Frontier Regulars

by Robert M. Utley

  Topping the summit at noon on June 25, Custer sent three troops, 125 men, under the senior captain, Frederick W. Benteen, on a scout to the left, or south. As the exact position of the village was not known, this movement may have reflected the continuing apprehension that the Indians might get away to the south. Custer assigned another three troops to Major Reno, retained five under his personal command, and left one in the rear to escort the pack train. Reno and Custer followed the Indian trail down the valley of a creek toward the Little Bighorn. Ahead, dust rose from behind a line of bluffs hiding the Little Bighorn from view. Immediately in front, a party of about forty Sioux warriors, the rear guard of a small camp moving to join the parent village, came into view. To Custer, the dust and the retreating warriors probably signified escaping Indians. He ordered Reno to attack—as Reno recalled it, “to move forward at as rapid a gait as prudent, and to charge afterward, and that the whole outfit would support me.”50

  Although Custer had not seen it, the village lay just ahead, across the Little Bighorn River. Beginning with the Hunkpapa circle, it extended almost three miles downstream to the Cheyenne circle and occupied most of the half-mile width of the valley. However many warriors the village contained—the minimum 1,500 estimate, the 2,500 to 3,000 that most sources support, or the 4,0 to 6,000 of some authorities—there were a great many more than Custer had soldiers, even before the fragmentation of the regiment. Many of them boasted firearms, some the efficient Winchester repeater. If they had any warning of Custer’s approach, it was not much—enough to paint and prepare themselves individually but not enough to make any battle plans or dispositions. But they reacted in the one way neither Custer nor his superiors expected. Instead of running, they fought.

  After fording the Little Bighorn and advancing two miles down the valley, Reno charged the upper end of the village. When Sioux swarmed to confront him, he stopped the charge short of its objective, dismounted his 112 men, and spread them in a thin skirmish line. Flanked on his left, he withdrew to the shelter of a cottonwood grove on his right. Tangled brush in the timber inhibited control. Warriors infiltrated the position. Again Reno mounted his men—those who heard the command or saw others forming—and led them in a dash for better positions on the bluffs across the river. Sioux mingled with the fleeing troopers and took a heavy toll, especially at the river crossing, before the remnants of the command gained the top of the ravine-scored bluffs rising steeply from the right bank of the river. Reno’s advance, battle, and retreat lasted about forty-five minutes. He lost, in killed, wounded, and missing, almost half his command, including four officers and Scout Charley Reynolds.

  Reno had expected Custer’s support from the rear. Instead, Custer veered to the north and rode parallel to the river, behind the bluffs, toward the lower end of the village, a move probably prompted by word from Reno that the Indians were not fleeing but advancing to give battle. At one point Custer and his headquarters group rode to the top of the bluffs and for the first time saw the immense encampment. Below, Reno was just advancing to the attack. Sweeping his hat in encouragement, Custer rejoined his command. He sent his trumpeter orderly with a note to Benteen to hasten forward and bring the ammunition packs. Glancing back as he spurred his mount, Trumpeter Giovanni Martini caught history’s last glimpse of Custer and his 215 men in life. Shortly afterward, warriors poured across the river at the center of the village, where a large coulee parts the bluffs. The Hunk-papa chief Gall is credited with leading this movement. The troops fell back to a high ridge farther downstream. More warriors, freed by Reno’s retreat, streamed to Gall’s support. As this force pressed from the south, another, under Crazy Horse, circled below the village and closed from the north. Trapped in broken terrain that favored the Indian’s style of warfare, the command fragmented along and on both sides of the battle ridge. The fight was sharp and short—probably no longer than an hour. Custer and a small remnant—including two brothers and a nephew—gathered around his personal pennant at the northern end of the ridge for the memorable “last stand” that has become so cherished a part of American history and folklore. No white man survived, at least none who could prove his claim.

  Benteen’s scout to the left had proved fruitless. Receiving Custer’s summons, he had hastened forward and united with Reno’s shattered command just as it completed the costly withdrawal from the valley. The sound of firing from downstream gave notice that Custer was engaged. Some officers wanted to go to his support and, despite Reno’s refusal, rode off to the north. Others followed with their units. They reached a hill from which they could see the Custer battlefield, but smoke and dust obscured the action there. Warriors riding from the Custer fight blocked further advance and drove the troops precipitously back to the original position. The pack train had arrived safely. Reno and Benteen laid out a perimeter defense. The men dug rifle pits. For the remaining daylight hours of that hot Sunday, they fought off growing numbers of exultant Sioux and Cheyennes. Next morning, June 26, the Indians renewed the siege. Twice they formed assault parties to attempt to breach the lines, but on both occasions counterattacks spoiled the effort. By early afternoon the firing had subsided. That evening, as the battered defenders of Reno Hill watched in silence, the great village moved off to the south.

  The reason for the Indian exodus became apparent the next morning, June 27, when Terry and Gibbon marched up the valley from the north. Lt. James H. Bradley and the Crow scouts found the bodies of Custer’s men, many stripped and mutilated, littering the battle ridge where they had fallen. In addition, Reno lost forty-seven killed and fifty-three wounded. An officer and sixteen enlisted men thought to have been slain in the valley turned up alive; they had been left in the timber but had remained hidden until the Indians departed. Altogether, half the Seventh Cavalry lay dead or wounded. How many Indians paid for this extraordinary victory with their lives is not known, for the dead were removed by the living. Estimates vary from 30 to 300.

  The Battle of the Little Bighorn gave birth to one of history’s enduring controversies. There are many intriguing “ifs.” What if Custer had followed Terry’s plan? What if Custer had attacked with his whole regiment instead of dividing it? What if Reno had stormed into the Sioux village instead of dismounting and then retreating? What if he and Benteen had moved promptly and aggressively downstream as soon as firing was heard? These and other questions fuel endless speculation.

  Whatever may be said in mitigation, the ultimate responsibility for the disaster must rest with Custer. He departed from Terry’s plan even though the circumstances on which it was premised turned out to be exactly as foreseen. He precipitated a battle a day early, with worn-out men and horses, and without knowing the strength and position of the enemy. He committed his regiment piecemeal, and at the critical time no component was in supporting range of the others. If all this adds up to an appalling violation of elementary military precepts, it must be borne in mind that Indian warfare was not conventional warfare. The conventional rules were not always pertinent. Moreover, both in conventional and Indian combat, Custer had achieved some of his most striking successes by boldly defying the rules. With a little of the legendary “Custer’s luck,” he might well have done the same at the Little Bighorn. But luck deserted him, and the imponderables in the complicated sequence of cause and effect that reached its bloody denouement on Custer Hill insure that men will ever find it a source of fascinating study and debate.51

  History has indicted if not fully convicted Custer of responsibility for one of the most calamitous defeats in American military annals. General Crook, perhaps because of his superlative record before and after, has escaped serious criticism. In fact, however, he bears major blame for the fiasco on Powder River in March and shares the blame for the disaster to Custer. No militarily sound explanation has been given for his division of his command before the battle of March 17. The additional force would surely have enabled him to hold the gains that Reynolds lost and, with the supply train present, to have rema
ined on the scene. Likewise, his withdrawal to his train after the battle of June 17 left the Indians free to meet Custer without distraction. Had he summoned his train and moved down the Rosebud, he would either have developed further action or have fallen in with Custer. In either case, the course of the campaign would have been very different. Privately, General Sherman believed Crook guilty of mismanagement on both occasions.52

  Mistakes the generals made, in abundance, and in probing them history has almost overlooked the assets the opposition brought to the contest. Never before or after were the northern Plains tribes better prepared for war. They were numerous, united, confident, superbly led, emotionally charged to defend their homeland and freedom, and able, through design or good fortune, to catch their adversary in unfavorable tactical situations. Even flawless generalship might not have prevailed over Sitting Bull’s mighty coalition that summer. In large part the generals lost the war because the Indians won it.

  NOTES

  1. Wooden Leg in Thomas B. Marquis, A Warrior Who Fought Custer (Minneapolis, Minn., 1931), p. 383. See also pp. 180–81. This evaluation takes on added importance in that Wooden Leg was a Cheyenne. Grouard is quoted in Vestal, Sitting Bull, Champion of the Sioux, pp. 91, 113. Although the standard biography, this book must be used with great caution.

  2. Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue, pp. 335–36.

  3. Harney to Sherman, Nov. 23, 1868, Senate Ex. Docs., 40th Cong., 3d sess., No. 11, pp. 2–6.

  4. In addition to annual reports of superintendent and agents in CIA, Annual Report (1869–74), see Olson, Red Cloud and the Sioux Problem, chaps. 6–9; Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, chaps. 10–12; and Hyde, Spotted Tail’s, Folk, chaps. 6–7.

  5. The number of agency Indians fluctuated from year to year, and even census counts were often wildly inaccurate. These figures are taken from statistical tables in CIA, Annual Report (1875), pp. 106–8.

  6. Quoted in Mark H. Brown, The Plainsmen of the Yellowstone: A History of the Yellowstone Basin (New York, 1961), p. 229.

  7. From Fort Sully, D. T., Aug. 24, 1869, CIA, Annual Report (1869), p. 331.

  8. Hancock’s annual reports for 1870 and 1872, in SW, Annual Report (1870), p. 26; (1872), p. 42. See also Athearn, Forts of the Upper Missouri, chap. 15.

  9. SW, Annual Report (1874), pp. 32–34. Olson, pp. 166–67.

  10. CIA, Annual Report (1869), pp. 271–76; (1870), pp. 176–80; (1871), pp. 416–17; (1875), pp. 302–3. SW, Annual Report (1869), p. 73; (1870), pp. 31–33; (1871), p. 27; (1874), pp. 25, 39; (1875), pp. 34, 62. House Misc. Docs., 43d Cong., 1st sess., No. 151. Senate Ex. Docs., 43d Cong., 1st sess., No. 46.

  11. SW, Annual Report (1872), pp. 41–42. See also testimony of Lt. Col. Nelson H. Davis, House Reports, 43d Cong., 1st sess., No. 384, p. 172; and Capt. J. S. Poland, Standing Rock Agency, to AAG Dept. Dak., Dec. 30, 1875, Senate Ex. Docs., 44th Cong., 1st sess., No. 184, pp. 31–33.

  12. SW, Annual Report (1870), pp. 31–32; (1871), p. 27; (1874), pp. 32–34, 39; (1875), pp. 62–63. CIA, Annual Report (1875), pp. 302–3.

  13. CIA, Annual Report (1871), pp. 416–17; (1872), p. 262; (1873), pp. 166–67; (1874), p. 267. House Ex. Docs., 43d Cong., 3d sess., No. 96.

  14. Sherman to Sheridan, Sept. 26, 1872, Sheridan Papers, LC.

  15. For the expedition of 1871, see SW, Annual Report (1871), pp. 27–28; and Brown, pp. 196–97. For the 1872 expedition, see ibid., pp. 197–203; SW, Annual Report (1872), pp. 39–41; and Vestal, chap. 18. A good account by a participant in this expedition is E. J. McClernand, “With the Indian and the Buffalo in Montana,” Cavalry Journal, 35 (1926), 508–11. See also James H. Bradley’s account in his diary of the Sioux campaign of 1876; Edgar I. Stewart, ed., The March of the Montana Column: A Prelude to the Custer Disaster (Norman, Okla., 1961), pp. 55–63.

  16. SW, Annual Report (1873), pp. 40–41. Brown, pp. 207–10. George F. Howe, ed., “Expedition to the Yellowstone River in 1873: Letters of a Young Cavalry Officer [Lt. Charles W. Larned],” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 39 (1952), 519–34. Charles Braden, “The Yellowstone Expedition of 1873,” Journal of the United States Cavalry Association, 16 (1905), 218–41. Anon., “An Incident of the Yellowstone Expedition of 1873,” ibid., 15 (1904), 289–301. Stanley, Personal Memoirs, pp. 238–55. Chandler, Of Garryowen in Glory, pp. 38–41.

  17. The Black Hills story is treated in the following sources: Watson Parker, Gold in the Black Hills (Norman, Okla., 1966). Harold E. Briggs, “The Black Hills Gold Rush,” North Dakota Historical Quarterly, 5 (1930–31), 71–99. Arthur J. Larsen, ed., “The Black Hills Gold Rush,” ibid., 6 (1931–32), 302–18. Olson, chaps. 10–11. Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, chaps. 12–13. Hyde, Spotted Tail’s Folk, chap. 9.

  18. SW, Annual Report (1873), p. 41; (1874), pp. 24–25. For details of the expedition, see Donald Jackson, Custer’s Gold: The United States Cavalry Expedition of 1874 (New Haven, Conn., 1966); The Black Hills Engineer (Custer Expedition Number), 17 (November, 1929); and W. M. Wemett, “Custer’s Expedition to the Black Hills in 1874,” North Dakota Historical Quarterly, 6 (1931–32), 292–301.

  19. Quoted in Army and Navy Journal, 12 (April 10, 1875), 55. See also ibid. (March 20, 1875), 503.

  20. Jackson, pp. 111–16. SW, Annual Report (1875), pp. 64–65, 69–70. Herbert S. Schell, History of South Dakota (Lincoln, Neb., 1961), pp. 129–30.

  21. Jenny’s report, CIA, Annual Report (1875), pp. 181–83, SW, Annual Report (1875), p. 71.

  22. The report of the Allison commission is in CIA, Annual Report (1875), pp. 184–200. The quotation is on p. 88. Good accounts of the negotiations are in Olson, chaps. 10–11; Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, chap. 13; and Hyde, Spotted Tail’s Folk, chap. 9.

  23. Sherman to Sen. P. W. Hitchcock, Feb. 11, 1873, Sherman Papers, vol. 90, pp. 308–10, LC.

  24. CIA, Annual Report (1873), p. 6.

  25. Thus, although wishing for more evidence, I favor the Anderson side of the Brown-Anderson controversy over the origins of the Sioux War of 1876. Without diminishing the importance of the Sioux raids in Montana as a cause, I cannot accept the thesis that the Black Hills had little or nothing to do with the war. See Mark H. Brown, “Muddled Men Have Muddied the Yellowstone’s True Colors,” Montana, the Magazine of Western History, 11 (January, 1961), 28–37; and Harry H. Anderson, “A Challenge to Brown’s Sioux Indian Wars Thesis,” ibid., 12 (January, 1962), 40–49.

  26. Sherman to Sheridan, Nov. 20, 1875, Sheridan Papers, LC.

  27. Briggs, p. 84.

  28. Former Commissioner of Indian Affairs George W. Manypenny, a careful observer of the Washington scene and chairman of the second Black Hills commission, strongly hints at this explanation in Our Indian Wards (Cincinnati, Ohio, 1880), pp. 301–8. See also Parker, p. 71. The official correspondence is printed in House Ex. Docs., 44th Cong., 1st sess., No. 184.

  29. House Ex. Docs., 44th Cong., 1st sess., No. 184, pp. 14–15. Sheridan’s report in SW, Annual Report (1876), p. 400.

  30. Sheridan’s and Terry’s annual reports, SW, Annual Report (1876), pp. 441, 459.

  31. The definitive work on this expedition is J. W. Vaughn, The Reynolds Campaign on Powder River (Norman, Okla., 1966). See also Bourke, On the Border with Crook, chaps. 15–16. SW, Annual Report (1876), pp. 502–3.

  32. So stated Lt. John G. Bourke, Crook’s aide, in On the Border with Crook, p. 270.

  33. The evidence is analyzed in Vaughn, chap. 7.

  34. Crook’s report, May 7, 1876, SW, Annual Report (1876), pp. 502–3.

  35. Sheridan’s annual report, Nov. 25, 1876, in ibid., p. 441.

  36. From Fort D. A. Russell, April 11, 1876, Sherman Papers, vol. 43, LC. The charges were tried in January 1877 at Cheyenne, Wyo., by a star-studded court presided over by Gen. John Pope. Reynolds defended himself aggressively, accusing Crook of seeking a scapegoat to cover his own mismanagement. But the court pronounced Reynolds guilty of most of the charges and sentenced him to suspension from rank and pay for one year. The President, citing Reyno
ld’s long and distinguished service, remitted the sentence. His reputation now ruined, he accepted disability retirement in June 1877. Vaughn’s studies led him to conclude that, although Reynolds was guilty of some errors of judgment in the heat of combat, the court’s findings were “cruelly unjust.”

  37. House Ex. Docs., 44th Cong., 1st sess., No. 184, p. 13.

  38. Correspondence from all three is quoted in Robert P. Hughes, “The Campaign against the Sioux in 1876,” Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States, 18 (1896), 5–6. (Reprinted in Graham, The Story of the Little Big Horn.)

  39. The strategy is most clearly detailed in Sheridan to Sherman, May 29, 1876, ibid., pp. 53–54.

  40. Principal accounts of Gibbon’s movements are Gibbon’s report, Oct. 17, 1876, SW, Annual Report (1876), pp. 471–76; Stewart, ed., March of the Montana Column; Gibbon, “Last Summer’s Expedition against the Sioux,” and “Hunting Sitting Bull,” American Catholic Quarterly Review, 2 (1877), 271–304, 665–94, reprinted as Gibbon on the Sioux Campaign of 1876 (Bellevue, Neb., 1969); Edward J. McClernand, “With the Indian and the Buffalo in Montana,” Cavalry Journal, 36 (1927), 7–54; and John S. Gray, ed., “Captain Clifford’s Story of the Sioux War of 1876,” Westerners Brand Book (Chicago), 26 (1969–70), 73–79, 81–83, 86–88.

  41. Monaghan, Custer, pp. 365–69. Whittaker, Life of Custer, pp. 553–60. Vol. 37 of the Sherman Papers, LC, contains illuminating data.

  42. The literature of the march to the Little Bighorn and the historic battle that occurred there is the most voluminous of the Indian wars. I have written of these events in “The Battle of the Little Bighorn,” Potomac Westerners, Great Western Indian Fights (New York, 1960), chap. 20; Custer and the Great Controversy: Origin and Development of a Legend (Los Angeles, 1962); and in Custer Battlefield National Monument, National Park Service Historical Handbook Series (Washington, D.C., 1969). My assessment of Custer is in “Custer: Hero or Butcher?” American History Illustrated, 5 (February 1971), 4–9, 43–48. A few standard works are W. A. Graham, The Story of the Little Big Horn (Harrisburg, Pa., 1945); Graham, The Custer Myth: A Source Book of Custeriana (Harrisburg, Pa., 1953); Graham, ed., The Reno Court of Inquiry: Abstract of the Official Record of Proceedings (Harrisburg, Pa., 1954); Edgar I. Stewart, Custer’s Luck (Norman, Okla., 1955); Joseph Mills Hanson, The Conquest of the Missouri (New York, 1946); Edward S. Godfrey, “Custer’s Last Battle,” Century Magazine, 43 (1892), 358–87. Official reports are in SW, Annual Report (1876), pp. 443–44, 459–64, 476–80.