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

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  My description of the regiment’s march up the Rosebud Valley is based in part on my own observations while following Custer’s trail in June 2007. Varnum’s description of the valley as “one continuous village” is from a May 5, 1909, letter from Varnum to Walter Camp in Richard Hardorff’s On the Little Bighorn with Walter Camp, p. 71. Burkman describes his interchange with Custer while riding along the Rosebud in Wagner, pp. 144–45. According to John Gray in Centennial Campaign, “Custer seems to have misinterpreted the signs to mean that the village was breaking up and fleeing,” p. 338. Varnum told of Custer’s order “to see that no trail led out of the one we were following” in Custer’s Chief of Scouts, edited by John Carroll, p. 60.

  Godfrey wrote of the regiment’s activities at the location of Sitting Bull’s sun dance in his Field Diary, edited by Stewart, pp. 9–10, and in “Custer’s Last Battle,” in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, pp. 135–36. The article in which Daniel Kanipe described the wickiups as “brush sheds” as well as how Sergeant Finley placed the scalp in his saddle-bag is in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 248. Wooden Leg told of how the young warriors stayed in wickiups instead of lodges in Marquis, Wooden Leg, p. 210. The various signs left by the Lakota and Cheyenne are described in Libby, pp. 78–79. According to the Arikara scout Soldier, they found “a stone with two bulls drawn on it. On one bull was drawn a bullet and on the other a lance. The two bulls were charging toward each other. Custer asked Bloody Knife to translate it and Bloody Knife said it meant a hard battle would occur if an enemy came that way,” Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 187. Red Star’s comment that Custer had “a heart like an Indian” is in Libby, p. 77. Custer’s participation in the ceremony in Medicine Arrow’s lodge is described by Grinnell in The Fighting Cheyennes, p. 264; by John Stands in Timber in Cheyenne Memories, p. 82; and by Custer himself in My Life on the Plains, pp. 357–58. Charles Windolph in I Fought with Custer writes, “[S]eems to me that Indians must have put some curse . . . on the white men who first touched their sacred Black Hills. . . . Custer got a lot of notoriety from his Black Hills Expedition. . . . But he never had any luck after that,” p. 43. In a note in Indian Views of the Custer Fight, Richard Hardorff describes Custer’s flag as “a large, swallow-tailed guidon, divided into a red and blue field, with white crossed sabers in the center,” p. 55. Godfrey told how the wind repeatedly knocked down Custer’s flag in his Field Diary, edited by Stewart, pp. 8–9, and in “Custer’s Last Battle,” in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, pp. 135–36.

  Wooden Leg speaks of the how the report of large numbers of antelope caused the village to move down the Little Bighorn in Marquis, Wooden Leg, p. 204. General Scott recorded that some Crow Indians had told him that the term Greasy Grass came from “a kind of grass growing up near the headwaters of [the river] that bore a kind of greasy pod or berry. After a horse had eaten a little while his jaws and nuzzle would be thickly smeared with a greasy substance,” in folder 52, Camp Papers, BYU. According to Ernie LaPointe in part 2 of The Authorized Biography of Sitting Bull, the term relates to the muddy slickness of the grass after a rain. Wooden Leg described the formation of Sitting Bull’s village on the Little Bighorn in Marquis, Wooden Leg, p. 206; see also Richard Fox’s “West River History: The Indian Village on the Little Bighorn River,” pp. 139–65. One Bull described how he and his uncle climbed to the top of the hills overlooking the river in box 104, folder 18, WCC. Robert Utley wrote of the Battle of Killdeer Mountain in The Lance and the Shield, pp. 55–57. White Bull described the battle in box 105, notebook 24, WCC.

  The interpreter Billy Garnett’s account of how the Lakota believed “that the first white man came out of the water” and their use of the warning “Wamunitu!” are recorded in the typescript of the Walter Camp Papers, BYU, p. 652. In The Oregon Trail, Parkman wrote how after they’d wiped out a Dakota war party, the Snakes “became alarmed, dreading the resentment of the Dakota,” p. 85. Sitting Bull’s “Dream Cry” is in “25 Songs by Sitting Bull,” box 104, folder 18, WCC. One Bull also told of Sitting Bull’s “Dream Cry” on the night before the Little Bighorn, box 104, folder 18, WCC. Utley described Sitting Bull’s appeal to Wakan Tanka in The Lance and the Shield, p. 144. Wooden Leg told of the dance on the night of June 24, 1876, in Marquis, Wooden Leg, p. 215.

  Chapter 8: The Crow’s Nest

  Benteen wrote two narratives of the battle, both in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, where he speaks of his greeting by Keogh, pp. 165, 179. Brian Pohanka writes of Keogh’s life in Italy and the Civil War in “Myles Keogh from the Vatican to the Little Big Horn,” pp. 15–24; Pohanka cites Captain Theo Allen’s remark about Keogh’s spotless and tight-fitting uniform, p. 20; Pohanka also cites Keogh’s comments to his sister about the need for “a certain lack of sensitiveness,” p. 22, and Libbie’s description of Keogh as “hopelessly boozy,” p. 22. Edgerly’s letter to his wife in which he mentions Custer’s handling of Keogh prior to the battle is in E. C. Bailly’s “Echoes from Custer’s Last Fight,” p. 172. Benteen’s July 25, 1876, letter to his wife in which he relates his “queer dream of Col. Keogh” is in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, p. 150. Ronald Nichols provides a synopsis of DeRudio’s career prior to joining the U.S. cavalry in Men with Custer, p. 83. Benteen’s account of the conversation prior to officer’s call is in his narrative, in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, p. 165. Godfrey in “Custer’s Last Battle” describes officer’s call in the dark as well as Custer’s original battle plan, in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 136. Varnum in Custer’s Chief of Scouts wrote of the Crows’ hope of seeing the village as the morning “camp fires started,” p. 61. John Finerty wrote of a night march in War-Path and Bivouac, pp. 241–42. Godfrey described losing his bearings when the dust cloud wafted away in “Custer’s Last Battle,” p. 136. Lee Irwin writes of the “below powers” and how “outstanding topographical features” provided the setting for Native visions in The Dream Seekers, p. 37.

  My account of the Battle of the Washita is based on the following sources: Richard Hardorff’s excellent compilation of primary source material in Washita Memories; Custer’s My Life on the Plains; Godfrey’s “Some Reminiscences, Including the Washita Battle, November 27, 1868”; Jerome Greene’s Washita: The U.S. Army and the Southern Cheyennes, 1876–9; Stan Hoig’s The Battle of the Washita; and Charles Brill’s Conquest of the Southern Plains. Greene in Washita refers to the campaign as “experimental,” p. 86; Custer’s description of setting out in the blizzard is from My Life on the Plains, pp. 215–16. Hardorff in Washita Memories has a useful note describing the “coloring of the horses,” p. 177, a process Custer describes in My Life, p. 208; Benteen’s complaints about Custer’s actions are in the annotations he left on his own copy of Custer’s book, cited by Hardorff in a note, Washita Memories, p. 177. Benteen wrote of how Elliott had been “peppering” Custer in a Feb. 12, 1896, letter to Goldin, in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, p. 253. The doctor who examined Benteen in 1888 wrote that he “has had attacks of neuralgia of the head (beginning in the eyes) ever since his eyes were affected in 1868—a campaign on the snow . . . he blackened the eyelids above and below, with powder moistened with saliva. The glare affected the vision of the horses and men,” in John Carroll’s introduction to Karol Asay’s Gray Head and Long Hair: The Benteen-Custer Relationship, p. v.

  John Ryan wrote of the crunch of the horses’ hooves and how the men warmed the horses’ bits at night, in Ten Years with Custer, edited by Sandy Barnard, pp. 75, 72. Brewster’s comparison of the regiment to a snake winding up the valley is in Hardorff, Washita Memories, p. 159. Dennis Lynch told Walter Camp how Custer and Tom strangled one of Custer’s dogs with a lariat; William Stair claimed Custer tied a dog’s head up in a woman’s apron in an attempt to quiet it; in Walter Camp’s Field Notes, folder 75, BYU. Ryan described the black dog getting a picket pin through the skull in Barnard, Ten Years, p. 74. Ben Clark related how Custer summarily dismissed an officer’s fears that there might be too many Indians, i
n James Foley’s “Walter Camp and Ben Clark,” p. 20. Custer described the “rollicking notes” of “Garry Owen” in My Life, p. 240. Ben Clark was beside Custer as he charged into the village; see his interview with Walter Camp, cited in Hardorff, Washita Memories, p. 225. Custer described Benteen’s encounter with the young Cheyenne warrior in My Life, pp. 241–42. Benteen wrote of how he “broke up the village” in a Feb. 12, 1896, letter to Goldin, in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, p. 252; he wrote of how he taught Custer to respect him at the Washita in a Jan. 11, 1896, letter, p. 238.

  Godfrey told of discovering the much larger village to the east and his conversation with Custer about Elliott in “Some Reminiscences,” pp. 493, 495–96. The Cheyenne Moving Behind, who was a young girl during the battle, remembered how the injured ponies “would moan loudly, just like human beings,” in Theodore Ediger and Vinnie Hoffman’s “Some Reminiscences of the Battle of the Washita,” p. 139. Dennis Lynch told of how the wounded ponies ate all the grass within their reach in Walter Camp Field Notes, folder 75, BYU. Benteen described the “steam-like volume of smoke” that rolled up from the burning tepees in the letter that was published in a St. Louis newspaper, in Hardorff, Washita Memories, p. 178. Charles Brill interviewed the scout Ben Clark, who claimed that after taking Black Kettle’s village, Custer planned on attacking the much larger village to the east. Clark’s account of convincing Custer that this “would be little less than suicide” is in Brill’s Conquest of the Southern Plains, pp. 174–79. Custer recounted how he attempted to do what the enemy neither “expects nor desires you to do” in his feint toward the larger village in My Life, p. 249; Godfrey wrote that the band played “Ain’t I Glad to Get Out of the Wilderness” as the regiment marched toward the village, in “Some Reminiscences,” p. 497. Ryan described the use of captives as human shields in Barnard, Ten Years, p. 77. On Clark’s and Custer’s versions of events, see Elmo Watson’s “Sidelights on the Washita Fight,” especially p. 59, in which he speaks of Custer’s “delirium of victory.”

  Godfrey described Elliott’s determination to go “for a brevet or a coffin,” in “Some Reminiscences,” p. 493; Benteen admitted that Elliott had ventured from the regiment on “his own hook” in a Feb. 12, 1896, letter to Goldin, in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, p. 252. Benteen wrote to Barry of his certainty that Custer would one day be “scooped,” in The D. F. Barry Correspondence at the Custer Battlefield, edited by John Carroll, p. 48. According to Walter Camp, “Custer’s tactics for charging an Indian camp Benteen did not approve of,” in Hardorff, On the Little Bighorn with Walter Camp, pp. 232–33; Camp also wrote of how Indians “had to be grabbed,” p. 188. Godfrey wrote of the need for surprise when attacking Indians in “Custer’s Last Battle,” in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 137. Benteen’s obsession with the Major Elliott affair is made clear in his Oct. 11, 1894, letter to Goldin: “Now, as ever, I want to get at who was to blame for not finding it out then,” in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, p. 229. The description of the “sixteen naked corpses” was in the Jan. 4, 1869, New York Herald, in Hardorff, Washita Memories, p. 259. Benteen’s letter to William DeGresse about the Washita appeared in the Dec. 22, 1868, St. Louis Democrat and the Feb. 14, 1869, New York Times and is reprinted in Hardorff, Washita Memories, p. 176. For a synopsis of the evidence concerning the abuse of the Cheyenne captives, including the adage “Indian women rape easy,” see the note in Hardorff, Washita Memories, p. 231. See also Jerome Greene’s discussion in Washita, p. 169. Benteen makes the claims about Custer and Monahsetah in a Feb. 12, 1896, letter to Goldin, in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, p. 258. Custer employed Monahsetah as a scout from Dec. 7, 1868, to Apr. 17, 1869; sometime in January of 1869 she gave birth to a son. According to Cheyenne oral tradition, she later gave birth to another son who was the product of her relationship with Custer. However, Monahsetah, who was known as Sally Ann among the officers of the Seventh, may also have had relations with Custer’s brother Tom. The son she gave birth to in January was jokingly known as Tom among the officers of the Seventh. For a more sympathetic view of the Custer-Monahsetah relationship, see “My Heritage, My Search” by Gail Kelly-Custer, who claims to be a descendant of Yellow Hair, also known as Josiah Custer, the child of Monahsetah and Custer. According to Kate Bighead, the southern Cheyenne women “talked of [Custer] as a fine-looking man.” Bighead added that Monahsetah (also known as Meotzi) “said that Long Hair was her husband, that he promised to come back to her, and that she would wait for him,” in The Custer Reader, edited by Paul Hutton, p. 364.

  Varnum compared the “peculiar hollow” near the lookout in the Wolf Mountains to the “old Crow Nest at West Point,” in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 60. Thomas Heski writes of how the original Crow’s Nest at West Point was named for the lookout on the masthead of a ship in “ ‘Don’t Let Anything Get Away’—The March of the Seventh Cavalry, June 24–25, 1876: The Sundance Site to the Divide,” p. 23. See also Richard Hardorff’s “Custer’s Trail to the Wolf Mountains.” My descriptions of the two Crow’s Nests—one in southern Montana, the other in New York—are based on my own visits to these areas. My thanks to Major Ray Dillman for his directions to Storm King Mountain (the closest peak in the Hudson River valley to the Crow’s Nest, which as part of a former firing range is now off-limits) and to Jim Court for taking me to the Wolf Mountains at first light of June 25, 2007. The Crow scouts’ description of how “the hills would seem to go down flat” is in Libby, p. 87. Varnum wrote of how the Crows claimed the village was “behind a line of bluffs” and how they described the pony herd as “worms on the grass” in Custer’s Chief of Scouts, p. 87. Varnum’s mention of his inflamed eyes is in Hammer, Custer in ’76, as is his description of “a tremendous village,” p. 60.

  Burkman spoke of using buffalo chips as a fire source on the Wolf Mountains in Wagner, p. 147. Theodore Goldin described the exhaustion of the regiment that morning in a Nov. 8, 1932, letter to Albert Johnson: “[H]ardly had we halted when men threw themselves to the ground and slept, while horses with heaving sides and drooping heads, stood just where their riders left the saddles,” in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, p. 39. Benteen described his breakfast of “hardtack and trimmings” in his narrative of the battle, in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, p. 166. Burkman told of how Custer lay down under a bush and immediately fell asleep in Wagner, p. 148. Peter Thompson wrote of “how poor and gaunt” the horses were becoming in his Account, p. 13. William Carter in The U.S. Cavalry Horse writes of how much a horse was typically fed, p. 377. Godfrey described the use of a carbine socket, in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 346.

  Red Star told of how he turned his horse “zig-zag” to indicate that he’d seen the enemy; he also recounted how Custer told Bloody Knife about Tom’s supposed fear, in Libby, pp. 89–90. My account of how Tom Custer won two Medals of Honor is based on Jeffrey Wert’s Custer, pp. 219–20, and Thom Hatch’s Custer and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, pp. 56–58. Custer’s immense respect for Tom is reflected in his comment to some friends while on the East Coast in the spring of 1876: “To prove to you how I value and admire my brother as a soldier, I think he should be the general and I the captain,” in Libbie Custer’s Boots and Saddles, p. 193. Fred Gerard witnessed Custer and Bloody Knife’s testy exchange the night after leaving the Far West, when Custer ordered Gerard to tell the scout, “I shall fight the Indians wherever I find them!” in Frances Holley’s Once Their Home, p. 263. William Jackson recounted Bloody Knife’s prediction that he would not “see the set of tomorrow’s sun” in James Schultz’s William Jackson Indian Scout, pp. 129–30. William Taylor in With Custer on the Little Big Horn wrote of how Custer rode bareback through the column after receiving Varnum’s message, p. 33; the bugler John Martin also described the scene in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 289, as did Benteen in his narrative, in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, p. 180. Godfrey in “Custer’s Last Battle” recounted Custer’s insistence that instead of two or
three days, “we’ll get through with them in one day,” in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 136. Thomas Heski offers a detailed description of the ravine in which the regiment temporarily hid in “ ‘Don’t Let Anything Get Away,’ ” p. 25. Edgerly recounted Cooke’s remarks about how “I would have a chance to bathe my maiden saber” in a letter to his wife, in Bailly’s “Echoes from Custer’s Last Fight,” p. 172.

  My account of Crawler and Deeds’ brush with the Seventh in the Wolf Mountains is based on the testimony of Low Dog and Little Soldier, both in Richard Hardorff’s Indian Views of the Custer Fight: A Source Book, pp. 63–64, 174. Utley writes of Sitting Bull’s leadership role in the Silent Eaters Society, Lance and Shield, p. 101. Varnum in Custer’s Chief of Scouts describes the “long lariat” with which Crawler held Deeds’ pony, p. 63. My account of DeSmet’s 1868 peace mission to the Hunkpapa is based on Louis Pfaller’s “The Galpin Journal: Dramatic Record of an Odyssey of Peace,” pp. 4–23, and Utley, The Lance and the Shield, pp. 76–81; Pfaller mentions the fact that Sitting Bull continued to wear the crucifix given to him by DeSmet, p. 21. Holy Face Bear recounted Crawler’s statement, “We thought they were Holy Men,” in Hardorff’s Indian Views, p. 182. Hugh Scott wrote of the Lakota’s interest in peace instead of war, in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 113; see also the statement of Pretty Voice Eagle, who claimed that he and a delegation of Lakota spoke with Custer prior to the Seventh’s departure from Fort Lincoln in May 1876 and “asked him not to fight the Sioux Indians, but to go to them in a friendly way. . . . We begged him to promise us that he would not fight the Sioux. He promised us, and we asked him to raise his hand to God that he would not fight the Sioux, and he raised his hand. . . . After we got through talking, he soon left the agency, and we soon heard that he was fighting the Indians and that he and all his men were killed,” Joseph Dixon, The Vanishing Race, pp. 76–77.