Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America

by Stiles, T. J.

  A scattering of shots startled him awake. Custer got to his feet and bellowed, “Bring in your horses, bring in your horses.” A half-dozen Lakotas had galloped up to the camp in an attempt to stampede the horses, and the pickets drove them back. He ordered Capt. Myles Moylan to have the men saddle up. Custer’s orderly, Pvt. John H. Tuttle, brought his horse and he mounted. Together with Tuttle, Lieutenant Calhoun, and twenty men under his brother Tom, Custer chased the six raiders up the river.47

  As they approached the woods to the west, Custer grew suspicious. “When almost within rifle range of this timber, I directed the squadron to halt,” he reported. He and Tuttle continued forward. “Tuttle,” he said, “keep your eyes on those woods.” He noticed that the six warriors matched his movements, stopping when he stopped, riding off when he advanced. He sent Tuttle back to tell Moylan to dismount in the trees where the horses had been grazing.

  Custer concluded it was a trap. Watching the Indians’ strange behavior, he remembered what he had read of the Fetterman Massacre, and guessed that he was chasing a decoy force. He was right. When he halted his pursuit, about 250 warriors rode out of the trees “in a perfect line,” he wrote, adorned for battle in paint and coup feathers, “with their characteristic howls and yells.” Custer reined around and galloped back toward Tom, shouting orders for him to dismount his men and form a skirmish line. The hostile force, composed of Lakotas and some Northern Cheyennes, chased at full speed. As soon as Custer cleared the line, Tom gave the order to fire. The volley broke the charge. Custer and his detachment retreated toward the main force.

  Custer had about ninety men. By the most conservative estimate, he faced three times as many enemies. Back in the woods, he deployed his men in a semicircle, with each flank anchored on the river. To improve his odds, he ordered the horse holders to hold eight instead of the usual four horses. He retained no reserve, but put every available carbine on the line. The Lakotas and Cheyennes swarmed around them and “displayed unusual boldness, frequently charging up to our line,” he reported.

  One hostile warrior showed his courage by riding along the firing line at top speed. Custer spoke through his interpreter to Bloody Knife. Pointing out a landmark, he suggested that when the rider reached that point, Bloody Knife should shoot the rider and Custer would shoot his pony. Bloody Knife liked the idea, Custer recalled, and aimed his Henry repeater as Custer aimed his Remington rolling-block breech-loading rifle. When the rider reached the designated point, both rifles barked. The man threw up his hands and fell as his horse tumbled. He had hardly hit the ground before other warriors galloped up and picked him up without stopping.

  Neither side suffered many casualties. Riding quickly, the attackers could not fire accurately, but neither could they be hit easily. At one point, Custer saw men crawling through the high grass toward them. Bloody Knife explained that they would try to fire the grass to burn them out, but not to worry. Sure enough smoke rose along the line, but the grass refused to burn. They spotted an enemy sneaking along the riverbank, and chased him off. Later they learned that a large party had been following him, and that they narrowly escaped a surprise attack from behind.

  Hours rolled by. The troopers grew short of ammunition. Custer ordered the horse holders to deliver up their cartridges, but the supply soon dwindled again. In the afternoon, Custer noticed that something startled the Lakotas and Cheyennes. From beyond the bluffs rose the dust cloud of the approaching column. “Now,” Custer said to Moylan, “let us mount and drive them off.” The troops saddled and advanced out of the woods. The trumpeter sounded a charge. The men cheered and spurred into a gallop. The Lakota withdrew.48

  Surprised, outnumbered, isolated in the enemy’s country, Custer handled his force with discretion and skill. He did not smash his enemy, to be sure, but he survived where Fetterman had not. He benefited from his studies and mustered all his old tactical instincts. He correctly read an ambush, kept his troops well in hand, maximized his firepower, and seized just the right moment to break the stalemate.

  But the battle was not without cost. Some Hunkpapas cut off a small group that had separated from the approaching column. They killed the veterinarian John Honsinger, the sutler, Augustus Baliran, and Pvt. John H. Ball. “I shall issue no further orders about straggling,” Stanley told the reporter Barrows, “for none will be necessary.”49

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  BETWEEN 400 AND 500 LODGES, Bloody Knife said, as he and Custer examined the remains of a recently occupied Indian campsite on August 7. The scout said the Lakotas and Cheyennes had moved the village off to a new location about the same time as the battle, three days or so earlier. On August 8 Custer found a second camp, about the same size, broken up at about the same time. “The discovery of these villages created a material change in our plans,” Barrows wrote to the Tribune. “There is only one way in which a hostile Indian tribe can be thoroughly crippled and intimidated, and that is by attacking and destroying one of their villages.…Custer was confident that, if he could overtake the Indians, he could make short work of their village and repeat the victory of the Washita.” Stanley authorized him to take all the cavalry still with the expedition, about 450 men, and pursue Sitting Bull and his people.

  “The scene that evening at the cavalry camp was active indeed. By 10 o’clock everything is ready. The trumpet sounds to horse,” Barrows wrote. “We march from the glowing woods into the silver moonlight in the beautiful valley below.” They followed the trail through the night and into the next day, covering forty miles. Late on August 9, the tracks veered down from the hills to the bank of the deep, fast-moving Yellowstone. They crossed here, Bloody Knife said; by now they’ve sent runners to nearby camps of their allies to recruit reinforcements. Custer spent the next day trying to get his men and heavy cavalry horses to the south side of the Yellowstone. (The river meandered to the northeast here; the “south” bank was actually almost due east of Custer’s position.) Sitting Bull’s entire village of men, women, and children had crossed with their lodges, horses, and other possessions, but Custer failed. He finally quit and let his men sleep.50

  As the pursuer, Custer never imagined that the prey would turn and strike back. But Bloody Knife guessed correctly: Sitting Bull had called in help, and prepared an attack on the cavalry stuck on the north (or west) bank of the Yellowstone. At four o’clock in the morning on August 11, he struck. A few shots echoed in the valley, then a ripping crackle of fire burst from the far bank of the river, sending bullets zipping through the cavalry camp. “The Indians! The Indians! They are firing on us from the other side!” a soldier shouted. The men rushed to the water’s edge with their rifles and shot back. Custer ordered them to cease fire until more hostiles came and provided “a better target,” Barrows wrote. They came. A large force descended the far hills and redoubled the fire. The two sides exchanged shots across the river, each finding cover in the trees that lined either bank.51

  Custer again ordered most of his men to cease fire. The range was 400 to 500 yards, and few of his troopers could shoot with any accuracy at that distance. Rather than waste ammunition, he allowed only “the best marksmen among the men” and some of the officers to return fire, Barrows reported. Custer also stationed troops on the bluffs behind his position “to guard against the Indians crossing and attacking us in the rear.” When the firing slacked off for a time, the Lakotas taunted the cavalry’s native scouts, daring them to cross the river. “Come, man, why don’t you? We’ll give you all you want,” the interpreter translated. “We are bound to have those horses of yours anyhow. We are going to cross and take them in spite of you.”

  One of the best sharpshooters was Custer’s orderly, Tuttle, who used a long-range Springfield sporting rifle. “I want to drop a few more of them fellows before I leave here,” he said. He pointed out a warrior across the river, aimed, and fired. The man fell from his saddle. He rapidly hit two more. He poked his head out from behind his tree to shoot again, and a Lakota bullet struck his forehead, kill
ing him.

  Custer fired with the others, taking cover between shots, when he saw the guard on the bluffs signal that the enemy were swimming their ponies over the river on either flank. Custer sent reinforcements to the heights and rode to see for himself.

  Lt. Charles Braden and perhaps twenty men held the upstream flank. His platoon occupied a deep ravine, a natural trench, and a knoll that offered passage through it. Some 100 enemy warriors approached, dressed and painted for battle, driving the scouts before them. Gall, Bloody Knife’s special enemy, led them on. Braden received a message from Custer that he must hold his position “at all hazards.” Then Gall led a charge. Braden waited until they were only thirty yards away before he ordered his men to fire. The close-range volley halted the attack. Gall and his allies charged again and again, but the troopers held. Braden stood to inspect the field; a bullet ripped into his thigh, shattering the bone and tumbling him into the ravine. Before his men could panic, three additional companies rode up to bolster their defense.

  Unknown to Custer, Sitting Bull observed the fighting from the hills across the river. He was “in reserve,” as his comrade White Bull later said; as a senior eminence, he was no longer expected to lead the fighting personally. Whether he commanded in the tactical sense is an open question. Certainly he orchestrated the concentration of warriors and the assault. Whether he gave directions on the field or not, it was his fight.

  Again Custer found himself in something of a stalemate. His ammunition dwindled and he did not expect Stanley’s column for another day or so. The main threat seemed to be from upstream, where Gall pressed Braden. The Lakotas and Cheyennes there grew in strength, and now numbered as many as 300. Many of them worked their way into another ravine and strafed the cavalry with accurate fire, killing Custer’s own horse. Custer left one company to guard the northern (downstream) flank, one company to protect against a direct crossing of the river, and concentrated his remaining six companies on his upstream, uphill flank, against the men with Gall.

  Unexpectedly, Stanley approached from downstream. (Due to the bend of the river, he was northeast of Custer.) He was almost an entire day ahead of schedule. As many as 100 Lakotas who were caught between his column and the 7th Cavalry turned and attacked him. He consolidated his men and continued his advance. Stanley unlimbered his artillery and began to shell the old warriors (including Sitting Bull) and crowd of noncombatants on the hills across the river. The cavalry cheered as they scattered.

  With his downtream flank secure, Custer formed his six companies into a line, with the band immediately behind them. He stood out as always, astride a white horse, wearing a red shirt, his long hair flying. “Strike up Garry Owen,” he told the band leader. “The familiar notes of that stirring Irish air acted like magic,” Barrows wrote; the brisk brass horns galvanized the men. Custer ordered a charge. “Away they went ‘pell-mell,’ ” Barrows continued. “Every man keeps in his place. On they go like a whirlwind.” Tom Custer led his company into the ravine occupied by the enemy and cleared it out. The men of the 7th Cavalry killed few, if any, though they shot Gall’s horse, among others. The Lakotas and their allies fled upriver before the massed cavalry attack. Custer pursued for eight miles before he relented, and the Indians crossed back to the far bank of the river.52

  “As we rode back to the infantry after the charge, with the band playing in front of us, our pennants flying and the éclat of so complete a victory to back us, our sensations were pleasurable enough to repay for all the hardships of the campaign,” Larned wrote to his mother. “The second battle at the mouth of the Big Horn was the coup de guerre and as thoroughly demoralized the Indians as it enhanced the prestige of the cavalry.”

  The battle reversed Larned’s bitter tone. He looked at Custer in a new light—not hero worship, of course, but with willingness to acknowledge his generosity and ability. He noted that Custer selected him to make a topographical survey, recognizing the skill that would later make Larned a professor of drawing at West Point. “This action on Custer’s part was so spontaneous and unsolicited as quite to astonish me. From that time to this, nothing I have asked for has been refused.” Custer allowed him to suspend his work and join the pursuit and second battle, and kept him close during the return to Fort Rice. “Accordingly I lived on Mount Olympus with the Gods, and have an orderly at my behest.” Despite the sardonic tone, he did not insist on distancing himself from Custer, as he had before. Larned did retain some of his suspicions. For example, he attributed “a great deal of consideration” on Custer’s part to Larned’s status as a correspondent for the Chicago Inter-Ocean, “and between you and I [that] is quite a power with Custer whose appetite for notoriety you know.” (Typically, Custer believed it was his own example that inspired “our young fellows to take to the press.”) But the battles clearly changed Larned’s attitude.53

  In the formative days of the 7th Cavalry, Libbie later wrote, her husband told her it would take a major fight to bind the regiment together, “that it was on the battlefield, when all faced death together, where the truest affection was formed among soldiers.” This romantic view was hardly a practical philosophy of personnel management—the 7th Cavalry waged very few pitched battles—yet it reflected an important truth. After all the petty squabbling, nitpicking orders, and dull misery of daily duty, the burst of Lakota gunfire across the Yellowstone reminded the troops that their regiment existed to fight. The sight of the fleeing enemy taught them that Custer knew his business, that he could lead them to victory. Afterward, Custer wrote to Libbie, he enjoyed warm relations with all the officers, barring only one—who could only have been Benteen. As for Larned, he was still sarcastic, still cynical, but nonetheless felt pride in these battles, and an almost begrudging respect for his commanding officer.54

  “We have had two fights with the Indians,” Stanley wrote to his wife on August 15. “This all fell to the share of the cavalry, which did very well, all men could do.” His regard for Custer rose just as Larned’s did. He no longer wrote of Custer as an arrogant upstart, but praised his conduct. Stanley said he was glad to have left the fighting to him. He added that Custer “has behaved very well since he agreed to do so.” He, too, was proud, and let Custer and his regiment ride home ahead of the wagon train.55

  The battles on the Yellowstone did not change the strategic balance on the Northern Plains. The Lakotas and their allies remained unmoved and almost unhurt. Custer inflicted no more than three dozen casualties on them on August 11, and he failed to find, let alone destroy, one of their villages. Yet these clashes enhanced Custer’s professional standing, providing a counterweight to his terrible reputation within the military. His deft performance against the Indian nation that the army feared most reminded his critics that, whatever his institutional failings, he could still fight. It gratified Sheridan, who had assigned him to this region precisely because he anticipated a Lakota war. When Custer reached Fort Abraham Lincoln, he wrote to Libbie on September 21, he found a telegram from Sheridan: “Welcome home.”56

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  BACK IN MONROE, LIBBIE OPENED a letter about Armstrong’s erection. “Good morning my Rosebud,” he wrote. “John has been making constant and earnest inquiries for his bunkey for a long time, and this morning he seems more persistent than ever, probably due to the fact that he knows he is homeward bound.”

  He devoted most of his letter to other matters than his anthropomorphized penis, but the passage marked a return to his early passion. After all their trouble, he still longed for her. He felt happy in general, pleased with himself and proud of his praise, particularly from Northern Pacific’s engineers. “My little durl never saw people more enthusiastic.…The expedition would’ve turned back long ago and abandoned the enterprise…had not your Boy stepped generally to the front,” he wrote. His ambition rose with his self-assurance. He told Libbie, “A letter from the Galaxy people is stirring me up for more articles and states that they intend to try and make arrangements for [Theodore] Davis of Harp
er’s to illustrate my book. Once on the march we halted for two days.…Your bo sat down and almost completed a Galaxy article.”57

  “It’s no use for me to try to see anything but a world of anxiety and the glory cannot cover the risks you have run,” Libbie wrote back. After the Civil War she had hoped that he would never go into battle again, yet here she was. In quiet Monroe, ten years after he had first courted her, she found herself still immersed in dread. When he left her for the field, he left her alone—without even children. As Shirley Leckie reflects, childlessness haunted Libbie; it may be why she doted on their dogs as much as Armstrong did.58

  And yet, her return to Monroe illustrated the alternative. She encountered a lawyer who had pursued her so many years ago. “What a humdrum life I escaped by not marrying him,” she wrote. She often reflected that summer on the “drudgery” of the typical woman’s existence in Monroe. “So monotonous so commonplace and besides I see every day that great ambition I have for you and how I bask daily in the sunshine of your glory.”59

  Ambition! That power that drives so much of what human beings do was wired with entanglements and traps for middle-class women in 1873. They felt its force as much as men did, of course, but knew the dangers if they pursued it freely. Some did. They ran businesses, wrote books, and embarked on careers, but only to the extent that they were willing to accept limits or flout the culture of respectability. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony had long campaigned for voting rights for women, and founded the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1869. But they suffered. That very summer of 1873, a court convicted Anthony of illegally voting in the 1872 presidential election. Victoria Woodhull and her sister Tennessee Claflin worked as spiritualist mediums and magnetic healers, paths considered appropriate for women, who were seen as passive vessels for larger forces. They became notorious when they went further, starting a brokerage house on Wall Street (though they had to make their trades through men) and a radical newspaper. In 1872, Woodhull offered herself as a candidate for president. Society treated them as outrageous curiosities at best, and more often as outcasts.