WATCHING RENO’S TROOPS from a high ridge along the edge of the bluffs were the General, Cooke, and Tom Custer. Through field glasses they could see a wide cloud of dust several miles to the southeast that indicated Benteen’s battalion and the pack train not far behind it.
After Kanipe had galloped away, Custer led his five companies downstream along the edge of the bluffs at a stiff trot. The strenuous pace began to take its toll on the horses; several gave out and forced their riders to dismount and lead them back the way they had come. After traveling a half mile farther downriver, Custer called a halt.
Now Custer and Cooke doffed their hats and waved them at Reno and his command, who had dismounted and were hotly engaged with several hundred Indians down in the valley more than a mile away. The General turned in his saddle and looked at his men. “Courage, boys, we’ve got them!” he shouted. “We’ll finish them up and then go home to our station.”19 The troopers responded with a loud cheer.
From here the full extent of the village could be seen: more than a thousand lodges in several large circles. With Lieutenant Charles DeRudio’s Austrian field glasses — more powerful than the standard 5X issued to officers20 — the General could see that there were few warriors in the village itself. Those with horses had galloped toward Reno, and others were running to the west, toward the huge pony herd. More dust and movement from the far end of the village undoubtedly signified a large group making its way north — women, children, and older men, no doubt, heading for safety.
Custer watched Reno’s battalion move off the skirmish line into the timber with little or no loss. The northern edge of the woods was only several hundred yards away from the closest tepees. That threat would keep a good many of the Indians occupied. There was no time to lose.
The General turned to Boyer and through him told the Crows that they were dismissed — they had done their job.21 Then he led his troopers east in column of twos down a narrow ravine lined with small cedars. The Crows remained behind. Curly turned south to find water for himself and his horse. White Man Runs Him, Hairy Moccasin, Goes Ahead, and Boyer moved farther downriver along the bluffs. Upon reaching two close peaks with a sugarloaf in between, they dismounted and fired a few shots into a small Sioux camp below them on the east side of the river, on the flats.22 Across the river, hundreds of Sioux and Cheyennes were massing around the woods.
AFTER TAKING A few potshots at some of the Indians far ahead and to the left of them, Varnum, Hare, Wallace, the scouts, the doctors, and their orderlies had moved into the timber and picketed their horses soon after dismounting. Fred Gerard joined them, having reached the command just as they had dismounted, but Isaiah Dorman and the mixed-blood scout Billy Jackson, at sixteen the youngest man in the command, remained on the line. Varnum glanced up as he made his way down the line to see Custer’s battalion almost straight across the Little Bighorn, moving at a trot along the bluffs back a ways from the river.23 He assumed that they were riding downstream to attack the lower end of the village.24
The left end of the line was now anchored by Bobtail Bull, the leader of the Arikara scouts. The troopers continued to fire into the Indians, though most of the hostiles remained out of reach. Reno, after another nip from his flask,25 accompanied McIntosh and G Company into the woods after a soldier reported Indians infiltrating from the river. Moylan moved his A troopers toward the woods to fill the gap.
ALMOST BLIND and barely able to walk, old Inkpaduta was no longer a warrior. But he was still a canny strategist.
He was fishing with his two young grandsons, sitting on the west bank of the Greasy Grass east of their lodges near the Hunkpapa circle at the upper end of the village, when one of them noticed the dust cloud moving down the valley toward them. Inkpaduta knew what it meant: bluecoats were coming to kill them.
The two boys helped their grandfather return to the camp as fast as they could to alert their people. Others had seen the dust — some women who had been out digging wild turnips south and east of the camp were also sounding the alarm, and a herd of Indian ponies and their herders were already moving down the valley. A group of Sans Arcs — mourners for their chief, She Bear, who had been mortally injured in the Rosebud battle — had just arrived from their previous night’s bivouac a few miles back on the lodgepole trail. As they approached the village and spread the word, about fifty warriors rode out and began galloping back and forth to create a masking wall of dust as the noncombatants of the great camp retreated from the bluecoats. The Indians had known of the approximate location of the large force of soldiers to the east, but no one except Box Elder had expected them to attack so soon. The blind old Cheyenne had had a vision of wasichus coming and had sent a crier to tell his people to hold their horses in the village.26
Inkpaduta remained near the line of attack, encouraging the warriors riding forth. Gall, the boyhood friend of Sitting Bull who had grown into a barrel-chested warrior and respected leader of his own band, soon arrived from finding his horse down the valley. After assessing the situation, he told Inkpaduta to keep the soldiers on the retreat, then turned and galloped north to the village with the old chief’s twin sons, the warriors Tracking White Earth and Sounds the Ground as He Walks.27 There Gall found his two wives and three of his children dead. With a feeling beyond words, he threw down his rifle and took his hatchet in his hand. He now had only one thing on his mind: revenge.
Inkpaduta eventually made his way back to camp, then aided in shepherding the women and children to safety. Everywhere there were people running: children looking for their mothers, mothers seeking their children, young boys sprinting out to the herds to bring horses to warriors preparing for battle. Women packed small bundles to flee with, then gathered the nonwarriors in their families to move northward to the low hills beyond the Cheyenne camp, some crossing the river there.28
Wooden Leg, still basking in the hard-earned glories won in the Rosebud fight a week earlier, had danced until dawn and met many young women. He had woken up late and gone swimming with his older brother Yellow Hair, for the midday sun was already hot. They joined many frolicking children and other adults in the cool waters of the Greasy Grass. Afterward the two dozed under a tree on the riverbank.
The two brothers awoke to a great commotion and the distant sounds of shooting, and they joined hundreds of others running to their lodges. Everyone was shouting about the soldiers charging down the valley. The brothers ran north toward the tribe’s pony herd below their camp circle, arriving just in time to find the horses being driven back to the Cheyenne camp. An exhausted Wooden Leg walked back to his lodge. His father had caught his favorite horse and now helped him get ready for battle. Wooden Leg pulled on a new pair of breeches, a good cloth shirt, and a nice pair of beaded moccasins. Then he painted his face; tied back his hair (he would have oiled and braided it also, but his father was urging him to hurry); grabbed his horse (his father strapped a blanket onto its back and fixed its lariat bridle), six-shooter, and bullets; and galloped upriver through the camp after all the other young men.29
Beyond the large Hunkpapa circle and the adjacent, smaller Blackfeet one were hundreds of Indians on horseback, racing back and forth, raising a thick dust cloud before a long line of dismounted soldiers a thousand yards distant. Some warriors were making bravery runs, galloping closer to the soldier line, concealing their bodies on the far side of their mounts and firing their weapons under their horses’ necks.
The Cheyennes learned of the attack minutes after it was launched, thanks to the warnings of the camp criers. Lame White Man had just begun a bath in a friend’s sweat lodge down by the river after following the “suicide boys” parading through the village. He was proud of the five young Cheyennes who had vowed to die fighting. “I must go up there and ride down in the parade with my boys,” he had told his wife.30 Now he and the other men crawled out of the sweat lodge and ran to their lodges and families. Some of the horses had been brought in that morning to be staked out near the camp in case of eme
rgency, and Lame White Man helped get his family started north to safety. Once they were on the way, he decided there was no time to don his war clothes or prepare properly. He wrapped a blanket around his waist, threw on his moccasins, grabbed his ammunition belt and gun, jumped on his horse, and rushed to the wide ford across from the village.31
By now the Hunkpapa camp was filled with a chaotic mix of women and children screaming, men yelling for their horses and arms, and the roar of guns. Old men sang death songs to encourage the warriors and helped them prepare for battle. Women trilled the tremolo to inspire their men. Dust was everywhere. The gunfire coming from the soldiers in the timber was high, though some bullets shattered the lodgepoles. Several horses fell. Hundreds of warriors — many of them until now asleep after a long night of dancing, others eating a late breakfast — grabbed their arms, poured from their tepees, and began frantically searching for their horses. The fortunate ones had tethered their mounts nearby for just such an emergency. Women and young boys helped others catch theirs. In ragged clusters, the mounted men rode south through the lodges to defend their village and their families.
Sitting Bull was lying in his lodge on the southwest side of his tribal circle32 when word of the attacking soldiers arrived. His nephew One Bull had just returned from the herd with horses, and he and Sitting Bull quickly took the family and other villagers into the low hills beyond the Cheyenne circle, then returned to the Hunkpapa camp. Sitting Bull helped his nephew prepare for battle, giving him a stone-headed war club and his own rawhide shield; then he buckled on his cartridge belt and went outside. He mounted a black horse and rode off to encourage those gathering to counterattack. While One Bull and other warriors charged the far end of the soldier line, Sitting Bull, White Bull (another nephew), and other Lakotas moved forward to a shallow draw that ran across the valley just south of the camp. From there they traded furious fire with the bluecoats, who had dismounted and planted three guidons out on the prairie.
Amid the mayhem, some Arikaras on the far end of the soldier line moved closer to the camp. Their gunfire killed several women and children in the Hunkpapa lodges before mounted warriors moved to repulse them. The Arikaras pulled back and galloped toward the woods.
The dead women and children were not the only losses. Four Lakotas galloped close to the soldiers, and only one came back.33 But as more warriors joined the first defenders, the Lakota line was extended to the west and then around the flank of the bluecoats, who fled into the timber behind an old riverbank and formed a new, shorter line facing west at its edge.
Then word spread quickly: “Crazy Horse is coming! Crazy Horse is coming!”
WITH NO CASUALTIES bar those from the runaway horses at the beginning of the battle, the troopers were still in good spirits, talking and laughing and confident of victory.34 But after some fifteen minutes on the line, the number of Indians increased significantly — four or five hundred of them, maybe more. Some began to ride around the line’s left flank; Captain Myles Moylan counted at least two hundred.35 Realizing that Custer was nowhere in sight, Wallace asked Moylan if they could send a messenger to the General. Moylan asked Billy Jackson if he could go back. Jackson looked around, then waved his hand to the left and rear and told them there were too many Indians to get through.36 Moylan sent for Reno and told him of the Indians reaching their rear.
The Major commanded the line to swivel right and draw back to the timber, yelling, “Retreat to your horses, men!” without arranging a rearguard action. As he passed into the trees, he took a big swig of whiskey that emptied his flask.37 Some of the troopers started rushing toward the trees. Captain French quickly ordered, “Steady there, men! I will shoot the first man that turns his back on the enemy — fall back slowly. Keep up a continual fire, you damned fools!”38 The men retreated to the timber slowly and steadily. One man did not obey: Miles O’Hara of M Company, a young Ohio lad, had just earned his Sergeant’s stripes a few days before, replacing a man whose term of service had expired and who had been left back at the Powder River depot. Slumped motionless on the ground, he had taken a round through the breast and was likely already dead. His head would be found in the village two days later.39
The timber in the old river bottom was on ground lower, by ten feet or so, than the prairie. The line of troopers retreated to the dry riverbed’s near embankment, on the fringe of the woods, their backs to the river, and continued to fire into the hundreds of Indians galloping closer. The air was thick with dust and black powder gunsmoke, the constant fire of hundreds of rifles, the high-pitched yells of warriors, the shrieks of eagle-bone whistles, the screams of injured and panicked horses, the shouts of soldiers excited or scared or injured. “It was one long continuous roar,” remembered one trooper.40
The scouts — with Varnum, Herendeen, and Reynolds — moved to the extreme right of the new line, now only 150 yards long. Varnum heard someone mention that G Company was going to charge a part of the village down through the woods and decided to go with them. Back near the river, among the large cottonwoods and dense underbrush, lay an open glade where most of the horses had been led. Beyond the clearing, Varnum could see the stream, and on the other side was part of Sitting Bull’s village.41 Several narrow animal paths wound through the trees, and Varnum followed one into the glade to find Reno and Lieutenant Donald McIntosh directing the men of G Troop against the infiltrating Indians.
“How are things on the line?” asked Reno.
“I don’t know,” said Varnum.
“Find out and let me know,” ordered the Major.42
Varnum dismounted, tied his horse, and returned to the line to find Moylan complaining that his men were nearly out of ammunition — the fifty rounds that each man had carried on him were almost gone.43 Though exhausted and operating only on nervous energy, Varnum volunteered to bring the horses up. He made his way back to the opening and retrieved A Company’s mounts, bringing them and a good deal of the rest of the men back to the line. Moylan’s men fell back in alternate fashion to get ammunition from their saddlebags.44
CRAZY HORSE was not to be rushed. The Oglala war chief had been bathing when the first shots had been heard upriver. He had taken time to apply his paint and prepare himself properly for battle.45 Other warriors waited impatiently for him. Finally, he emerged, leaped onto his pinto pony,46 and led a horde of mounted Oglalas up the valley. Other men, even a few Cheyennes, joined him. There were many great fighters in the camp, but no one’s medicine was as strong as Crazy Horse’s. Within minutes, hundreds of warriors, perhaps a thousand, surrounded the wooded loop sheltering the bluecoats. Those without horses moved up the river and across it to fire into the trees from the east and north.
AS REYNOLDS AND Gerard entered the timber, a despondent Reynolds told Gerard that he had never felt so depressed and discouraged in his life. (The night before, the scout had distributed his belongings among his friends.) He needed something to stimulate him — the nasty abscess on his left hand was causing him great pain. Did Gerard have anything with him? Gerard pulled out a flask and passed it to Reynolds, cautioning him not to drink too much. Then they took positions on the edge of the old riverbank and fired on the Indians for twenty minutes or so.
Now, as Varnum dropped down next to him, Gerard pulled out his flask again and said, “Well, I’ve got a little whiskey left. We’ll take one last drink together.”47 Charley Reynolds took a swig and passed it to Varnum, who partook himself.48
The men in the woods began to yell something about charging, and in response Varnum and most of the others jumped up and ran in search of their horses.
“What damn fool move is this?” Gerard asked Reynolds, next to him.
“I don’t know,” the scout replied. “We will have to go. We’ll have to get out of this.” Reynolds jumped up and went for his horse.49 Gerard moved off the edge of the hill with him.
Meanwhile, Reno continued to direct the fire of G Troop toward the Indians infiltrating the river side of the woods. They were
everywhere, with more of them arriving every minute. Arrows whistled past and smashed into trees; bullets zipped by, raining twigs and branches down onto the men. Gray clouds of gunsmoke hung in the air, and the noise from hundreds of rifles was deafening. Reno had seen Custer atop the bluffs across the river and upstream a ways waving his hat — his battalion was stirring up quite a cloud of dust50 — and that meant he must have chosen a flank attack in support. But where was he now? All the Major could see were high, sheer cliffs across the river — surely a crossing was not possible anywhere nearby.51 And where was Benteen? No sign of either column, not even a messenger with some kind of news or fresh orders.
Then someone told Reno that several of the horses had been shot in the rear of their position in the woods. To the Major, the situation now seemed close to untenable. The ammunition was about half-gone. Unless they got out now, there would be no getting out at all. It was time to find a more defensible position, one closer to the rest of the regiment and away from the large village that could be glimpsed through the trees. The command was virtually surrounded by hostile Indians, and a movement in any direction would likely incur casualties, probably deaths. But some, perhaps most, of the men would survive — if they left now.
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