The Last Days of George Armstrong Custer

by Thom Hatch

  The battle, although each side had sustained only light casualties, convinced many of the hostiles that they could never prevail against the army. Sitting Bull decided to take his band to Canada, while other small bands scattered across the Plains and mountains and still others chose to straggle onto the reservations.

  After the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Crazy Horse and his followers, who probably numbered around six hundred, spent about a month celebrating their victory with feasts and dances. He then returned to the Black Hills to harass prospectors. While other Sioux bands split up and had apparently lost their lust for war, Crazy Horse waged what amounted at times to a one-man fight to regain the land promised to his people.

  But Crazy Horse’s defiance began to waver as time passed. His people were starving, and his wife had contracted tuberculosis. General George Crook had promised Crazy Horse a reservation of his own if he would submit. On May 5, 1877, the legendary warrior led eight to nine hundred of his brethren in a parade two miles long, guided by Red Cloud, into Fort (Camp) Robinson.

  There were, however, a few bands that remained defiant and vowed to continue their resistance. One such group of Sioux under Lame Deer had chosen not to surrender with Crazy Horse. Colonel Miles, acting on information from Indians who had surrendered, marched up the Tongue to search for these hostiles.

  A village of fifty-one lodges was located on Muddy Creek, a tributary of the Rosebud. At dawn on May 7, Miles, with four cavalry troops, charged into Lame Deer’s village. The surprised Indians fled to the hillsides, while the army easily secured the village and commandeered the 450-head pony herd.

  One of Miles’ scouts convinced Chief Lame Deer and Iron Shirt, the head warrior, to surrender. Another scout, however, rode up and shot at the two men, who, in turn, retrieved their weapons and fled toward the high ground while firing—one bullet just missing Miles and striking a trooper to the rear. Both Indians were shot down by a barrage of fire from the troops.

  Fourteen Indians had been killed in the assault, while the army lost four enlisted killed and one officer and six enlisted wounded. More than two hundred of Lame Deer’s band had escaped, and Miles gave chase, without success, before returning to destroy the village. These Indians were followed throughout the summer by Miles—including eleven troops of the Seventh Cavalry under Colonel Samuel Sturgis—which resulted in most of them eventually surrendering.

  Discontent and tension gripped the Lakota Sioux reservations throughout the summer of 1877. The presence of Crazy Horse at Red Cloud Agency had a great effect on young braves who worshiped him, the older chiefs who resented him, and the army, which distrusted him. The reservation that Crook had promised apparently had been simply a ruse to encourage Crazy Horse to surrender. He was asked by Crook to visit Washington but refused. Crook, through interpreter Frank Grouard, asked Crazy Horse if he would help the army fight against the Nez Percé. Grouard reportedly misinterpreted the response on purpose to indicate that Crazy Horse wanted to fight whites, which led Crook to believe that the Sioux warrior intended to lead his people in a rebellion.

  Crazy Horse requested that he be allowed to take the ill Black Shawl to Spotted Tail Agency, but that was viewed as a threat and he was denied permission. He went anyway, chased by soldiers who failed to catch him. He did, however, agree to return and did so—to his surprise as a prisoner—on September 5.

  Crazy Horse was being led to the stockade at Fort Robinson when he panicked at the thought of incarceration and tried to escape. Little Big Man and several other Indian guards grabbed him, and Private William Gentiles stepped forward to run his bayonet through Crazy Horse’s body.

  Crazy Horse said as he lay on his deathbed:

  I was not hostile to the white man.… We had buffalo for food, and their hides for clothing and our tipis. We preferred hunting to a life of idleness on the reservations, where we were driven against our will. At times, we did not get enough to eat, and we were not allowed to leave the reservation to hunt. We preferred our own way of living. We were no expense to the government then. All we wanted was peace, to be left alone.… They tried to confine me, I tried to escape, and a soldier ran his bayonet through me. I have spoken.

  The great warrior Crazy Horse died later that day. His father, also named Crazy Horse, buried the body of his son at some secret location in his homeland—legend has it near Wounded Knee Creek—which has yet to have been discovered by the white man.

  The Northern Cheyenne—including chiefs Dull Knife and Little Wolf—unlike the Sioux, had been denied the right to live on a reservation located in their own part of the country and had been escorted in August to their new home at Fort Reno in Indian Territory.

  Meanwhile, the Nez Percé, a tribe from Wallowa Valley, Washington, led by the legendary strategic genius Chief Joseph, had gone to war against the United States government. The tribe had been pressured to move onto a reservation in Idaho, which would have forced them to reduce the size of their prized herds of Appaloosa horses. Chief Joseph negotiated a peaceful settlement of the dispute and the tribe was prepared to move when a clash between settlers and young warriors over stock stolen by the settlers left eighteen whites dead. Joseph was compelled to head into the mountains with 650 of his people and was chased by the army.

  The outnumbered Nez Percé were caught by surprise on three separate occasions—at White Bird Canyon and Clearwater, Idaho, and by Colonel John Gibbon at Big Hole Valley, Montana—but each time fought off the attack of the superior force and escaped. As skirmishes escalated, casualties on both sides mounted and Chief Joseph decided to make a mad dash to Canada in an attempt to join Sitting Bull’s band of Sioux.

  On September 13, Colonel Samuel D. Sturgis and 350 troopers of the Seventh Cavalry intercepted the Nez Percé at Canyon Creek, Montana, near present-day Billings. In a running battle, Sturgis, who was criticized for his timidity, failed to prevent the tribe from escaping.

  Colonel Miles marched with reinforcements and on September 30 attacked Chief Joseph’s camp on Snake Creek near the Bear Paw Mountains. In the ensuing bloody battle, the Seventh Cavalry bore the brunt of the casualties—Captain Owen Hale was killed, and Captain Myles Moylan and First Lieutenant Edward S. Godfrey were wounded.

  Miles subsequently laid siege to the Indian camp with artillery until finally, on October 5, Chief Joseph, who had been captured and exchanged, eloquently surrendered the remainder of his people. The tribe had covered about twelve hundred miles on their “Long March” through Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana—losing about 275 warriors and killing about 266 soldiers. The heroic struggle of the Nez Percé, who took no scalps, killed no prisoners, and harmed few noncombatants, gained the sympathy of the American public.

  By September 1878, the Cheyenne who had been sent to Indian Territory were beset by hunger, homesickness, and disease. Chiefs Dull Knife and Little Wolf fled the reservation with three hundred of their tribe in an effort to return to their Tongue River homeland. More than ten thousand soldiers and civilians followed the renegades and engaged in several minor skirmishes. After crossing the North Platte River, however, the two chiefs argued, which divided the tribe. Dull Knife and his band eventually surrendered to a cavalry patrol near Fort (Camp) Robinson on October 23, while Little Wolf resumed his journey north to take refuge at Red Cloud Agency after a fifteen-hundred-mile journey.

  Dull Knife’s people were held in a barracks at the fort and refused requests to return peacefully to Indian Territory. The post commander attempted to persuade them by cutting off food, water, and fuel. On January 9, 1879, the Cheyenne, who had secreted weapons, were driven by the unbearable conditions to shoot the guards and flee the post. They were chased down, and almost half of them—men, women, and children—were shot down or froze to death. The survivors, who included Chief Dull Knife and his family, took refuge at Red Cloud Agency and were later settled on Pine Ridge Reservation.

  Little Wolf and his band remained at large throughout the winter, finally surrendering on March 27 t
o a detachment of the Second Cavalry from Fort Keogh. In 1884, the Northern Cheyenne were awarded their own reservation at Tongue River—one year after Dull Knife had died.

  During the ensuing years, the Sioux who had fled to Canada straggled into reservations. The Canadian government refused to provide supplies, and life became hard for Sitting Bull’s band. He had married as many as nine wives and had fathered about the same number of children and was worried about their well-being.

  On July 19, 1881, under a pledge of amnesty, he led two hundred of his people to Fort Buford. Sitting Bull was held a virtual prisoner for nearly two years at Fort Randall in present-day Gregory County, South Dakota, before being permitted in May 1883 to settle at the Standing Rock Indian Agency. The surrender of Sitting Bull, however, had for all intents and purposes ended Sioux resistance and opened the Plains to the army, the settlers, and the railroad.

  In June 1885, Sitting Bull signed a four-month contract with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show for $50 a week and a bonus of $125, along with the rights to sell his photograph and autograph. His reception by Eastern audiences, who frequently hissed when this Indian villain appeared, was quite disrespectful, which was a source of displeasure to the Sioux medicine man. During the tour, he also met President Grover Cleveland and a number of the army officers who had futilely chased him around the Northern Plains.

  Relative peace was maintained on the Sioux reservations until 1890 when the Sioux became captivated by a new religion. In 1889, a Paiute Indian named Jack Wilson, who called himself Wovoka, claimed to have had a spiritual experience that prompted him to create a religion called the Ghost Dance movement, which was based on the premise that the white man would disappear and the buffalo would return. Most Western tribes accepted the peaceful doctrine of this Ghost Dance, but the Sioux converted the ceremony to conform to their hostility and began to defy authority. The army feared that there would be an outbreak of war and increased the number of troops at the two Sioux reservations, which included bringing in the Seventh Cavalry from Fort Riley.

  Sitting Bull did not participate in this ritual but clearly enjoyed the turmoil it provoked among his people. Indian agent James McLaughlin, who had always regarded Sitting Bull as a threat to good order, believed that the Sioux leader was indeed inciting members of his tribe to defy the government. McLaughlin and General Nelson Miles ordered that Sitting Bull be arrested.

  On December 15, Indian police went to serve the arrest warrant. A confrontation between more than forty Indian police and about 150 Ghost Dancers ensued outside Sitting Bull’s cabin. In the resultant melee, the Sioux medicine man was shot and killed by Indian policemen Lieutenant Bullhead and Sergeant Red Tomahawk. Sitting Bull’s seventeen-year-old son, Crow Foot, and six other Ghost Dancers were killed, along with six Indian policemen.

  The death of Sitting Bull ended forever the domination of the ancient regime among the Sioux of the Standing Rock Reservation. And that was likely the true motivation for the murder of Sitting Bull.

  The murderous act that took the life of Sitting Bull convinced Miniconjou chief Big Foot, who was also singled out for arrest, to flee the reservation with three hundred of his people and head for Pine Ridge. Miles dispatched the Seventh Cavalry, commanded by Colonel James W. Forsyth, to catch Big Foot and his band and escort them back. Forsyth overtook Big Foot twenty miles from Pine Ridge in the valley of Wounded Knee Creek, where the two factions camped for the night.

  The Sioux awoke on the morning of December 29 to find themselves surrounded by five hundred troops and four cannon. Colonel Forsyth requested that the Indians hand over their firearms. When they refused, Forsyth ordered that a search be made. One Indian, perhaps Yellow Bird, called for the others to resist. A soldier and a warrior engaged in a scuffle, and a weapon was discharged.

  The young men of the tribe immediately commenced firing into the nearest soldiers. That fire was returned, and in the close-range battle that followed, with the cavalry supported by artillery, the Indian camp was destroyed. Eighty-four Sioux men and boys—including Chief Big Foot—forty-four women, and eighteen children lay dead. In addition, fifty-one Indians were wounded, with seven later dying.

  The Seventh Cavalry lost one officer, Captain George D. Wallace, along with eighteen enlisted killed and thirty-three wounded.

  On New Year’s Day, 1891, the Indian bodies were gathered up and buried in a mass grave on the hill from where the artillery had been fired. The Wounded Knee massacre was viewed by the army as a terrible blunder committed by Colonel Forsyth, who was relieved of command and the subject of a court of inquiry.

  The event brought to an end the Ghost Dance ritual and with it any hope that the Plains Indians had for ever regaining the traditions, land, and culture that had been lost in decades of war against the United States.

  The end of the Plains Indians was only the beginning of the controversy and debate about their fate as well as the particulars surrounding the most famous battle of the war—the Little Bighorn.

  Sixteen

  Mysteries, Myths, and Legends

  Perhaps the most enduring mystery about the battle has been the whereabouts of Troop E. This was the company—the Gray Horse Troop commanded by First Lieutenant Algernon “Fresh” Smith—that had ventured down Medicine Tail Coulee with Custer to probe the village in the opening stages of the battle and likely had been forced back to the ridge.

  According to accounts, the bodies of about twenty-eight troopers from Company E were located on June 27, 1876, at the bottom of a narrow gash in the land now known as Deep Ravine. This drainage, also known as North Medicine Tail Coulee, was located near the end of the slope that ran from Custer Hill about two thousand feet west to the Little Bighorn River.

  When discovered, these bodies were said to have been too badly decomposed to be moved and therefore were not carted away for individual burial. The detail simply covered them with dirt where they lay.

  By 1877 when the burial detail arrived on the field and searched for those bodies, they were nowhere to be found. Not only that, but these bodies have remained missing to this day. Modern-day excavations with heavy equipment, not to mention volunteers with metal detectors, have not unearthed a single clue. Twenty-eight bodies have apparently vanished.

  One particular body from Company E that had not been found immediately after the battle when accounting for all of the officers was that of Second Lieutenant James Garland “Jack” Sturgis. This twenty-two-year-old West Point graduate was the son of Colonel Samuel D. Sturgis, who at that time commanded the Seventh Cavalry. Locating the body of their commanding officer’s son would have been paramount for the soldiers, but nonetheless it could not be found anywhere on the field.

  Sturgis had been the youngest and the final regular officer assigned to the regiment before it marched on the Little Bighorn Campaign. He had initially been assigned as third-in-command of Company M—where it was said that he was very popular with the troops—but was transferred to Company E as second-in-command just before the march.

  The head of James Sturgis, as well as a blood-soaked undergarment belonging to him, was discovered in the abandoned Indian village site two days after the battle. In the archives of the United States Signal Corps there is a photograph taken on the battlefield depicting a primitive monument made of stones with a board lettered “Lt. STURGIS, 7th CAV JUNE, ’76.” That photo, however, was staged in an effort to mislead Sturgis’ mother, who had not been informed that her son’s remains had not been found.

  If the bodies had indeed been observed in Deep Ravine, they could have fallen prey to nature by the following year. The shallow graves may have been eroded by rain and wind and blizzards. Predators might have robbed those shallow, hastily dug trenches and scavenger birds could have picked clean the bones, and then the skeletons could have been scattered to the four winds by animals and the elements.

  One theory proposed that the mystery could be solved by simply searching in a neighboring ravine, that observers in 1876 had note
d the wrong place. No evidence whatsoever exists for this theory. Taking into consideration military tactics, it would have been unlikely that Company E would have even been deployed anywhere within the vicinity of that location down Deep Ravine or nearby ravines, nor would the men have fallen back to that location during the fighting. And modern-day searchers would have surely observed remnants of twenty-eight bodies anywhere in the vicinity.

  The body of Company E commander “Fresh” Smith had been found with Custer and forty others on that hill far from the river. Smith would not have deserted his command at the river to save himself alone on high ground. It has been speculated that he was on Custer Hill seeking medical assistance for a wound. Smith was probably there for a reason—his troopers were deployed nearby. The missing bodies from Company E likely were not missing at all but were lying on the upper reaches of the slope leading to Deep Ravine not far from Custer Hill.

  As far as the contention that the 1876 detail had plotted these bodies down Deep Ravine, human error could be to blame. There were Indians who testified that very few soldiers were seen down Deep Ravine during the battle. It was a stressful time for the burial detail, immediately after a horrendously bloody fight, confronted with decomposing, mutilated bodies of fellow soldiers, and both officers and enlisted wanted nothing more than to finish this gruesome job and return to Fort Abraham Lincoln as quickly as possible. People in that condition can make mistakes. Mystery solved?

  Another body that was never found was that of Second Lieutenant Henry Moore Harrington, who was second-in-command of Tom Custer’s Company C. It has been speculated that Tom Custer was serving as an aide-de-camp to his brother and that this twenty-seven-year-old West Pointer was actually in command of that company during the battle. Company C fell on Battle Ridge, but Harrington’s body was not with them.