The Last Days of George Armstrong Custer

by Thom Hatch

  The soldiers on the burial detail—many of whom were quickly overcome with nausea and vomiting—did not possess proper digging implements for the task. Only a dozen or so spades, shovels, and picks were available that had been found in the rubble of the Indian village. Therefore, anything that could scoop away the dirt to hasten the job was utilized. The soil was dry and porous, described as resembling sugar—just like they had encountered on their hilltop defense position—and proper burial was simply a token gesture. The bodies were basically left lying where they fell and covered as best as possible with sagebrush and dirt or rolled into shallow trenches. Officers were identified by their names written on a slip of paper that was stuffed into a cartridge case and then hammered into a crude cedar stake placed near the gravesite.

  The bodies at the various locations were counted: 42 on Custer Hill, 208 or 210 on the Custer portion of the field, and a total of 263 when all the officers, enlisted, civilians, and scouts had been tallied. One group of 28 or 29 bodies from Company E was reportedly found in Deep Ravine but have disappeared.

  Newspaperman Mark Kellogg’s body apparently had been found in the ravine with those of Company E. Colonel John Gibbon stated that he happened upon a body at that location that was missing an ear and had been scalped but was not stripped: “The clothing was not that of a soldier, and, with the idea of identifying the remains, I caused one of the boots to be cut off and the stockings and drawers examined for a name.” No name was found, but the boots were later identified as belonging to Kellogg.

  Myles Keogh was killed along with his troops on the eastern slope of Battle Ridge within half a mile of Custer Hill, which was where his remains were found. The body of West Pointer First Lieutenant James E. Porter, second-in-command of Keogh’s Company I, either was too mutilated to be recognized or was not on the field, for it was never found. His bloody coat, containing two bullet holes, was discovered at the abandoned Indian village site.

  Another body that was not found that day was that of guide and interpreter Minton “Mitch” Bouyer. The son of a Frenchman and a full Santee woman, Bouyer had access to both white and Indian cultures and could speak English, Sioux, and Crow. This protégé of Jim Bridger had accompanied Lieutenant Charles Varnum to the observation point known as Crow’s Nest on the morning of June 25 and warned George Armstrong Custer that they would find more Indians than they could handle in the distant camp. Custer reputedly told Bouyer that he could stay behind if he was afraid. Bouyer replied that he would go wherever Custer went and thus became the only army scout killed with Custer’s detachment.

  The steamship Far West had been moored about a half mile above the mouth of the Little Bighorn River on June 27 when the first word arrived about the fate of Custer’s command. Captain Grant Marsh hurriedly converted the area between the stern and the boilers into a hospital, covering the planks with fresh grass, then spreading tarpaulins on top to create a soft mattress for the wounded.

  On June 30, about thirty (or as many as fifty-two, as Terry had stated in a note to Marsh) wounded cavalrymen were transported from the battlefield on crude litters to the Far West. Marsh was cleared to leave shortly after 5:00 P.M. on July 3.

  The Far West, her colors at half-mast and decks draped in black mourning cloth, made the 710-mile trip to Bismarck, with only two brief stops, in a record-setting time of fifty-four hours, arriving at 11:00 P.M. on July 5. This heroic feat made Marsh the most hailed and famous steamboat captain in the history of navigation on the Yellowstone.

  On Sunday, June 25, 1876, while the Battle of the Little Bighorn raged, thirty-four-year-old Libbie Custer and other wives had gathered as usual at Fort Abraham Lincoln to sing hymns. The women had heard about General Crook engaging in the earlier unsuccessful fight on the Rosebud and naturally were worried about the fate of their loved ones. They had heard unconfirmed reports of an Indian battle affecting their husbands and had been offering daily moral support and companionship to one another as they waited for these rumors to be confirmed. No doubt a shroud of dread had descended over Fort Lincoln.

  Finally, in the early morning hours of July 6—eleven days after the battle—Libbie was awakened by a knock on the back door. She slipped into her dressing gown, and entered the hallway to be greeted by Maria Adams, whose sister Mary had accompanied the expedition as Custer’s personal cook. Libbie opened the door to three men, Captain William S. McCaskey, Lieutenant C. L. Gurley, and Dr. J. V. D. Middleton, the post surgeon.

  McCaskey asked that Libbie rouse Margaret “Maggie” Custer Calhoun, the wife of Jimmy, from her bed and the two of them come to the parlor with him. Once there, the captain read a formal message announcing the tragedy at the Little Bighorn. There was no easy way to break the news—George Armstrong Custer, James Calhoun, and scores of other cavalrymen and civilians had died on June 25.

  Libbie asked for her shawl and bravely joined the party of men to visit the two dozen or so women at the fort who would be read that same tragic statement that would change their lives forever. Although she was emotionally crushed, Libbie Custer, like her husband always had, would do her duty as the post “first lady” and help comfort the other new widows. Maggie Calhoun gradually digested the words of the statement and chased after Captain McCaskey and the others. She had lost three brothers, a nephew, and her husband. “Is there no message for me?” she cried.

  No, there was no message. The five men in her life had all died fighting the Sioux and Cheyenne at the Little Bighorn River.

  On June 25, 1877—one year to the day after the battle—Captain Henry J. Nowlan and the newly recruited Company I of the Seventh Cavalry arrived at the battlefield for the purpose of collecting the remains of the officers who had fallen. Nowlan was accompanied by Lieutenant (later major general) Hugh L. Scott, Colonel Michael V. Sheridan, brother of General Phil Sheridan, and all the Crow scouts who had gone with Custer the year before. Fortunately, there would be no need for guesswork to identify the dead. Nowlan had been provided a chart that designated where each officer was buried.

  The bodies of the officers from both the Custer and Reno battlefields were gathered up and transferred into pine boxes for transport to cemeteries designated by the next of kin. Apparently at that time many of the enlisted men were reburied either individually where they were found or together in mass graves on the field. One group of the dead—twenty-eight or twenty-nine bodies from Company E—was not located.

  George Armstrong Custer had told wife Libbie that when the time came for his passing he wanted to be buried at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and she was determined to honor his wishes. Libbie had fretted about the identification of her husband’s remains when they were exhumed from the battlefield and shipped to West Point for burial. She was assured, however, by Major Joseph G. Tilford, who had been on a leave of absence during the Little Bighorn Campaign, that the remains being sent east were indeed those of her husband.

  Tilford wrote to Libbie on July 28, 1877:

  On yesterday I shipped by U.S. Express via Chicago, the remains of your heroic husband Genl. Custer to West Point, N.Y., care of the Commanding Officer at that post. Those were my instructions from Genl. Sheridan. I presume an officer will accompany the remains from Chicago on. It may be some consolation for you to know that I personally superintended the transfer of the remains from the box in which they came from the battlefield to the casket which conveys them to West Point. I enclose you a lock of hair taken from the remains which are so precious to you. I also kept a few hairs for myself as having been worn by a man who was my beau ideal of a soldier and honorable gentleman.

  Due to the fact that West Point was relatively vacant during the summer, Libbie was advised to wait until fall to hold the funeral. Custer’s remains were stored in a Poughkeepsie, New York, vault owned by Philip Hamilton, whose son Louis had fallen at the 1868 Battle of the Washita.

  On October, 10, 1877, crowds lined the Hudson River as the bunting-draped Mary Powell, her flags flying at half-mast, brought
the remains of George Armstrong Custer to the south dock of the Academy. The casket, which was adorned with an American flag that had belonged to Captain Hamilton, was escorted by a cavalry detachment to the chapel.

  Shortly before 2:00 P.M., Major General John M. Schofield, commandant of the military academy, escorted Libbie into the chapel. Other close family members in attendance were Emanuel Custer and Margaret “Maggie” Custer Calhoun. Classes had been suspended, and the cadets crowded into the chapel to witness this event. The West Point chaplain, Dr. John Forsyth, presented an Episcopal service, concluding with the Nineteenth Psalm, a Psalm of David to the chief Musician, which begins: “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.”

  After the service, the casket was carried to a caisson by cadets and moved toward the cemetery. A lone horse displaying a pair of cavalry boots with spurs in which the toes had been turned to the rear followed the caisson. The procession halted at the cemetery, the chaplain spoke, three volleys were fired, and George Armstrong Custer was laid to rest.

  Fifteen

  Custer’s Avengers

  The nation was understandably horrified and outraged by the Custer disaster at the hands of the Sioux and Cheyenne. The act served to unite the country with purpose as nothing ever had as they mourned their fallen heroes. Custer, a national hero, had been cut down in the prime of his life and the public wanted revenge.

  Congress immediately voted to authorize two new forts—Custer and Keogh—on the Yellowstone and recruited an additional twenty-five hundred fresh cavalry troops for duty. Many recruits, calling themselves “Custer’s Avengers,” enlisted specifically to serve in the Seventh Cavalry. The hostile Sioux and Cheyenne, keenly aware that there would be some sort of retaliation for the battle on the Little Bighorn River, broke up into smaller bands and scattered across the plains.

  The conflict that would become known as “The Great Sioux War of 1876–77” resumed in early July 1876 when eight hundred Cheyenne warriors fled Red Cloud Agency and headed for the Powder River country. The Fifth Cavalry, now under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Wesley Merritt, intercepted about thirty of the renegades on July 17 at War Bonnet, or Hat, Creek—twenty-five miles northwest of the agency.

  Scout William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody had accompanied the column and engaged in a “duel” with a Cheyenne subchief named Yellow Hair. Actually, Cody was said to have shot the Indian off his pony, ridden him down, then killed and scalped him. The celebrated scout held up the bloody scalp for all to see and announced that this was the “first scalp for Custer.” This “duel” became a featured attraction of Cody’s Wild West Show and also a play, The Red Right Hand, or Buffalo Bill’s First Scalp for Custer.

  On August 5, General George Crook, along with Wesley Merritt’s troops—nearly twenty-three hundred in total—marched from his base camp on Goose Creek down the Tongue River trailing the Indians. At the same time, General Alfred Terry, with Colonel John Gibbon and the Seventh Cavalry, took another seventeen-hundred-man detachment down the Yellowstone to the mouth of the Rosebud.

  The columns—to their mutual surprise—happened upon each other on August 10 in the Rosebud Valley. The reinforced column then embarked on an arduous march through rain and mud, with many men succumbing to sickness and fatigue. They arrived on August 17 at the mouth of the Yellowstone River without having come within one hundred miles of the hostiles. By this time, Sitting Bull and his band had escaped to the lower Missouri, and Crazy Horse was leading his people toward the Black Hills.

  On September 5, General Terry made the decision to disband his portion of the expedition. Gibbon returned to Fort Ellis, and the Seventh Cavalry rode for Fort Abraham Lincoln. Crook, however, decided on a forced march to the Black Hills in an effort to overtake those Indians who had earlier embarrassed him on the Rosebud.

  Crook was under the impression that he could quickly catch up with the hostiles and ordered that all wagons, extra clothing, tents, and other nonnecessities be abandoned. His column, however, was soon plagued by bad weather and supply problems on what would become known as the “starvation march.” Scores of exhausted animals died, and the men were reduced to eating mule and horse meat. Near the town of Deadwood, Crook dispatched Captain Anson Mills with a detail of 150 cavalrymen to buy rations.

  On September 9, Mills happened upon a Sioux camp of thirty-seven lodges near Slim Buttes, a landmark rock formation. The cavalrymen charged and routed the enemy—killing Chief American Horse—and occupied the camp while withstanding heavy fire from warriors who took up a nearby defensive position.

  At about noon, Crazy Horse and another two hundred warriors arrived and attacked. A fierce battle raged without a decision until Crook and reinforcements reached the field and the Indians broke contact. The army lost three killed and twelve wounded; Indian casualties are unknown. A search of the camp revealed various items taken from Custer’s command—clothing, horses and saddles, a guidon, and a gauntlet that had belonged to Captain Myles Keogh.

  Crook’s beleaguered column was finally rescued when wagons laden with supplies accompanied by a herd of cattle reached them on September 13. At that time, he made the decision to abandon his futile search for the hostiles.

  The Little Bighorn Campaign had come to an inauspicious end, and the United States Congress vowed to make the Lakota Sioux tribe pay dearly for its treachery. It was decreed in the annual Indian appropriation act of August 15 that the Sioux would be denied subsistence until the tribe relinquished all claims to hunting rights outside the reservation and signed over ownership of the Black Hills to the government.

  This ultimatum was delivered to the reservations in September and October, and in order to save their people from starvation, a number of chiefs at the various agencies signed the new treaty—instead of the two-thirds of adult males as specified by the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. Regardless, Paha Sapa, formerly Lakota land, was now officially owned by the United States. Colonel Nelson A. Miles worked throughout the fall building winter quarters at his Tongue River Cantonment, which he used as a supply base from which to chase various Sioux tribes, including that of Sitting Bull, across half of Montana. Skirmishes and negotiations between the two warring factions failed to produce agreeable results, although small bands did occasionally submit to the reservations.

  Nelson Miles, a thirty-seven-year-old Massachusetts native, had helped organize an infantry unit during the Civil War. He had been deemed too young to command at that time but proved himself in such battles as Seven Pines, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Petersburg—he was wounded in each of them. He had been awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions at Chancellorsville and promoted to brigadier general after Petersburg. After a stint as commander of a black regiment, he was placed in charge of Fort Monroe, Virginia, where former Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, was being held. Miles assumed command of the Fifth Infantry in 1869, commanded them in the so-called Red River War of 1874–75, and had now come north to pursue hostile Cheyenne and Sioux.

  Meanwhile, General Crook, with a column of more than twenty-two hundred men, had marched on November 14 from Fort Fetterman up the old Bozeman Trail to a location near his earlier battle on the Rosebud. At that point, scouts reported finding a large Cheyenne village to the west in the Bighorn Mountains. Crook dispatched Colonel Ranald Mackenzie with ten cavalry troops—about eleven hundred men—to engage the hostiles.

  At dawn on November 25, Mackenzie and his cavalrymen stormed into a canyon of the Red Fork of the Powder River and attacked a two-hundred-lodge village under chiefs Dull Knife and Little Wolf. The army horsemen quickly routed the surprised occupants.

  About four hundred warriors, however, regrouped within the boulders on a nearby bluff and poured a deadly fire back into the village while others closed with the soldiers and Indian scouts, fighting hand to hand. Chief Little Wolf was said to have been wounded seven times but escaped and survived.

  It was midafternoon before the cavalrymen ha
d fought off the assault and maintained control of the village. They then set to work destroying everything of value—lodges, clothing, and food—and capturing the herd of seven hundred ponies. Once again items from Custer’s command were found, including a guidon that had been made into a pillowcase. Also, a bloody photograph of Captain Thomas McDougall’s sister that for some unknown reason had been carried by Captain Myles Keogh was also found in that Cheyenne village.

  Mackenzie lost one officer and five enlisted killed and twenty-six wounded. The Indians suffered about forty dead—including the horrible loss of eleven babies who had frozen to death that night.

  The Cheyenne fled in search of Crazy Horse on the upper Tongue River. Crook determinedly followed but after enduring low temperatures and blizzards ended his campaign in late December without another major engagement.

  The military pressure, however, was taking its toll on the renegade Indians. Many of these people submitted to the reservation and others were prepared to surrender. To that end, communication was opened between the chiefs and Colonel Nelson Miles to discuss terms.

  On December 16, a delegation of Cheyenne approached the Tongue River Cantonment to talk but was attacked by some of Miles’ Crow scouts, who killed five of their enemy. The Cheyenne fled, and hostilities resumed.

  In early January 1877, Miles and about 350 men set out to search for hostiles up the Tongue River Valley. On January 7, the Indians attempted to lure them into an ambush, but anxious warriors sprang the trap too soon, which enabled Miles to escape and in the process capture a number of Cheyenne women and children. At daybreak the following morning, January 8, Crazy Horse and about five hundred Sioux and Cheyenne warriors attacked Miles’s command with intentions of freeing the captives.

  The two sides fought fiercely throughout the morning on a battlefield covered with deep snow. Miles was well prepared for the attack and skillfully deployed his artillery and marksmen, which kept the Indians at bay. The Battle of Wolf Mountain, or Battle Butte, ended about noon when a blizzard obscured visibility and the Indians withdrew. Miles had intended to continue his campaign, but the difficulty in obtaining supplies forced him to return to Tongue River Cantonment.