do Brust, Pohanka, and Barnard in Where Custer Fell, p. 92. Runs the Enemy’s description of how “a great roll of smoke seemed to go down the ravine” is in Joseph Dixon’s The Vanishing Race, p. 176; Fox also cites this account in his description of C Company’s collapse, Archaeology, p. 154. Red Horse’s description of “the bravest man they had ever seen” is in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, pp. 57, 60. Two Moons mentioned a heroic trooper in buckskin with “long black hair and a mustache,” in Hardorff’s Cheyenne Memories, p. 102. Walt Cross in Custer’s Lost Officer argues that this “bravest man” was Harrington, pp. 140–55.

  On the archaeology conducted at the battlefield, see Douglas Scott and Richard Fox’s Archaeological Insights into the Custer Battle; Scott, Fox, Melissa A. Connor, and Dick Harmon’s Archeological Perspectives on the Battle of the Little Bighorn; Scott, P. Willey, and Melissa A. Connor’s They Died with Custer; and Fox’s Archaeology, History, and Custer’s Last Battle, pp. 63–131. Two Moons described the firing as “pop—pop—pop” in Hardorff’s Cheyenne Memories, p. 102. Curley compared the sound of gunfire to “the snapping of threads in the tearing of a blanket” in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 11. Red Hawk’s account of the skirmish line at Calhoun Hill is in Hardorff’s Lakota Recollections , p. 43. Moylan testified about the shells he found on Calhoun Hill in W. A. Graham, RCI, p. 76. Brust, Pohanka, and Barnard provide an excellent account of the attack on Calhoun Hill in Where Custer Fell, pp. 95–97. On the devastating effect of “high trajectory arrow fire,” see Jay Smith’s “A Hundred Years Later,” p. 141. Moving Robe Woman told of seeing a horse holder with as many as ten horses in Hardorff’s Lakota Recollections, p. 95. Gall’s account of attacking the horse holders is in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, pp. 89–92. Gall told F. E. Server about his discovery of the horses in Horse Holders’ Ravine; Server told Eli Ricker, “The horses were huddled together in this safety-spot, the only one on the now circumscribed field. They must have been packed in like livestock on shipboard,” in Ricker’s Voices of the American West, vol. 2, p. 144. Low Dog told how the plunging horses made it difficult for the soldiers to shoot effectively, in Hardorff’s Indian Views, p. 65. He Dog told of how Crazy Horse “broke through . . . a sort of gap in the ridge,” in Hardorff’s Lakota Recollections, p. 75. See also Brust, Pohanka, and Barnard’s account of the incident in Where Custer Fell, p. 104. Waterman’s claim that Crazy Horse was “the bravest man I ever saw,” is in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 110. Stands in Timber detailed the activities of the Suicide Boys in Cheyenne Memories, pp. 292–93. Moving Robe Woman told of the darkness of the smoke and the flash of guns, in Hardorff’s Lakota Recollections, p. 95. Crow King told of the war cry “Hi-Yi-Yi” (“a high, prolonged tone,” according to the interpreter) in Hardorff, Indian Views, p. 69. Red Hawk recounted how the soldiers were “swept off their feet. . . . [T]he Indians were overwhelming,” in Hardorff’s Lakota Recollections, p. 44. Gall claimed that “Calhoun’s men died fighting as skirmishers,” in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 91. Varnum remembered that Calhoun was identified by the fillings in his teeth, in Hardorff’s The Custer Battle Casualties, II, p. 15. Hugh Scott learned that an “Indian had shot an arrow in Crittenden’s eye and had broken it,” in Hardorff’s The Custer Battle Casualties, p. 104. Brust, Pohanka, and Barnard write that the positions of the bodies on Calhoun Hill indicate that the “two platoons had been fighting back to back,” in Where Custer Fell, p. 95. Gall recalled that Keogh’s men “were all killed in a bunch,” in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 91. On Keogh’s Agnus Dei, see “Captain Keogh’s Medals,” in Myles Keogh, edited by John Langellier, Kurt Cox, and Brian Pohanka, p. 162. Godfrey wrote that “in life [Keogh] wore a Catholic medal suspended from his neck; it was not removed,” in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 345.

  Two Moons described how “[T]he whole valley was filled with smoke and the bullets flew about us, making a noise like bees,” in Joseph Dixon’s The Vanishing Race, p. 183. That White Shield wore a stuffed kingfisher on his head during the battle is in Hardorff’s Cheyenne Memories, p. 50, and that Standing Bear wore a skinned redbird and “vowed that I would make an offering if this bird should help me” is
in DeMallie’s The Sixth Grandfather, p. 188. Iron Hawk told of how after being fired on by the soldiers, a Cheyenne warrior with a “hairy belt around his waist” shook out the slugs the belt had magically collected, in DeMallie, p. 189. Gall spoke of the Great Spirit on “a coal black pony,” in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 91. Red Horse told of how the soldiers threw down their guns and raised their hands, in Hardorff’s Indian Views, p. 75. Iron Hawk remembered seeing the soldiers firing “wildly in every way,” in Hardorff’s Lakota Recollections, p. 66. Shoots Walking, who was just sixteen during the battle, told of shooting two soldiers who stood dumbly by with carbines in their hands, in Hardorff’s Indian Views, p. 169. The Brulé warrior Standing Bear, not to be confused with the Minneconjou of the same name who wore a redbird on his head, recounted the pangs he felt killing soldiers who “lay on the ground, with their blue eyes open, waiting to be killed,” in Luther Standing Bear’s My People the Sioux, p. 83. Horned Horse told of how the warriors “were knocking each other from their steeds,” in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 63. Yellow Nose’s account of seeing two mounted warriors running into each other and rolling to the ground is in Stands in Timber’s Cheyenne Memories, p. 202. Wooden Leg recounted how the sight of the warrior with a missing jaw sickened him, in Marquis, Wooden Leg, p. 234. White Bull’s account of his hand-to-hand battle with a trooper is in Hardorff’s Lakota Recollections, pp. 107–26. See also Vestal’s Warpath, in which White Bull proclaimed, “It was a glorious battle, I enjoyed it,” p. 199. Foolish Elk described the soldiers fleeing toward Last Stand Hill, in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 199. Fox estimates that only twenty survivors of the Right Wing reached Last Stand Hill, in Archaeology, History and Custer’s Last Battle, p. 195. Two Moons described how the warriors circled around the soldiers, “swirling like water round a stone,” in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 102. Hardorff describes the topography of Last Stand Hill: “In 1876, the crest near the present monument was much higher and considerably narrower, and only a small level place with a thirty feet diameter existed then,” in The Custer Battle Casualties, p. 35.