The Last Days of George Armstrong Custer

by Thom Hatch

  Reno was not without his vocal detractors. It has been said that he was not liked and was even despised by many of his contemporaries. Hugh Scott, then a young second lieutenant who was later to become a general, “disliked him intensely.” Lieutenant Francis M. Gibson was “wary of Reno and considered him to be arrogant and vicious.” Another future general, then First Lieutenant Edward S. Godfrey, wrote in his journal, “Reno’s self important rudeness makes him unbearable.” Even Captain Benteen, who shared a common dislike of Custer, once slapped Reno in public, called him an “S.O.B.,” and challenged him to a fight. Reno prudently declined the invitation.

  Reno, who had never been in even a skirmish with Indians, along with six troops of the Seventh Cavalry, moved out on the afternoon of June 10 with a definite route provided by Terry to scout the Powder and Tongue valleys.

  Terry meanwhile had decided to move his supply depot from Stanley’s old stockade on Glendive Creek to the mouth of the Powder River. On June 11, Custer arrived at that location with his left wing. He was disappointed that wife Libbie was not aboard the Far West and perhaps more disappointed that the steamer had brought a sutler who spent the afternoon serving whisky to the regiment over a makeshift bar of planks and barrels.

  By June 13, Reno was camped on the upper Mizpah Creek, a waterway that was part of his assigned scout. Rather than inspect that creek, however, Reno determined that he could see far enough in that direction from a promontory on the western divide and decided that a scout was unnecessary.

  On June 16, Reno came upon an abandoned Indian village estimated at four hundred lodges that would include perhaps one thousand warriors. In direct disobedience of Terry’s orders, Reno chose to follow the trail of this village down the Rosebud. Unknown to him, on June 17 he came within forty miles of General George Crook, who was engaged in the battle of the Rosebud.

  On June 19, Reno camped at the mouth of the Rosebud, upriver from Colonel John Gibbon, and notified Terry by courier of his present position. Reno informed Terry that he had not only scouted the Powder and Tongue river valleys but also entered the Rosebud Valley while following the fresh Indian trail. He had traversed more than 240 miles of an itinerary that had been set by Terry at about 175 miles.

  Terry as well as Custer was furious with Reno for differing reasons. Terry had explicitly warned Reno not to go to the Rosebud for fear that the action would alert the Indians to the presence of soldiers and jeopardize the movement of the three columns. The commanding general would have certainly preferred charges against Reno had he not been the only major in Custer’s command. Custer, however, believed that Reno should have pursued and attacked the hostiles he had trailed.

  But Reno, to his dubious credit, had provided vital information by identifying that the Indians were not on the lower section of Rosebud Creek. General Terry could now assume that the hostiles were moving toward the Valley of the Little Bighorn and formulate his plans accordingly.

  Sitting Bull had indeed moved his village to that location, and their numbers had grown. Bolstered by those brethren who had left the reservations for a summer of freedom, the village had swelled to about one thousand lodges—some seven thousand people, including perhaps two thousand or more warriors.

  On June 21 aboard the Far West, which was moored on the Yellowstone at the mouth of the Rosebud, General Alfred Terry, who would not accompany the march, issued orders for Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and his Seventh Cavalry. These orders would later create a controversy when some—including Terry and of course Frederick Benteen—would contend that Custer had disobeyed them.

  Perhaps Custer had a premonition that Terry’s orders would have a historic value. Captain Grant Marsh placed the final words Armstrong wrote to his beloved wife, Libbie, in the mail sack at the junction of the Yellowstone and Rosebud rivers, Montana Territory, on the morning of June 22. The letter read in part:

  My Darling—I have but a few moments to write as we start at twelve, and I have my hands full of preparations for the scout. Do not be anxious about me. You would be surprised how closely I obey your instructions about keeping with the column. I hope to have a good report to send you by the next mail. A success will start us all toward Lincoln.

  I send you an extract from Gen’l Terry’s official order, knowing how keenly you appreciate words of commendation and confidence in your dear Bo: “It is impossible to give you any definite instructions in regard to this movement, and, were it not impossible to do so, the Department Commander places too much confidence in your zeal, energy and ability to impose on you precise orders which might hamper your action when nearly in contact with the enemy.”

  Your devoted boy Autie

  Incidentally, Major Marcus Reno, Captain Myles Keogh, Captain Tom Custer, First Lieutenant James Calhoun, and Marsh stayed up all night that night before the regiment marched playing cards on board the docked Far West. Perhaps this was their way of relieving tension before life became deadly serious the following morning.

  As the officers and men of the Seventh Cavalry prepared for this campaign, they were confident in their ability to meet the challenge of their enemy. They were well armed and trained and anxious to relieve garrison boredom with action.

  In the early 1870s, the army’s Ordnance Department staged field trials of prospective rifles and carbines for use by the troops. The army was seeking a weapon that could take a beating yet remain reliable and one that used a single-shot system rather than a repeating system because of its lower manufacturing cost. The rifles were tested for every factor from defective cartridges to the effects of rust and dust. In the end, about ninety entries by such makers as Elliot, Freeman, Mauser, Peabody, and Spencer were winnowed down to four finalists: the Remington Rolling Block; the vertically sliding breechblock Sharps; the trapdoor Springfield; and the Ward-Burton bolt-action. The final selection was made in 1872 by a board of officers, which was presided over by General Alfred Terry and included Major Marcus Reno as a member.

  On May 5, 1873, the winner of the rifle competition was announced in the board’s final report to the secretary of war. The Model 1873 Springfield .45/55-caliber, single-shot, breech-loading carbine had emerged on top. The Springfield weighed about 6.9 pounds and was 41.3 inches long. It fired a .45-caliber copper-cased cartridge with fifty-five grains of black powder, with an effective range of about 250 to 300 yards, although it could shoot as far as 1,000 yards. A properly trained rifleman could fire his weapon up to a maximum of seventeen times per minute with accuracy. The Seventh Cavalry had been issued the Springfield just prior to the Black Hills Expedition of 1874 but had not encountered circumstances that had put the rifle to a real test as yet.

  Each trooper would be carrying one hundred cartridges for his Springfield carbine—fifty in his cartridge belt and fifty in his saddlebags. This would afford Custer’s detachment more than twenty thousand available rounds of ammunition. The cavalrymen also would carry a Model “P” 1872 Colt Single Action revolver, which had been chosen over the Smith & Wesson Schofield due to its simpler operation, stronger parts, and dependability. The army had placed an initial order of thirteen thousand in 1873–74 and then bought about one thousand a year thereafter until 1891. Called a thumb-buster by the troops, this .45-caliber revolver, with a seven-and-a-half-inch barrel, fired six metallic cartridges with twenty-eight grains of black powder and had an effective range of about sixty yards. Each man would have twenty-four rounds for his Colt. This popular revolver, which came to be known as the “Peacemaker” to frontier lawmen, was manufactured by the Colt company into the 1980s.

  Some of the officers and men, however, would carry personal weapons. George Armstrong Custer would go into battle with his .50-caliber Remington sporting rifle with an octagonal barrel and two self-cocking white-handled British Webley Bulldog double-action revolvers. Captain Thomas A. French was widely known for his marksmanship with his .50-caliber Springfield rifle known as “Long Tom.” Sergeant John Ryan took along a specially made .45-caliber S
harps rifle with a telescopic sight that weighed fifteen pounds.

  Contrary to depictions by some artists, the Seventh Cavalry—with perhaps the exception of European first lieutenants Charles DeRudio and Edward Mathey—would not carry their sabers into the battle. These heavy, cumbersome, and noisy weapons, which were for the most part merely ornaments for inspection and parade, would be left behind at the Powder River base camp.

  At noon on June 22, George Armstrong Custer, wearing a wide-brimmed hat, light-colored buckskin suit, and his distinctive Civil War red tie, shook hands one final time with General Alfred Terry. The regimental band was positioned on a knoll overlooking the Powder River and performed the marching song “Garry Owen” to a chorus of hearty cheers from the troops. It would be the final tune heard by Custer and his cavalry before marching into the Valley of the Little Bighorn.

  Custer then led his column of troops on the march toward their objective. The command would cover over seventy miles in the next three days—locating and following the Indian trail on the second day out.

  Accompanying Custer was a member of the press—newspaperman Marcus H. “Mark” Kellogg, who was being paid to send back dispatches to an interested reading public. The forty-three-year-old Kellogg had been a reporter for newspapers throughout the Midwest during his career. His wife had died in 1867 and his daughters were being raised by an aunt, so Kellogg was free to pursue his career. He had worked at various papers, including one in Brainard, Minnesota, in 1872 until May 1873, when he assumed a position as an editorial assistant for The Bismarck Tribune. Kellogg apparently worked only part-time for the newspaper—in the summer of 1974 he ran a hay camp north of Bismarck while studying law. He then went east and returned to Bismarck in early 1876 aboard the same train as the Custers. The train became snowbound, and Kellogg was said to have fashioned a telegraph key that summoned Tom Custer to come to the rescue with a sleigh.

  Kellogg had not been scheduled to accompany Custer’s Seventh Cavalry on this campaign but at the last moment had replaced his Tribune employer, Clement A. Lounsberry, whose wife suddenly became ill. During the march, Kellogg had thus far submitted three dispatches, dated May 31, June 12, and the final one from the mouth of the Rosebud on June 21.

  On the morning of June 24, Custer had passed the limits of Reno’s scout and happened upon a large abandoned village where the Indians had recently held a Sun Dance. The column followed this fresh trail from the village and camped at dusk on Mud Creek, after a march of about twenty-eight miles.

  Scouts under Second Lieutenant Charles Varnum who had been dispatched earlier to gather information returned to report that the Indians were likely on the lower Little Bighorn River.

  Varnum had just celebrated his twenty-seventh birthday three days earlier. The New York native was a West Point graduate who had reported for duty with the Seventh Cavalry in time to participate in the Yellowstone Expedition. Now he had been chosen to command the Crow and Arikara scouts for this campaign and led the advance up the Rosebud following the Indian trail toward the Valley of the Little Bighorn.

  Custer marched his command at 11:00 P.M. and paused three hours later in the wee hours of June 25 for a brief rest before resuming the march. The column eventually went into bivouac just before dawn. The men heated coffee over sagebrush and buffalo chip fires to drink with their hardtack, those unsalted, cracker-like biscuits that were issued for field duty.

  The officers and men were exhausted but perhaps not in as bad a shape as the horses. Cavalry horses were accustomed to at least fourteen pounds of hay a day along with twelve or so pounds of grain. These horses had been eating only about three pounds of grain a day and whatever they could forage from the sparse valley grass.

  George Armstrong Custer, contrary to common belief, was not immune to weariness and took this opportunity to curl up under a bush and fall asleep.

  During the night, Lieutenant Varnum and his scouts had camped on a promontory—a traditional Plains Indian lookout—that afforded a fair view of the Valley of the Little Bighorn. Varnum had named this terrain feature Crow’s Nest after a similarly shaped mountaintop back at West Point that bore that name.

  In the clear light of dawn, Varnum’s scouts—Charley Reynolds, Minton “Mitch” Bouyer, and a number of Arikara and Crow—observed smoke some fifteen miles distant as well as what they believed to be a sizable pony herd grazing in the valley, although neither the river nor the bordering trees were visible. Varnum himself, even with spyglasses, could not observe anything but dismissed that failure as a symptom of lack of sleep. Nonetheless, Varnum trusted his scouts and sent a message to Custer at 8:00 A.M. that a huge village had been located on the Little Bighorn River.

  By the time Custer arrived at about 9:00 A.M., a haze had settled over the hilly terrain that made it impossible for him to recognize anything that far away. He did, however, accept the assessment of his scouts that a large Indian village along the river lay ahead.

  Custer returned to camp and was informed by his brother Tom that Captain Myles Keogh, whose battalion had been detailed with the pack train, reported that a troubling incident had occurred. Troopers with Company F had been sent back to retrieve a box of hardtack that had fallen off a mule during the night march. When the detail located the box it was surrounded by several Indians, who had been sampling the contents and raced away as the soldiers approached.

  That information convinced Custer that the presence and location of his command was certainly now known by the hostiles. This would necessitate immediate action or—as was the custom of the Indians when discovered by the army—the village would vanish into the hills. Time was now of the essence.

  Custer assembled his officers and informed them of the situation. Every one of them was concerned that the Indians would escape and understood that they must move quickly to prevent that. The column, Custer told them, would march at once in the direction of the presumed location of the village. Each company would detail one noncommissioned officer and six troopers to escort the pack train. Captain Frederick Benteen’s Company H would have the advance.

  Custer informed his orderly, John Burkman, that his horse Dandy was weary from his trip to Crow’s Nest. Burkman was asked to saddle Vic, a chestnut thoroughbred with three white fetlocks that Custer had obtained in Kentucky. Burkman was told to remain with the pack train and make sure that Custer’s hounds did not follow him.

  George Armstrong Custer was ready for a fight, and would formulate his battle plan as events warranted—just as he had done during the Civil War with great success. He had no reason to believe that the Sioux and Cheyenne would provide much of a contest, especially since he believed they were running away and he would likely be chasing down small bands throughout the territory.

  If everything went as planned, the Seventh Cavalry would be attaining further glory by sundown that day. But that wasn’t to be the case.

  Ten

  Into the Valley

  There has been a concerted effort over the years by historians to demonize Custer and place guilt and disgrace by association on the members of the Seventh Cavalry who rode under his command to wage battle in the Valley of the Little Bighorn. In fact, there are those Americans who shamefully regard these soldiers as the enemy in this engagement, believing that they were less than honorable for fighting against the hostile Sioux and Cheyenne.

  Any implied dishonor toward these brave men who rode under the colors of the United States of America has been misdirected and should be considered a grievous insult to anyone who has ever served in the military—as well as any true American.

  Custer was not a loose cannon or some sort of rogue commander who was free to pillage, plunder, and kill his way through the West. Neither he nor his men had the power to formulate national policy or to choose their enemies—that falls into the category of politics and the national interest. The soldiers were simply doing their duty and following orders under the United States Constitution, the document that they had sworn to uphold when the
y had volunteered for the army.

  If there was to be an argument about the right or wrong of this mission, then that argument should be with the politics, policies, and principles of the president, his cabinet, the Congress, and the War Department, which, in this case, overwhelmingly supported this military mission.

  These soldiers marched off under orders from their government with the blessing and admiration of the country’s population, which, along with their elected leaders had determined that the Sioux and Cheyenne, were a threat that must be dealt with harshly. Any blame for fighting a particular enemy should never be directed at those citizens who stepped forward to proudly wear the uniform representing their country and sacrificed so much to protect the national interests—including at times the ultimate sacrifice, their lives.

  Make no mistake about it, at that point in time in America Custer and the soldiers of the Seventh Cavalry were every bit as much heroes for doing their duty in Montana as were those forthcoming soldiers who fought in the bloody trenches at Belleau Wood in World War I, or the courageous men who stormed the deadly beaches at Normandy or Iwo Jima, or those fighting servicemen who braved the freezing season at the frozen Chosin Reservoir in Korea, or the men who risked their lives battling brutal communist insurgents in South Vietnam, or those Marines who cleared the dangerous streets of Fallujah in Iraq, or servicemen who came under siege at an outpost in Nuristan Province, Afghanistan.

  The men of the Seventh Cavalry—as they rode into that dangerous valley—deserve the respect of the public now just as they did back then for their service. They were indeed the military heroes of their time.