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

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  On July 8, 2009, at a restaurant in Deadwood, South Dakota, in the Black Hills, Ernie LaPointe spoke of his great-grandfather and the Battle of the Little Bighorn: “Historians are always saying that we are a defeated people, but slaughtering the buffalo, disarming and massacring old men, women, and children like they did at Wounded Knee doesn’t constitute victory. After all these years, after everything that’s happened, we still have the colors we won at the Little Bighorn, and that makes us strong.”

  On the morning of June 28, 1876, Private Thomas Coleman was part of the burial detail assigned to Last Stand Hill. In his diary he composed a kind of prose poem entitled “Oh What a Slaughter”:

  How many homes are made desolate by

  The sad disaster, every one of them were scalped

  And otherwise mutilated, but the General he

  Lay with a smile on his face.

  Others said Custer looked much as he did when taking a nap in the midst of a march: quietly relaxed and content, as if all were right with the world. Lieutenant Godfrey described Custer’s smile as a “calm, almost triumphant expression.”

  As with so many aspects of this story, no one will ever know with any certainty what Custer was thinking at the time of his death. Did he look around and realize that, like the Spartans at Thermopylae and the Texans at the Alamo, all 210 troopers and civilians under his immediate command were dead or about to be? Did he, like Brutus in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, take consolation in knowing that he would have “glory by this losing day,” and did he smile?

  Or perhaps the smile was a simple attempt to reassure the officers and men who were still alive that even if he had fallen, they should carry on and prevail. Or was the smile directed to his brother Tom in grateful thanks for a mercy killing? Or did it signal a more private acknowledgment that Libbie’s father had been right all along, and he was about to die, as Judge Bacon had predicted, as “a soldier”?

  Or perhaps Custer’s expression had nothing to do with the circumstances of his death. Perhaps the smile was applied to his lips postmortem as a sardonic commentary on the mutilations inflicted on his body by the Lakota and Cheyenne.

  In the end, Custer’s smile remains a mystery, and people will make of it what they will.

  In 1876 the American public used that smile to construct the myth that has become synonymous with Custer’s name, the myth of the Last Stand. The irony is that if the archaeological evidence and much of the Native oral testimony is to be believed, Custer’s thrust to the north barely gave him time for the kind of epic confrontation commonly associated with a Last Stand. In truth, the Battle of the Little Bighorn was the Last Stand not for Custer, who was on the attack almost to the very end, but for the nation he represented. With this battle and its sordid aftermath, climaxing so tragically in Wounded Knee, America, a nation that had spent the previous hundred years subduing its own interior, had nowhere left to go. With the frontier closed and the Indians on the reservations, America—the land of “Westward Ho!”—began to look overseas to Cuba, the Philippines, and beyond.

  The Wild West of memory, however, continued to live on, and Custer remains an icon to this day. But the times have changed since Custer led the Seventh Cavalry to the Little Bighorn. Wars are no longer fought with arrows and single-shot carbines. There are weapons of mass destruction. Instead of several hundred dead and a guarantee of eternal fame, a Last Stand in the future might mean the devastation of a continent.

  Sitting Bull is known today for stalwart resistance, for being the last of his tribe to surrender to the U.S. government. But at the Little Bighorn, he did not want to fight. He wanted to talk. This may be his most important legacy. As he recognized when he instructed his nephew to approach Reno’s skirmish line with a shield instead of a rifle, our children are best served not by a self-destructive blaze of glory, but by the hardest path of all: survival.

  APPENDIX A

  The Seventh Cavalry on the Afternoon of June 25, 1876

  Prior to the battle, Custer organized the twelve companies of his regiment into three units, known as battalions. Custer commanded the largest battalion of five companies, and Major Marcus Reno and Captain Frederick Benteen commanded their own battalions of three companies each. There is evidence that Custer further divided his own battalion into Right and Left wings, consisting of Companies C, I, and L and Companies E and F, respectively. In addition, the 175-mule pack train, escorted by Captain Thomas McDougall’s B Company, operated as a largely independent entity, meaning that Custer’s approximately 670-man regiment was split into four separate components when the battle began.

  Below is a listing of the officers and enlisted men mentioned in the text, as well as the guides, scouts, and interpreters who accompanied the Seventh Cavalry on that historic day in 1876.

  CUSTER’S BATTALION

  (five companies, approximately 215 men)1

  Commanding: Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer

  Staff: First Lieutenant William Cooke, Adjutant

  Captain Thomas Custer, Aide-de-Camp

  George Lord, Assistant Surgeon

  Mitch Boyer, Interpreter

  Boston Custer, Guide

  Mark Kellogg, Attached Newspaper Correspondent

  Autie Reed, Accompanying Civilian

  Custer’s Right Wing

  (three companies, approximately 115 men)

  Commanding: Captain Myles Keogh

  C Company

  Commanding: Second Lieutenant Henry Harrington

  First Sergeant L. Edwin Bobo; Sergeants George Finckle,

  Jeremiah Finley, Richard Hanley, and Daniel Kanipe;

  Corporal Henry French; Privates James Bennett, John Jordan,

  John Mahoney, John McGuire Jr., Peter Thompson, James Watson,

  and Alfred Whittaker

  I Company

  Commanding: Captain Myles Keogh

  Second-in-Command: First Lieutenant James Porter

  First Sergeant Frank Varden; Private Gustave Korn

  L Company

  Commanding: First Lieutenant James Calhoun

  Second-in-Command: Second Lieutenant John Crittenden

  First Sergeant James Butler; Private John Burkman

  Custer’s Left Wing

  (two companies, approximately 100 men)

  Commanding: Captain George Yates

  E Company

  Commanding: First Lieutenant Algernon Smith

  Second-in-Command: Second Lieutenant James Sturgis

  First Sergeant Frederick Hohmeyer

  F Company

  Commanding: Captain George Yates

  Second-in-Command: Second Lieutenant William Van Reily

  First Sergeant Michael Kenney; Privates Edward Davern, Dennis Lynch,

  and James Rooney

  Crow Scouts: Curley, Goes Ahead, Hairy Moccasin, and White Man Runs Him

  RENO’S BATTALION

  (three companies, approximately 131 men)

  Commanding: Major Marcus Reno

  Staff: Lieutenant Benjamin Hodgson, Adjutant

  Henry Porter, Acting Assistant Surgeon

  James DeWolf, Acting Assistant Surgeon

  A Company

  Commanding: Captain Myles Moylan

  Second-in-Command: First Lieutenant Charles DeRudio

  First Sergeant William Heyn; Sergeants Ferdinand Culbertson, Henry

  Fehler, and Stanislas Roy; Trumpeters William Hardy and David

  McVeigh; Privates William Nugent and William Taylor

  G Company

  Commanding: First Lieutenant Donald McIntosh

  Second-in-Command: Second Lieutenant George Wallace

  Acting First Sergeant Edward Botzer; Privates Theodore Goldin,

  Benjamin Johnson, Samuel McCormick, John McVay, Thomas O’Neill,

  and Henry Petring

  M Company

  Commanding: Captain Thomas French

  First Sergeant John Ryan; Sergeants Miles O’Hara and Charles White;

  Privates John Dona
hue, Henry Gordon, George Lorentz, William Meyer,

  William Morris, Daniel Newell, Edward Pigford, Roman Rutten, John

  Sivertsen, William Slaper, James Tanner, and Henry Voight

  Scouts/Guides/Interpreters with Reno’s Battalion

  (approximately 35 men)

  Commanding: Second Lieutenant Charles Varnum

  Second-in-Command: Second Lieutenant Luther Hare

  Interpreters: Isaiah Dorman and Frederic Gerard

  Scout: George Herendeen

  Guide: Charley Reynolds

  Arikara Guides and Scouts: Bloody Knife, Bobtail Bull, Bull, Forked Horn, Goose, Left Hand, Little Brave, One Feather, Red Bear, Red Star, Soldier, Stabbed, and Young Hawk

  Crow Scouts: Half Yellow Face and White Swan

  Pikuni Scout: William Jackson

  Two Kettle Lakota Scout: William Cross

  BENTEEN’S BATTALION

  (three companies, approximately 113 men)

  Commanding: Captain Frederick Benteen

  D Company

  Commanding: Captain Thomas Weir

  Second-in-Command: Second Lieutenant Winfield Edgerly

  Sergeants James Flanagan and Thomas Harrison; Corporal George

  Wylie; Farrier Vincent Charley; Private Patrick Golden

  H Company

  Commanding: Captain Frederick Benteen

  Second-in-Command: First Lieutenant Francis Gibson

  First Sergeant Joseph McCurry; Blacksmith Henry Mechling; Privates

  Jacob Adams, William George, George Glenn, and Charles Windolph

  K Company

  Commanding: First Lieutenant Edward Godfrey

  First Sergeant Dewitt Winney; Saddler Michael Madden; Privates Charles

  Burkhardt and Jacob Horner

  PACK TRAIN

  (approximately 120 soldiers and 11 citizen packers)

  Commanding: First Lieutenant Edward Mathey

  Citizen Packers (mentioned in the text): Benjamin Churchill, John Frett, and

  John Wagoner

  Escorted by B Company

  Commanding: Captain Thomas McDougall

  First Sergeant James Hill

  APPENDIX B

  Sitting Bull’s Village on June 25, 1876

  There were two major tribes represented at the Battle of the Little Bighorn: the Lakota (also known as the Teton Sioux) and the Cheyenne, along with a small number of Arapaho and Santee Sioux. Of the Lakota, there were seven bands: the Blackfeet, Brulé, Hunkpapa, Minneconjou, Oglala, Sans Arcs, and Two Kettles. Below is a listing of the participants mentioned in the text, grouped alphabetically by tribe and band.2

  ARAPAHO

  Left Hand: part of a five-man hunting party that joined the village shortly before the battle; mistakenly killed a Lakota warrior in the dusty confusion around Last Stand Hill

  Waterman: companion of Left Hand’s who described the Oglala warrior Crazy Horse as “the bravest man I ever saw”

  BLACKFEET LAKOTA

  Kill Eagle: leader of a band detained against their will by Sitting Bull’s warriors

  BRULÉ LAKOTA

  Julia Face: married to Thunder Hawk; watched the battle from the hills to the west of the river

  Standing Bear: not to be confused with the Minneconjou of the same name; told his son Luther of his experiences at the battle

  CHEYENNE

  Beaver Heart: told tribal historian John Stands in Timber of Custer’s boast about capturing the Lakota woman “with the most elk teeth on her dress”

  Buffalo Calf Road Woman: rescued her fallen brother during the Battle of the Rosebud prior to the Little Bighorn

  Comes in Sight: saved by his sister Buffalo Calf Road Woman at the Rosebud

  Hanging Wolf: told the tribal historian John Stands in Timber of the soldiers’ northernmost approach to the river

  Kate Bighead: told Thomas Marquis of how she watched the fighting from the periphery of the battlefield

  Lame White Man: warrior killed by friendly fire during the charge near Battle Ridge

  Little Hawk: discovered Crook’s Wyoming Column prior to the Battle of the Rosebud; also present at the Little Bighorn

  Little Wolf: saw the Seventh approaching from the east but didn’t reach Sitting Bull’s village till after the fighting

  Noisy Walking: cousin to Kate Bighead; mortally wounded by a Lakota during the battle

  Two Moons: played a pivotal role during the battle with Custer; later spoke extensively about his experiences

  White Shield: about twenty-six years old at the time of the battle; had a nine-year-old son named Porcupine and fought with a stuffed kingfisher tied to his head

  Wolf’s Tooth: young warrior who later told John Stands in Timber about the battle

  Wooden Leg: fought both Reno’s and Custer’s battalions and later told of his experiences to Thomas Marquis

  Yellow Hair: brother to Wooden Leg

  Yellow Nose: Ute captive raised as a Cheyenne who figured prominently in the Custer fight

  Young Two Moons: twenty-one years old at the time of the battle; nephew to Chief Two Moons

  HUNKPAPA LAKOTA

  Black Moon: announced Sitting Bull’s vision at the 1876 sun dance; lost a son during the battle

  Crawler: father of Deeds and Moving Robe Woman; closely aligned with Sitting Bull

  Deeds: ten-year-old son of Crawler; one of the first killed

  Four Blankets Woman: younger sister of Seen by the Nation and wife of Sitting Bull

  Gall: lost two wives and three children at onset of the battle; subsequently led in capturing the troopers’ horses

  Good Bear Boy: friend of One Bull injured during the attack on Reno’s skirmish line

  Gray Eagle: brother of Sitting Bull’s two wives, Four Blankets Woman and Seen by the Nation

  Gray Whirlwind: with Sitting Bull when Reno attacked the Hunkpapa circle

  Her Holy Door: mother of Sitting Bull

  Iron Hawk: only fourteen years old during the battle; fought near Last Stand Hill

  Jumping Bull: adopted brother of Sitting Bull

  Little Soldier: Sitting Bull’s fourteen-year-old stepson at the time of the battle

  Moving Robe Woman: also known as Mary Crawler; joined the fighting after the death of her brother Deeds

  Old Bull: close ally of Sitting Bull who later claimed, “Soldiers made mistake attacking Hunkpapas first”

  One Bull: Sitting Bull’s nephew and a major source on the life of his uncle

  Pretty White Buffalo Woman: also known as Mrs. Horn Bull; claimed Reno might have won the battle if he had charged the village

  Rain in the Face: noted warrior who became famous for the apocryphal story that he cut out Tom Custer’s heart

  Seen by the Nation: elder sister of Four Blankets Woman and wife of Sitting Bull

  Shoots Walking: just sixteen years old, fought against the objections of his parents; claimed that the soldiers “did not know enough to shoot”

  Sitting Bull: forty-five-year-old political leader and holy man whose sun dance vision presaged the victory at the Little Bighorn

  MINNECONJOU LAKOTA

  Red Horse: spoke of a single soldier who “alone saved his command a number of times by turning on his horse in the rear in the retreat”

  Standing Bear: seventeen years old at the time of the battle; described the slaughter as Reno’s battalion retreated across the river

  White Bull: brother of One Bull and nephew of Sitting Bull; counted seven coups during the battle

  OGLALA LAKOTA

  Black Bear: leader of a seven-person band seen at the divide by Custer’s scouts on the morning of June 25

  Black Elk: twelve years old at the time of the battle; later related the story of his life in the classic Black Elk Speaks

  Crazy Horse: thirty-five years old at the time of the battle; the preeminent Lakota warrior

  Eagle Elk: twenty-four-year-old cousin to Crazy Horse; one of the many warriors who reported seeing Yellow Nose captu
re a company’s flag

  Flying Hawk: twenty-four-year-old nephew of Sitting Bull

  He Dog: thirty-six-year-old warrior and Shirt Wearer noted for his bravery

  Low Dog: also about twenty-nine years old; married to a northern Cheyenne woman; later fled to Canada with Sitting Bull

  Red Hawk: part of the Crazy Horse–led charge of Reno’s skirmish line; later drew a detailed map of the battle

  SANS ARC LAKOTA

  Long Road: killed just seventy-five feet from the soldiers’ line on Reno Hill

  SANTEE SIOUX

  Inkpaduta: veteran of Minnesota Uprising of the 1860s and ally of Sitting Bull

  TWO KETTLE LAKOTA

  Runs the Enemy: leader of a hundred-warrior band that fought both at the Valley Fight and on Last Stand Hill

  Acknowledgments

  Special thanks to Mike Hill, friend and researcher extraordinaire, without whom this book would not have been possible. Thanks also to Steve Alexander for talking about his career as the country’s foremost Custer reenactor; to Jack Bailey for sharing his knowledge of Montana’s Rosebud Valley and for providing access to the Deer Medicine Rocks; to Rocky Boyd for all his research help and especially for his insights into the life and writings of Peter Thompson; to Ladonna Brave Bull Allard at the Standing Rock Sioux Agency for speaking with me about the history of her people; to Jim Court, past superintendent of the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, for his help in retracing Custer’s route up the Rosebud River to the Little Bighorn; to Joan Croy for a tour of the Custer sites in Monroe, Michigan; to the Delta Queen, the historic sternwheeler that showed me what it’s like to travel upriver by steam power; to Major Ray Dillman of the English Department at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, not only for directions to the Crow’s Nest but for putting me in touch with Lieutenant Colonel Peter Kilner of the Center for Company-Level Leaders at West Point, who shared with me his extensive firsthand knowledge of leadership in battle; to West Point’s Alicia Mauldin-Ware and Gary Hood for their research assistance; to John Doerner, historian at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, for all the leads and research help; to Michael Donahue, author and seasonal ranger at the battlefield, for his insights into the battle; to Sharon Smalls at the battlefield for her help with the images; to Zach Downey at the Lilly Library at Indiana University; to Robert Doyle for the tour of Myles Keogh’s birthplace in Leighlinbridge, County Carlow, Ireland, and also to Elizabeth Kimber for sharing documents relating to Myles Keogh; to Dennis Farioli for his research help; to Jeffrey Flannery at the Manuscript Reading Room of the Library of Congress; to the Gilcrease Museum Archives at the University of Tulsa for permission to quote from the Benteen-Goldin papers; to Susan Goodall for photographic assistance; to Mark Halvorson at the State Historical Society of North Dakota for the tour of his institution’s collection relating to Sitting Bull, to Greg Wysk for the archival assistance, and to Sharon Silengo for her help with the photographic collection; to Bruce Hanson at the Denver Public Library; to the Reverend Vincent Heier for some late-inning research help; to June Helvie for permitting me to quote from the writings of both her mother, Susan Taylor Thompson, and her grandfather Peter Thompson; to Marilynn Hill for sharing her writings about Libbie Custer; to Eric and Betsey Holch for navigational and moral support during a research trip in Ireland; to David Ingall, James Ryland, and Chris Kull at the Monroe County Historical Museum; to Bill Kupper for passing along an important resource; to Ernie and Sonja LaPointe for the conversation and hospitality; to Doctor Tim Lepore, the only physician I know with a topographical map of the Little Bighorn Battlefield in his office, for allowing me to fire his Springfield 73 carbine and his Colt .45; to Minoma Little Hawk and Christal Allen at the Washita Battlefield National Historic Site; to the Reverend Eugene McDowell for a most instructive conversation about horses under stress; to Castle McLaughlin, whose exhibit during the spring of 2009 at the Peabody Museum at Harvard University (curated with Butch Thunder Hawk) “Wiyohpiyata: Lakota Images of the Contested West” was immensely helpful; to Elizabeth Mansfield for her research assistance; to Bruce and Jeanne Miller, for navigational and video assistance during research trips to Kansas, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Montana; to Tim Newman for all his help with assembling the images for this book; to Al and Mary Novisimo, the scanning and PowerPoint gurus of Nantucket; to Mickey and Bruce Perry for sharing their knowledge about horses, and to their daughter, Megan, for a riding demonstration worthy of Custer himself; to Crow tribal member Charlie Real Bird, for guiding me by horse across the Little Bighorn Battlefield and especially to his twenty-seven-year-old former rodeo horse Tomcat for not throwing me; to Matthew Reitzel and Ken Stewart at the South Dakota State Historical Society; to John and Rebecca Shirley at the Eagle Nest Lodge in Hardin, Montana, for their hospitality and especially for the jet-boat tour of the Bighorn and Little Bighorn rivers; to Neal Smith at The Tropical Research Institute for identifying the finder on Mitch Boyer’s hat; to Russell Taylor and John Murphy at the Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University; to Leroy Van Horne for the tour of the Custer sites in and around New Rumley, Ohio; to Charmain Wawrzyniec of the Dorsch Memorial Library in Monroe, Michigan, for making available one of the best collections of Custer-related books in the world; and to Jennifer Edwards Weston for all her research help and to her mother, Marge Shoots the Enemy Edwards, for showing the way to Sitting Bull’s cabin.