The right wing left at 3:00 p.m. on June 10, under clearing skies. Reno’s troopers were accompanied by a Gatling gun and its crew and a pack train of about seventy mules. The rest of the command marched north down the Powder to the Yellowstone, to the new supply depot there. The map Reno carried was the same used by all components of the campaign, one prepared in 1872 from the Raynolds-Maynadier Expedition. It was hardly complete. The threat of hostile Indians had prevented the two army engineers from surveying the entire lengths of all the rivers. The unplatted rivers were represented by lightly drawn lines indicating the probable courses of the streams. The Powder was fairly well represented, as was the Bighorn far to the west. But the country between, and the many waterways therein that drained into the Yellowstone or one of its larger tributaries, was largely unmapped. Only a short distance of the Tongue, Mizpah, Pumpkin, Rosebud, and Tullock’s had been explored, no more than thirty miles. The Little Bighorn had not been platted at all and thus was only a light, projected line on the map.21
Reno’s guide through this semi–terra incognita was Boyer — “the Man in the Calfskin Vest,” as the eight Arikara and Lakota scouts accompanying the force called him. (The Arikaras’ name for Reno was “the Man with the Dark Face.” He had threatened to shoot one Arikara in an argument before the wing’s departure, and only the timely intervention of Bloody Knife had prevented bloodshed.)22 Several of Custer’s favorite officers rode with Reno: the likable Lieutenant Henry Harrington, commanding C Company in place of Tom Custer, who was serving on his brother’s staff as aide-de-camp;23 Captain Myles Keogh and his I Company; Lieutenant Algernon Smith and the “Gray Horse Troop,” E Company; Lieutenant Jimmi Calhoun, who had just been transferred to the command of L Company; and Captain George Yates and his spiffy “Band Box Troop,” F Company. The sixth troop in the right wing was B Company, led by the easygoing Captain Tom McDougall.
Reno rode his men hard through scattered showers — some rain would fall every day of the scout24 — and over rough, slippery ground, but the command made good time, slowed only by the Gatling gun battery and its infantry detachment. The heavy gun and its ammunition and accoutrements was mostly pulled by two “condemned” cavalry mounts judged not fit to carry troopers, but it needed the occasional hauling by hand through some of the rougher ravines. (The gun would eventually upset and injure three men.) After two days of marching, the force bivouacked at a point some twenty miles from the mouth of the Little Powder; from there Reno sent his Indians upriver to scout the area. The next day, he marched west toward Mizpah Creek, which paralleled the Powder. Reno’s orders directed that he descend the Mizpah a long way until it joined the Powder before turning to the west. But from the divide between the two, Reno could see a considerable distance down the valley. No Indian signs or smoke could be seen. He decided to take a chance and deviate from his orders. The wing turned west toward Pumpkin Creek, another of the many tributaries draining north into the Yellowstone or one of its feeder streams. Then, after just a single day’s march down the Pumpkin, he veered west again to the Tongue. Boyer guided the wing to the village site Lieutenant Bradley had spied on May 16 and found evidence of some four hundred lodges.
Finally, Reno had acquired some previously unknown information — confirmation of Bradley’s count of the hostile lodges. But Boyer undoubtedly told Reno of the more recent camp on the Rosebud that Bradley had discovered. The large village would have moved since then, probably more than once, since the needs of grazing, hunting, and sanitation demanded it. But a reconnaissance of the area might be able to determine which way it had moved, vital information to Terry’s plans.
With Boyer as his guide, Reno decided to deviate from Terry’s orders again. On its seventh day out of camp, the wing rode west again to Rosebud Creek. Four miles short of that valley, Reno sent Indian scouts to reconnoiter. They returned with reports of two old encampments and a large lodgepole trail leading south. (Each Lakota and Cheyenne family, like most of the Plains Indians, carried their belongings on a travois consisting of two of their tepee’s lodgepoles tied to a horse and dragged behind. Most of the family’s camp possessions could be transported this way.) The command reached the Rosebud and the higher abandoned campsite around midnight and bivouacked. The next morning, June 17, they followed the wide, heavily marked trail upstream and found another deserted campsite, this one fresher and just as large. Clearly, the village was moving south up the Rosebud valley. Reno ordered a halt here, increased perimeter security, and forbade any loud noises or bugle calls. This was good procedure but, unknown to the Major, unnecessary on this day, as most of the warriors from the hostile camp now situated in the valley of the Little Bighorn were at that moment engaged in the battle with Crook’s Wyoming column.
Boyer and the Indian scouts continued up the creek. Twelve miles on, they found another large campsite, this one even fresher. They followed the trail another seven miles to a large bend of the Rosebud, made sure the trail didn’t leave the valley there, and rode back to the soldiers.25 Along the way, they examined travois trails that appeared to be even fresher than the village sites. Clearly, other bands were moving after the main camp.
Reno listened to Boyer’s report and his claim that the hostile village lay no more than a day or so’s march away, and considered following up.26 But their rations were low, their horses were tired and weak (the long marches over rough terrain had taken their toll, and the animals had been rationed for only two pounds of oats a day, one-sixth rations, during the scout), and the Arikaras were not confident. If the hostiles were found, a battle was likely, and “if the Dakotas see us, the sun will not move very far before we are all killed,” declared the senior Arikara scout, Forked Horn.27 Reluctantly, Reno was persuaded to turn back.28
A hard march that afternoon and another the next day brought Reno’s weary command to the mouth of the Rosebud. A mile down the south bank, they stopped and camped just above Gibbon’s column across the river. The two commands communicated by the army code of flag signals, then a Crow swam the wide, fast-moving river to bring a written message to Reno. The next morning, his troopers continued downstream toward the rendezvous point at the Tongue, where the main part of the Dakota column awaited.
WHILE RENO WAS searching for Indian sign, Custer had marched his men to the supply depot on the Yellowstone on June 11 and rested them in camp. When the Far West arrived with sutler John Smith, who quickly set up a makeshift bar of planks and barrels to ply a good portion of the regiment with dollar-a-pint whiskey, “some of the boys got gloriously drunk,” remembered one trooper.29 A man in a yawl had also arrived to sell beer at two bits a small glass.30 Since there had been little for them to spend their money on besides poker games and meat bought from the Arikara scouts, heavy drinking was inevitable. In the absence of a guardhouse, the worst cases of inebriation were herded out onto the open prairie to sober up. Custer was disappointed to find no Libbie aboard the Far West, as they had planned.
On June 15, after drawing supplies and loading them on the pack mules, Custer led the left wing of the regiment — stripped down and ready for action — up the south bank of the Yellowstone to the Tongue, where they would wait for Reno. The whiskey trader accompanied them, to the delight of the troops.
The Far West followed the command upstream and now lay moored off the Yellowstone’s south bank. The ground the regiment was encamped on had been occupied by the Indians the previous winter. “A number of their dead, placed upon scaffolds, or tied to the branches of trees, were disturbed and robbed of their trinkets. Several persons rode about exhibiting trinkets with as much gusto as if they were trophies of valor, and showed no more concern for their desecration than if they had won them at a raffle,” remembered Lieutenant Edward Godfrey, who kept a diary on the campaign.31 Young Autie Reed, Custer’s nephew, snagged a bow, some arrows, and a pair of moccasins.32 Reed should have been left at the Powder River depot with the other herders, but he rode with his three uncles. His fellow herder Dick Roberts had want
ed to go also, but his pony, Humpty Dumpty, had given out and stranded him at the depot. His brother-in-law Captain George Yates had promised to send for him when another horse was found.33 Also left at Powder River (on Terry’s orders, despite Custer’s wishes)34 were the musicians, whose horses were given to some of the unmounted troopers. Felix Vinatieri would not have the opportunity to lead the band in “Garry-Owen” while the regiment rode into battle, as he had three years earlier on the Yellowstone.35
The rest of the walking cavalry, which included most of the new recruits, also remained at the Powder River depot, along with a few dozen others who were sick or detached for various details — a total of about 150 troopers. Finally, the regiment’s sabers were boxed up and left behind. Only one officer, Lieutenant Charles DeRudio, carried his on a pack mule. He claimed it came in handy for killing snakes.36
At the new campsite, Custer ordered Isaiah Dorman, the interpreter, to pull down one particularly fragrant burial scaffold and throw the corpse in the river. Later, when the Arikaras saw Dorman fishing near the same spot, they suspected him of using the corpse as bait — a bad omen in their eyes. Other troopers threw Sioux bones into the Yellowstone.
Some of the officers played whist on the boat, and the Custer brothers fished soon after arriving at the Tongue.37 Custer was in an expansive mood. “We are living delightfully,” he wrote to Libbie on the 17th. “We are expecting the Josephine to arrive in a day or two. I hope that it will bring me a long letter from you, otherwise I do not feel particularly interested in her arrival — unless, by good-luck, you should be on board; you might just as well be here as not.”38
Near sunset on the 19th, two Indian couriers from Reno arrived in the idle camp with a letter from Gibbon and a terse report from Reno, which read in part:
I am in camp eight miles above you. I started this a.m. to reach your camp, but the country from the Rosebud here is simply awful. . . . I enclose you a note from Gibbon, whom I saw yesterday. I can tell you where the Indians are not and much more information when I see you in the morning. . . . My animals are leg weary and need shoeing. We have marched near to 250 miles.39
An angry Terry, who had by now transferred his headquarters to the Far West, read this cheeky, ill-phrased message, which admitted disobedience of orders but included no justification for it. Custer had followed his own lead more than once on the march from Lincoln; now Reno had done the same. As rumors of “hot Indian trails” and “plenty of Indians not far to the south and east” began to circulate through camp,40 Terry sent his brother-in-law and aide-de-camp, Captain Robert Hughes, upstream to acquire more information and to tell Reno to remain where he was. Hughes returned that night. Terry wrote to his sisters:
It appears that he [Reno] had done this in defiance of my positive orders not to go to the Rosebud, in the belief that there were Indians on that stream and that he could make a successful attack on them, which would cover up his disobedience. . . . He had not the supplies to enable him to go far and he returned without justification for his conduct, unless wearied horses and broken-down mules could be justification. Of course, the performance made a change in my plans necessary.41
On June 20, the day after Reno’s message arrived, the Dakota column marched upstream to join Reno, with Terry and the Far West following them up the Yellowstone. When Custer and Terry heard Reno’s report in person, a frustrated Custer questioned his junior Major sharply, upbraiding him for not acquiring more information, such as the direction the Indians were taking. Reno replied tersely, but before the argument got out of hand, “Terry interposed and smoothed the matter over,” remembered one trooper.42
Custer continued to voice his disapproval in a more public way, via a scathing anonymous dispatch to the New York Herald penned two days later.
Reno, after an absence of ten days, returned, when it was found, to the disgust and disappointment of every member of the expedition, from the commanding General down to the lowest private, that Reno, instead of simply failing to accomplish any good results, has so misconducted his force as to embarrass, if not seriously and permanently mar, all hopes of future success of the expedition. He had not only deliberately and without a shadow of excuse failed to obey his written orders issued by General Terry’s personal directions, but he had acted in positive disobedience to the strict injunctions of the department commander. . . . Had Reno, after first violating his orders, pursued and overtaken the Indians, his original disobedience of orders would have been overlooked, but his determination forsook him at that point, and instead of continuing the pursuit, and at least bringing the Indians to bay, he gave the order to countermarch and faced his command to the rear . . . and reported the details of his gross and inexcusable blunder to General Terry . . . who informed Reno in unmistakable language that the latter’s conduct amounted to positive disobedience of orders. . . . The details of this affair will not bear investigation. . . . A court-martial is strongly hinted at, and if one is not ordered it will not be because it is not richly deserved.43
Custer’s in-print criticism of a fellow officer echoed an earlier instance of the same — Benteen’s caustic missive castigating Custer’s actions at the Washita. When Custer had denounced that anonymous letter after seeing it in a St. Louis newspaper, he had considered it a heinous, dishonorable act and threatened to horsewhip the author. Benteen’s letter had been vitriolic and opinionated, but Custer’s printed, albeit anonymous, censure of an officer directly under his command was certainly less than honorable. And whether accurate or not, it was another case of Custer expecting others to follow rules that did not apply to him. Reno’s initiative had achieved results, and he had done what Custer would likely have done in his place, though Custer would just as likely have pursued and attacked the village and its fighting force despite its vast size advantage. Reno, by contrast, had listened to the counsel of his scouts and officers, exercised discretion, and returned without the loss of a single trooper.
Curiously, in a letter to Libbie the day before, Custer had voiced his worry that Reno’s wanderings had alerted the hostiles to the soldiers’ presence. “Think of the valuable time lost!” he wrote, and then added, in a typical display of enthusiasm, “But I feel hopeful of accomplishing great results. I will move directly up the valley of the Rosebud.”44 That sentence, in Custer’s last letter delivered to Libbie before he headed south from the Yellowstone after the hostiles, points up the value of Reno’s disobedience. Though Terry was furious at Reno’s insubordination, he quickly realized the worth of Reno’s intelligence. Since the Indians were obviously not on the lower Rosebud, a new plan was needed. As the cool night fell and the Far West steamed up the Yellowstone, General Terry and his aides aboard the stern-wheeler pulled out the Raynolds-Maynadier maps and began revising their strategy.
There was another reason for revision, though Terry was not yet aware of it. Far to the east, the army was finally receiving accurate reports from its posts near the agencies — reports that spoke of much larger numbers of hostiles. From Sheridan’s divisional headquarters in Chicago, a message to Terry was dispatched on June 6.
Chicago, June 6th. Courier from Red Cloud Agency reported at Laramie yesterday that Yellow Robe arrived at agency (six days from hostile camp). He says that eighteen hundred lodges were on the Rosebud and about to leave for Powder River, below the point of Crazy Horse’s fight, and says they will fight and have about three thousand warriors. This is sent for your information.
The numbers were exaggerated, but the message here and in other reports coming into army headquarters was clear: young warriors from the agencies were on the move — and likely headed toward Sitting Bull’s camp. (Sheridan, in Wyoming Territory later in the month, would be sufficiently unsettled by the absence of young men at the Indian agencies to order the capable Lieutenant Colonel Eugene A. Carr and his Fifth Cavalry north to reinforce Crook’s column.)45 This was significant information and would necessitate a radical change in Terry’s plans.
The June 6 dispa
tch had been telegraphed to Fort Lincoln with instructions to send it to Terry in the field “by boat” or any other opportunity.46 The fort’s commanding officer in Custer’s stead, Captain William McCaskey, Twentieth Infantry, forwarded the message by the steamer Yellowstone that morning. He also planned to forward copies by two other government-contracted steamers, the Key West and the Josephine, once they arrived at the fort. The Key West departed three days after the Yellowstone; the Josephine left for the Yellowstone and the supply depot on the 15th.
The Josephine arrived at the Powder River depot on June 24, and Arikara scouts carried the message on horseback with the rest of the mail 120 miles up the Yellowstone to Terry’s camp at the mouth of the Bighorn. By then, however, Terry was gone. He would not receive the message until the last day in June — much too late to affect his new plan.
NINE
The Seventh Rides Out
Before many days you will hear of a big fight or a lively foot race.
LIEUTENANT GEORGE WALLACE
General Alfred Terry was proud of his new plan to catch the hostile Indians — this despite the fact that, if one looked closely, the new plan was very much like the old plan.
Terry had transferred his headquarters to the Far West before her departure from the mouth of the Powder on June 15, a week earlier. The steamer had subsequently moved up the Yellowstone. After unloading supplies for Gibbon’s command, Terry had moored two miles east of the mouth of the Rosebud, where the Seventh Cavalry had just arrived to set up camp on the south side of the larger river. Gibbon’s Montana column had been dispatched upstream toward the Bighorn, pursuant to Terry’s new plan, the broad outlines of which he and his aides had finalized by then.
Terry hosted Gibbon, Custer, and Brisbin in a conference room of the Far West about two o’clock in the afternoon of the 21st1 as the Seventh Cavalry prepared to move out the next day. The men sat around a table, upon which the Raynolds-Maynadier map2 of the area was spread, and over the next few hours, Terry outlined his plan and the commanders worked out the final details.
A Terrible Glory Page 19