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

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  Chapter 4: The Dance

  For information on Sitting Bull’s sun dance and sun dances in general, I have consulted Peter Powell’s “Sacrifice Transformed into Victory: Standing Bear Portrays Sitting Bull’s Sun Dance and the Final Summer of Lakota Freedom” in Visions of the People, edited by Evan Maurer, pp. 81–108; Standing Bear’s account in The Sixth Grandfather, edited by Raymond DeMallie, pp. 173–74; Black Elk’s in The Sacred Pipe, edited by Joseph Epes Brown, pp. 67–100; Ella Deloria’s excellent description of the ceremony in Waterlily, pp. 113–39; and numerous references in WCC.

  One Bull describes how Sitting Bull “pierced the heart” on the Little Missouri in One Bull Interview, box 105, notebook 19, WCC. White Bull spoke about the pain of being pierced to Walter Campbell: “[T]here was a strong pain for the first jerks then the nerves seem to be killed and no pain thereafter. Even jerking out. Some bleeding but put stuff on that stopped it,” box 105, notebook 8, WCC.

  For two quirky, sometimes winningly irascible accounts of Red Cloud and Spotted Tail, see the two books by George Hyde: Red Cloud’s Folk: A History of the Oglala Sioux Indians and Spotted Tail’s Folk: A History of the Brulé Sioux. On Sitting Bull’s selection as the leader who has “authority over all decisions of war and peace,” see Utley, Lance and Shield, pp. 85–87. According to Robert Higheagle, Sitting Bull sang the following song after being “coronated by Running Antelope and Gall”: “Ye Tribes behold me / The chiefs [of old] are no more [are gone] / Myself [as substitute or successor] shall take courage [pledge],” in “25 Songs by Sitting Bull,” box 104, folder 18, WCC. One Bull’s description of the ceremony with which Sitting Bull became war chief is in box 104, folder 11, WCC. My account of Sitting Bull’s role as leader owes much to Jeffrey Ostler’s The Plains Sioux and U.S. Colonialism, especially pp. 52–53.

  Sitting Bull’s famous words about being “fools to make yourself slaves to a piece of fat bacon” are in Charles Larpenteur’s Forty Years a Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri, 1833–1872, p. 360. White Bull told of Four Horns’ advice about being “a little against fighting,” as well as Crazy Horse’s statements about attacking the soldiers only if they attack first, in ww box 105, notebook 8, WCC. White Bull also spoke of the cautionary words of Sitting Bull’s mother, ww box 105, notebook 24, WCC. Utley writes of the state of relative peace after 1870 in Lance and Shield, p. 90. Kingsley Bray in Crazy Horse: A Lakota Life writes of the iwashtela movement among the Lakota, p. 132; according to Bray, “in October 1870, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse agreed to a policy that for the present complemented iwestela . . . a gradual transition to reservation life. Sitting Bull even declared an end to his own band’s four-year war against the military posts on the upper Missouri,” p. 154. John Gray in Centennial Campaign estimates that the total population of the Lakota and Cheyenne tribes that had participants in the Battle of the Little Bighorn was 21,870, and that only 8,000, or 37 percent of that population, were not at the agencies during the battle and could have possibly taken part in it, pp. 318–20. My account of Sitting Bull and Crow King’s encounter with a group of agency Indians on the Yellowstone River in 1870 is from Stanley Vestal’s New Sources of Indian History, pp. 329–32. Sitting Bull’s statement that Red Cloud “saw too much” comes from William Quintin’s report of a conference with the Assiniboine and Gros Ventre at Fort Shaw in which it was said that Sitting Bull had broken with Red Cloud; cited by James Olson in Red Cloud and the Sioux Problem, p. 131. Vestal writes of Sitting Bull’s difficulty sleeping with his two jealous wives in Sitting Bull, pp. 39–40.

  According to John Gray in “Frank Grouard: Kanaka Scout or Mulatto Renegade?” Grouard’s mother was from the Tuamotu Islands; according to Richard Hardorff in “The Frank Grouard Genealogy,” she was from an island off Tahiti. White Bull speaks of Sitting Bull’s relationship with Grouard in ww box 105, notebook 8, WCC. On “Yellow Hair,” the supposed child of Custer and Monahsetah, see “My Heritage, My Search” by Gail Kelly-Custer (who claims to be descended from Yellow Hair, also known as Josiah Custer) in Custer and His Times, book 5, edited by John Hart, pp. 268–81. On the phenomenon of the “squaw man,” see Stanley Vestal’s New Sources, pp. 312–13, as well as Walter Boyes’s “White Renegades Living with the Hostiles Go Up Against Custer,” pp. 11–19, 31.

  The 1872 description of a “Sandwich Islander, called Frank” is cited by John Gray in “Frank Grouard,” p. 64. Grouard’s comments about Sitting Bull are in Joe DeBarthe’s Life and Adventures of Frank Grouard (subsequently referred to as DeBarthe), pp. 159, 387, 386. On Sitting Bull’s use of warrior societies to create “channels of influence both to the chiefs and elders and to the key brokers of warrior opinion,” see Bray, Crazy Horse, p. 177.

  Utley writes of how the opening of the Milk River Agency represented a conscious attempt to undercut Sitting Bull’s influence; Utley also discusses the small number of lodges remaining with the Hunkpapa leader during the winter of 1872–73 in Lance and Shield, p. 97. According to Catherine Price in The Oglala People, 1841–1879, “The tiyospaye was commonly composed of ten or more bilaterally extended families,” p. 2. Grouard describes his falling out with Sitting Bull in DeBarthe, pp. 109–13. White Bull describes Sitting Bull’s courageous pipe-smoking demonstration in 1872, ww box 105, notebook 24; WCC. Grouard was with the Lakota along the Yellowstone during their encounter with the Seventh Cavalry in 1873 and remarked on the playing of the regimental band, DeBarthe, p. 114. Barrows’s description of the “stirring Irish air” was in the Sept. 9, 1873, New York Tribune.

  Standing Bear’s memory of Sitting Bull’s comparison of the Black Hills to a food pack is in DeMallie’s The Sixth Grandfather, p. 164. Bray has an excellent account of the U.S. government’s “general uncertainty about the region’s significance in a time of unprecedented crisis,” Crazy Horse, p. 187. Grouard speaks of his difficulties readjusting to a white diet in DeBarthe, p. 88; he also tells of his troubles relearning the English language, p. 175, and the varying reactions of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull to his return with a peace delegation, pp. 173–74. Hyde in Red Cloud’s Folk writes of Little Big Man’s confrontation with the peace commissioners, pp. 243–44.

  John Gray in Centennial Campaign cites the Watkins letter recommending military force, as well as Sheridan’s description of the Jan. 31, 1876, deadline as a “good joke,” pp. 28–33. Grouard tells of his role as government scout during the winter and spring of 1876 in DeBarthe, pp. 181–88; he also speaks of carrying “a map of the country in my mind,” p. 154. Wooden Leg described the army’s attack on his village in Marquis, Wooden Leg, pp. 161–67. John Gray has created a useful chronology of the village’s movements that winter and spring (largely based on Wooden Leg’s account) in Centennial Campaign, pp. 321–34. Wooden Leg describes Sitting Bull’s reception of the Cheyenne refugees in Marquis, Wooden Leg, pp. 170–72, as well as how Sitting Bull had “come now into admiration by all Indians,” p. 178. Vestal relates Crazy Horse’s explanation of the soldiers’ behavior in Warpath, p. 182; Vestal also discusses the dangers of staying on the reservation, writing, “it was so convenient to kill friendlies,” in Sitting Bull, p. 69. Wooden Leg speaks of Sitting Bull’s insistence that the warriors hunt instead of fight in Marquis, Wooden Leg, pp. 179, 185. Kill Eagle’s account of being forced to join Sitting Bull’s village is in W. A. Graham’s The Custer Myth, p. 49.

  One Bull describes Sitting Bull’s activities during the 1876 sun dance in box 104, folder 6, and box 110, folder 8, WCC. Grouard’s description of the “scarlet blanket” is in DeBarthe, p. 120. Raymond DeMallie in “ ‘These Have No Ears’: Narrative and Ethnohistorical Method” provides a probing analysis of how Vestal/Campbell interpreted and inevitably adjusted the accounts of Sitting Bull’s sun dance he received from both One Bull and White Bull, pp. 518–20. For a reference to the Rock Writing Bluff, see DeMallie’s The Sixth Grandfather, p. 198. Concerning the consequences of not following Sitting Bull’s injunction about the spoils, Ernie LaPointe, Sitting Bull’s great-grands
on, says, “When you don’t follow a vision to the end, you will suffer,” in The Authorized Biography of Sitting Bull, part 2.

  Chapter 5: The Scout

  Judge Bacon’s deathbed words about Custer having been “born a soldier” are in Frost, General Custer’s Libbie, p. 150, as is Libbie’s plea to Custer that “we must die together,” p. 126. Custer tells of his encounter with the psychic in an Apr. 17, 1866, letter to Libbie in the Merington Papers at the New York Public Library, cited by Barnett in Touched by Fire, pp. 59–60. Custer’s letter to Libbie about how “troublesome and embarrassing babies would be to us” is in Frost, General Custer’s Libbie, p. 178. Custer’s Jan. 31, 1876, telegram to General Terry about his impending bankruptcy is in the Custer Papers, NA. Custer told of how he spent the night writing his article for Galaxy magazine in a June 9, 1876, letter to Libbie in Boots and Saddles, p. 270. Edgerly wrote of Custer’s dinner of bread drenched in syrup in an Oct. 10, 1877, letter to Libbie in Merington, p. 302. Terry described his wet return to the Powder River encampment in his Diary, p. 21. Godfrey wrote of how the officers speculated about why Custer was not given the scout in his Field Diary, edited by Stewart, p. 6. Kellogg claimed that Custer had declined the scout in an article in the June 21, 1876, New York Herald. Godfrey described the difficulties of training the pack mules in his diary, Stewart, p. 5. My description of the Gatling gun is based largely on Julia Keller’s Mr. Gatling’s Terrible Marvel, pp. 173–206.

  The scouts’ description of Reno as “the man with the dark face” is in Libby, p. 73. Benteen describes his confrontation with Reno in a Jan. 16, 1892, letter to Goldin in John Carroll’s Benteen-Goldin Letters, p. 209. My descriptions of Reno’s service on the munitions board and his actions upon learning of his wife’s death, as well as his run-in with Thomas Weir, are based primarily on Ronald Nichols’s In Custer’s Shadow, pp. 116–20, 133–35, 136, 148. Custer told of how Terry requested that he lead the column to the Yellowstone in a June 11, 1876, letter to Libbie in Merington, p. 302. The engineer Edward Maguire calculated that the column had covered a total of 318.5 miles, averaging 15.9 miles per day, in John Carroll’s General Custer . . . The Federal View, p. 42. Hanson describes how the appearance of the column transformed the once-placid banks of the Yellowstone, p. 245. In a June 21, 1876, article in the New York Herald, Kellogg wrote about the temporary trading post at the Powder River encampment; the Arikara scouts also described the post, in Libby, pp. 71–72; the scouts also recounted how the interpreter Fred Gerard told them they could each have a single drink of whiskey, Libby, p. 207, and how much they enjoyed the playing of the regimental band, Libby, p. 73.

  John Gray quotes Terry’s Feb. 21, 1876, letter to Sheridan in Centennial Campaign, p. 40. Custer’s June 12, 1876, letter to Libbie describing how the dogs slept with him in his tent is in Boots and Saddles, p. 271. Dr. Paulding’s remarks concerning Gibbon’s lack of initiative are in “A Surgeon at the Little Big Horn: The Letters of Dr. Holmes O. Paulding,” edited by Thomas Buecker, p. 139. Benteen’s June 12–13, 1876, letter to his wife, Frabbie, describing the languid scene inside his tent along the Yellowstone is in Camp Talk, edited by John Carroll, p. 14; along with Custer, Benteen feared that Reno’s scout might unnecessarily “precipitate things” and ruin an otherwise excellent opportunity to attack the Indians. Reno’s note to Terry in which he says he can tell him “where the Indians are not” is quoted in Gray’s Centennial Campaign, p. 136.

  On the Crows’ decision to align themselves with the American government, see Frederick Hoxie’s Parading Through History, pp. 60–125, as well as Jonathan Lear’s provocative Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation . John Gray writes extensively of Mitch Boyer’s background in Custer’s Last Campaign, pp. 3–123; he also cites Boyer’s comments about how the Lakota “can’t get even now,” p. 396. My thanks to Neal Smith for identifying the binds on Boyer’s headgear as blue jays, specifically Steller’s jays. On Reno’s scout, see James Willert’s Little Big Horn Diary, pp. 130–31, and Gray’s Custer’s Last Campaign, p. 132. Terry described his strategy prior to the Reno scout in a June 12, 1876, letter: “a double movement, one part of the force going up the Tongue to near its head waters then crossing to the head waters of the Rosebud, & descending that stream; the other portion joining Gibbon’s troops & proceeding up the last named river,” Terry Letters, p. 19. On Reno’s previous experience fighting Indians, see Nichols, In Custer’s Shadow, p. 37.

  Mark Kellogg wrote of his voyage down the Yellowstone on the Far West in the June 21, 1876, New York Herald. For a useful biography of Kellogg, see Sandy Barnard’s I Go with Custer. Custer wrote to Libbie about the drowning of Sergeant Fox and the temporary loss of the letter bag in a June 17, 1876, letter in Boots and Saddles, p. 273. See also Willert’s account of Fox’s drowning in Little Big Horn Diary, pp. 128–29. Benteen also wrote about the incident in a June 14, 1876, letter to his wife, Frabbie, in John Carroll’s Camp Talk, p. 15. Libbie’s letter to Custer in which she says, “All your letters are scorched,” is in Merington, p. 303. John Gray details who was left at the Powder River supply depot in Centennial Campaign, p. 129. In his Field Diary Terry wrote, “Band of 7th to remain at depot,” p. 22. According to James Wilber, “Custer wanted to take the band beyond Powder River, but Terry would not consent to it,” in Custer in ’76, edited by Kenneth Hammer, p. 149. Stanley Hoig in The Battle of the Washita describes how the band’s instruments froze at the onset of the attack, p. 128. According to James Henley, “Custer’s orders to have the band play ‘Garry Owen’ when about to charge [at the Washita] was ever a subject of ridicule in the regiment,” in Camp on Custer, edited by Bruce Liddic and Paul Harbaugh, pp. 36–37.

  According to Godfrey, “No one carried the saber,” in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 346. On DeRudio’s decision to bring his saber, see Hammer, Custer in ’76: “DeRudio says he was the only man in the regiment who carried a saber,” p. 87. Kellogg wrote of the abandoned Indian village on the Tongue in the June 21, 1876, New York Herald. Custer’s letter to Libbie about finding the trooper’s charred skull is in Boots and Saddles, p. 274. Red Star described Custer’s examination of the skull in Libby, in which he also recounted Isaiah Dorman’s involvement in the desecration of the Lakota graves, pp. 75–76. Maguire provided a detailed description of the embalmed Lakota warrior, in John Carroll’s General Custer . . . The Federal View, p. 43. Stanislaw Roy told of how the soldiers of McIntosh’s G Company were warned that they “might be sorry” for the desecration in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 111. Boston Custer’s letter detailing the pillage is in Merington, p. 306. Godfrey’s description of the same is in “Custer’s Last Battle,” in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 129. Peter Thompson related Gerard’s pronouncement that “the vengeance of God . . . had overtaken” the Custer clan for despoiling the Lakota graves, in his Account, p. 46. Custer’s letter to Libbie describing the scene at night around the fire is in Boots and Saddles, p. 274. John Gray describes Reno’s activities along the Rosebud on June 17, 1876, in Centennial Campaign, pp. 133–34. Peter Thompson’s description of how the Indians’ travois tore up the ground is in his Account, p. 8. In a June 21, 1876, letter to Libbie, Custer wrote, “The scouts reported that they could have overtaken the village in one day and a half,” in Boots and Saddles, pp. 274–75. Forked Horn’s words of warning to Reno are in Libby, p. 70.

  Chapter 6: The Blue Pencil Line

  George Bird Grinnell details Little Hawk’s scout up the Rosebud in The Fighting Cheyennes, pp. 282–84; he writes of Little Hawk’s reputation as a practical joker in The Cheyenne Indians: Their History and Ways of Life, p. 124. On the movements of Sitting Bull’s village, see John Gray’s Centennial Campaign, p. 327. Wooden Leg told of how the heralds warned “young men, leave the soldiers alone” in Marquis, Wooden Leg, pp. 198–99. Grinnell wrote of how Little Hawk and his scouts “howl like wolves, to notify the people that something had been seen,” in The Fighting Cheyennes, p. 284. White Bull spoke of how approximately
a thousand young warriors slipped away at night for the Rosebud and how Sitting Bull was with him at the beginning of the battle, box 105, notebook 24, WCC.

  In writing about Crook and the Battle of the Rosebud, I have consulted John Finerty’s War-Path and Bivouac; John Bourke’s On the Border with Crook; Crook’s Autobiography, edited by Martin F. Schmitt; Charles King’s Campaigning with Crook; J. W. Vaughn’s With Crook on the Rosebud; Neil Mangum’s Battle of the Rosebud; and Charles Robinson’s General Crook and the Western Frontier. Perry Jamieson writes of Crook’s groundbreaking techniques with the mule train in Crossing the Deadly Ground, pp. 39–40. Crook’s observation “Nothing breaks [the Indians] up like turning their own people against them” appeared in a series of articles published in the Los Angeles Times in 1886; cited by Robert Utley in Frontier Regulars, p. 54. This was the same technique pioneered by Benjamin Church during King Philip’s War; see my Mayflower, pp. 311–44. Red Cloud’s defiant words appeared in the June 9, 1876, New York Herald, cited by James Olson in Red Cloud and the Sioux Problem, p. 218. John Bourke in On the Border said that Crook’s belief that the Lakota “would never stand punishment as the Apaches had done” was based on the fact that they had “accumulated much property in ponies and other things, and the loss would be felt most deeply,” p. 286.

  Grouard described the “Sioux war-cry” and the confrontation between the Lakota and Crows and Shoshone in DeBarthe, pp. 224–25. Anson Mills judged the Lakota “the best cavalry soldiers on earth” in My Story, p. 406. In his Autobiography, Crook claimed the Indians “outnumbered the soldiers three to one and were armed with the latest model repeating rifles,” p. 196. John Finerty in War-Path and Bivouac wrote that an incredible twenty-five thousand cartridges were expended during the battle, adding, “It often takes an immense amount of lead to send even one Indian to the happy hunting grounds,” p. 141. Mills described the Lakota and Cheyenne’s intimidating appearance in My Story, p. 406. Crook remembered how the war whoop “caused the hair to raise on end” in his Autobiography, p. 194. Bourke in On the Border details the column’s activities after the battle, p. 322. Libbie’s letter mentioning Crook’s battle is in Merington, p. 303. Bates in Custer’s Indian Battles quoted a bit of soldier’s doggerel describing Crook after the Battle of the Rosebud: “I’d braid my beard in two long tails / And idle all the day / In whittling sticks and wondering / What the New York papers say,” p. 30.