Copyright © 2008 by James Donovan
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Little, Brown and Company
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First eBook Edition: March 2008
ISBN: 978-0-316-02911-7
Contents
Dedication
Author’s Notes
PROLOGUE
PART I: APPROACH
ONE: The Divine Injunction
TWO: “The Boy General of the Golden Lock”
THREE: Patriots
FOUR: Outside the States
FIVE: Belknap’s Anaconda
SIX: “Submitt to Uncl Sam or Kill the 7 Hors”
PART II: ADVANCE
SEVEN: “The Hide and Seek for Sitting Bull”
EIGHT: The Fruits of Insubordination
NINE: The Seventh Rides Out
TEN: The Trail to the Greasy Grass
ELEVEN: On the Jump
PART III: ATTACK
TWELVE: The Charge
THIRTEEN: “The Savior of the Seventh”
FOURTEEN: Soldiers Falling
FIFTEEN: The Hill
SIXTEEN: “Death Was All Around Us”
SEVENTEEN: The Rescue
PART IV: AFTERMATH
EIGHTEEN: “All the World Has Gone”
NINETEEN: The Lost Captain
TWENTY: For the Honor of the Regiment
TWENTY-ONE: Ghosts Dancing
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
About the Author
TO MY MOTHER, ALYCE HELEN CARMEN, WHO NIGHTLY FROM AN OLD BLACK BINDER READ HER FAVORITE STORY POEMS, HAND-COPIED, TO HER FOUR CHILDREN:
“THE BOY STOOD ON THE BURNING DECK . . .”
AUTHOR’S NOTES
SOURCES AND ACCURACY
I have relied on primary accounts (rather than secondary accounts, interpretations, or hearsay) almost exclusively in the following narrative. But not all such accounts are created equal, and I have tried to be rigorous in their use. The just-surrendered Lakota leader fearful of retribution; the trooper or warrior whose faulty memory attempts to remember events of fifty or more years ago; the officer concerned with avoiding blame and thus subtly altering his version of those same events — the difficulties inherent in these kinds of accounts and others, such as faulty interpreters or overly dramatic reporters, have complicated the job of anyone trying to find the truth of what happened along that river on June 25, 1876. Combined with the all-too-human propensity for viewing and remembering the same event differently, the historian’s task in this case is made surprisingly difficult considering the multitude of eyewitness accounts. Fortunately, the broad brushstrokes of history here are not in question, though many of the details certainly are. In such instances, where there is disagreement over what occurred, I have endeavored to examine the evidence objectively before making a decision as to the most likely course of action. (Any such examinations or discussions, moreover, are confined to the notes.)
All dialogue appearing within quotation marks comes directly from primary sources — accounts written or given by eyewitnesses or others who interviewed them. Those sources include trial transcripts, letters, interviews published in newspapers, et cetera, and unpublished participant interviews and accounts.
In only one area have I employed anything other than the strict historical record: that part of the battle dealing with the movements of Custer’s battalion after trumpeter John Martin gallops away with a message from his commander as Custer leads his men down into Medicine Tail Coulee. We will never know, without a reasonable doubt, what happened to Custer and his 210 men. That is because no white observer saw any man of that contingent alive again, and the accounts of those who witnessed its movements — the Sioux and Cheyenne who defeated Custer — are, for many reasons, sketchy and often contradictory. But there is knowledge to be gleaned from a careful sifting of those accounts. The stories of those eyewitnesses, checked against each other and against the known positions of the troopers’ bodies and the extensive archaeological and forensic work completed over the last quarter century, enable one to determine, to a reasonably accurate degree, the actions (and by extension some of the thoughts) of Custer and a few of the men in his battalion. Though others may interpret the same record differently, I believe that given the information available, the actions of Custer and his subordinates as related herein during that time are those most likely to have occurred.
SIOUX TRIBAL STRUCTURE
The people known to the whites as Sioux were divided into three related groups, each of which spoke a slightly different dialect. The largest and westernmost were the Lakota (Teton), consisting of seven major tribal divisions (Hunkpapa, Oglala, Minneconjou, Brulé, Blackfeet, Two Kettle, and Sans Arcs) that lived west of the Missouri River and north of the Platte River. The easternmost group were the Dakota or Santee (further divided into the Mdewakanton, Wahpeton, Wahpekute, and Sisseton), in Iowa and Minnesota west of the Red River. Between them — between the Missouri and the Red Rivers — were the Nakota or Yankton (comprising the Yankton and Yanktonai). There are many variant spellings of some of these (Uncpapa, Minnecoujou, and so forth), and there are also Siouan versions. In almost every case, I have employed the most common and traditional forms for familiarity, regularity, and simple ease of reading.
ARMY RANK
During the Civil War, a Union officer could actually hold as many as four ranks: his permanent (“full”) rank in the Regular Army, a full rank in the Volunteers, and brevet ranks in both. A brevet rank was an honorary promotion given an officer for battlefield gallantry or meritorious service and was often awarded for much the same reasons medals are given out today (our modern system of medals did not exist until several decades after the Civil War). After the war, when the Volunteer army was disbanded, brevet promotions were still awarded, but less frequently. Though except in rare instances it imparted little authority and no extra pay, an officer was entitled to be addressed by his brevet rank. For the sake of clarity, I have refrained from that practice — with one exception. Despite his Regular Army rank of Lieutenant Colonel, George Armstrong Custer was referred to by one and all of the men under him as the General, in honor of his Civil War brevet ranks of Major General in both the Regular Army and the Volunteers. I have followed that custom frequently in this book.
PROLOGUE
A Good Day to Die
Wolf Mountains, Montana Territory June 25, 1876, 3:00 a.m.
The night was pitch-black and cool as the small party of scouts reined their horses off the creek and up into the hidden hollow between the hills. They picked their way through juniper trees, up the westernmost ridge, until it became too steep for horses. Second Lieutenant Charles Varnum dismounted, threw himself on the ground, and fell asleep instantly. The young West Pointer had ridden close to seventy miles since early that morning, almost twenty-four hours nonstop. He was bone tired.
All six of the Arikara Indians followed the officer’s lead, for they had been in the saddle just as long. But two of the five Crow Indians, along with the dapper scout “Lonesome” Charley Reynolds, left their horses and climbed the steep slope to a ridge overlooking the pass that crossed the divide between the Little Bighorn and Rosebud valleys. The Arikaras were only along as couriers; their homeland lay on the Missouri River, almost three hundred miles to the east. This was Crow country, a
nd the Crows had often used the hollow to conceal their horses while scouting the area during Sioux pony raids. From the lookout, they could usually see for a great distance in both directions.1 But not this night, not now. The thin crescent moon had set before midnight, and only starlight illuminated the sky.
An hour later, the diminutive half-breed guide Mitch Boyer shook Varnum awake.2 There was light in the sky, and the Crows wanted their chief of scouts on the hill. The hatless Lieutenant — he had lost his hat fording a stream along the way — and the scouts scrambled up through the buffalo grass to the top.
At the far edge of the bluff, the Crows pointed west, near the horizon, beyond the intervening ridges. They signed to the Arikaras — the two tribes spoke different languages — that they could see the Sioux camp. Charley Reynolds looked for a while, then peered through his field glasses a while longer. Finally, he nodded. Red Star, the youngest Arikara, nodded also; he could see the light smoke of morning cookfires, and beyond that black specks he thought were horses. White Man Runs Him, the young Crow who had led them here, even claimed he could distinguish some white horses among the herd.
Varnum shook his head. His eyes were inflamed from exhaustion and the hard, dusty ride. Even after an Arikara handed him a cheap spyglass, he could not make out anything resembling a village. Look for worms crawling on the grass, the scouts told him — that was the immense pony herd. He saw neither worms nor horses, nor the rising smoke they said betrayed the hundreds of cookfires of a large village. But the scouts and their trained eyes convinced him: less than twenty miles west, most likely in the valley of the Little Bighorn, was the large gathering of nontreaty Indians — “hostiles,” as they were called by the U.S. government — that the six hundred men of the Seventh Cavalry had trailed for three days.
The scouts continued to scan the western horizon; perhaps the increasing light would aid visibility. Eventually, Varnum pulled out paper and pencil and scribbled a quick note about the discovery, folded it, and handed it to Crooked Horn. In turn, the older Arikara selected Red Star and Bull to carry the message back to camp. As the two saddled up, Crooked Horn pointed to the east, where smoke from the Seventh Cavalry’s breakfast fires rose some eight miles away. Varnum could hear the anger in the Crows’ voices: did the white officers think the Sioux were blind? But the smoke made the way back easier for Red Star, and he made good time on the twelve-mile trek. He carried the message himself — a great honor for the young man — and paid little attention to his companion. Soon Bull lagged far behind on his undersized pony.
When Red Star rode into camp a couple of hours later, his tribesman Stabbed met him, saying, “This is no small thing you have done.” As the youth rode by, Stabbed turned and called out to the other scouts, waking them. Red Star dismounted, unsaddled, and told Bloody Knife, the half-Sioux, half-Arikara who was the General’s favorite, of the big village to the west. The message delivered, Red Star looked up to see the one they called Son of the Morning Star heading his way along with Frederic Gerard, the interpreter.
George Armstrong Custer, it appeared, had found his Indians.
I
APPROACH
ONE
The Divine Injunction
Again, we come to the great law of right. The white race stood upon this undeveloped continent ready and willing to execute the Divine injunction, to replenish the earth and subdue it. . . . The Indian races were in the wrongful possession of a continent required by the superior right of the white man.
CHARLES BRYANT, HISTORY OF THE GREAT MASSACRE BY THE SIOUX INDIANS (1864)
Philip Henry Sheridan, tough, fearless, and tenacious, like the bulldog he resembled, faced a thorny problem in the fall of 1875 — several thousand of them, actually.1 A small contingent of Plains Indians, roaming the same lands they had occupied for generations, refused to bow to the manifest destiny of the nation he had so devoutly served for more than twenty years.
Sheridan’s dilemma was a multifaceted one. From his headquarters in Chicago, he commanded the Division of the Missouri, by far the largest and most problematic military region in the country. It comprised the Great Plains and more — indeed, almost half the nation’s territory, from the Canadian border to the tip of Texas, from Chicago to the Rockies. That expanse included most of the western states, five territories, a growing number of whites, and approximately 175,000 Indians of many different tribes. Over the past half century, most of those Indians had been herded onto reservations set aside for their use, both to keep them away from the westering whites and to facilitate the effort to make them, as much as possible, white people. The problems stemming from these relocations were monumental, though they were perceived by most whites as more humane, and considerably less expensive, than the alternative: war.
The U.S. government soon found out that it was one thing to assign tribes to reservations and quite another to keep them there — especially when the food rations and supplies promised them by treaty were delayed, stolen, inedible, or simply never delivered. What had been presented as a policy designed to prevent bloodshed soon became yet another rationale for it.
Sheridan’s dilemma was shared by his immediate superior, General of the Army William Tecumseh Sherman, President Ulysses S. Grant, and several high-ranking members of Grant’s administration. For years the two Generals had advocated all-out war on the Indians, with Sheridan, who had branded the uncooperative elements of the Plains tribes “hostiles,” especially single-minded on the subject. But certain legal and moral niceties, which Sheridan found supremely irritating, precluded such belligerence. Grant’s infernal “Peace Policy,” which stressed humanitarian reforms before military intervention, was one. Treaties made with various Indian tribes were another. A third (and particularly galling) obstacle was that weak-kneed portion of the eastern intelligentsia whose naive, romantic view of “Lo the poor Indian” (a phrase from a poem by Alexander Pope, which led to the use of “Lo,” with heavy frontier wit, as the generic name for the Indian) was formed by such unrealistic sources as the novels of James Fenimore Cooper and the poetry of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
But that November, at a high-level meeting at the White House, a bold solution to the Indian problem would be revealed.
UNTIL A FEW years previous, the Plains tribes had roamed at will. During the warmer months, they followed the buffalo, or bison, their source of food, clothing, shelter, and virtually every other material (and spiritual) need. Before the unforgiving winter swept down, they gathered up their stores of meat and then holed up in sheltered valleys along moving water to wait out the weather, as close to hibernation as a people could get. Until the new grass appeared in the spring, their ponies grew considerably thinner, surviving on the bark of riparian cottonwoods. The Indians, too, were vulnerable in winter, but they knew the wasichus (whites) were reluctant to launch any extended large-scale campaign then. A plains winter could turn deadly in a matter of hours, and heavy supply trains to feed men and mounts slowed a column even in the best of weather. The white soldiers had waged winter war once or twice, but that kind of campaign was difficult to muster and coordinate.
As emigrant travel through the heart of Sioux country increased, the monumental job of protecting incoming miners, farmers, ranchers, tradesmen, stockmen, railroad surveyors, lawmen, barbers, saloon owners, and others in an area of more than a million square miles fell to Sheridan, who commanded almost a third of the shrunken remnants of the victorious Federal army. More than two million men had served the Union during the Civil War, but more than half had mustered out a year after its end, and the regular army had gradually been trimmed to 25,000 enlisted men by the early 1870s. The nation was understandably tired of war, and a southern-controlled Congress found the idea of a large standing army distasteful. Undermanned, underpaid, undersupplied, undertrained, and underfed (a decade after Appomattox, Civil War–era hardtack was still being issued to frontier troops), the army Sheridan served faced a warrior culture that trained males from early childhood to fig
ht, ride, and survive better than anyone else in the world. These people knew every hill and valley and water source in their wide land and eluded their pursuers with ease.
The job, Sheridan knew, had been easier, or at least simpler, a half century earlier. All that was necessary then was to push the Indians west, beyond “The Line” — wherever it was at the time.
THE LINE, WHICH had existed almost since the white man had begun to penetrate the vastness to the west, was the result of more than three centuries of clashes between Europeans and the native population. Spanish conquistadors had clashed constantly with the native inhabitants of Florida during their many expeditions in search of gold and other treasures. In the epic Battle of Mabila in 1540, in the area later known as Alabama, Hernando de Soto and several hundred Spaniards had destroyed an entire army of thousands of Indians to the last man. To the north, in the swampy Tidewater region of Virginia, the two-hundred-village-strong Powhatan Confederacy had aided the ill-prepared English settlers at Jamestown since their arrival in 1607. The generous Indians had brought food to the starving colonists, given freely of their considerable agricultural knowledge, and generally made it possible for the English to survive the first few years of the settlement’s existence. (They also taught the whites how to cultivate a cash crop called tobacco, which would enable the foundation and rapid rise of several more southern colonies.) Their generosity was not repaid in kind. The settlers were soon told by their superiors — who were, after all, directors of a for-profit joint-stock company — to do whatever it took to acquire all the land they could. Indian tempers grew short after a series of humiliations and attacks (no doubt aided and abetted by the Spaniards to the south), and fifteen years later they mounted a large-scale surprise assault on the colony that resulted in 347 English deaths in a matter of a few hours. The surviving colonists vowed revenge, and fifty years of almost constant eye-for-an-eye warfare followed. By 1671 the Virginia governor could report to London that “the Indians, our neighbours, are absolutely subjected, so that there is no fear in them”2 — in no small part because there were only a few thousand of them left in the face of 40,000 Englishmen.
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