Reno ordered Moylan and McIntosh to mount and form in column of fours, then sent Hodgson to tell French, closer to the edge of the woods with M Troop. But neither Reno nor Hodgson relayed that order to a trumpeter — chiefly because G Company, still scattered throughout the woods, didn’t have one that day and Reno had not assigned a trumpeter to attend him. (Of G Company’s two trumpeters, one had been detailed as an orderly to General Custer, and the other was on detached service.) As the order descended from the Major down the ranks to the lowest Private, it was lost. Only those men within earshot or fortunate enough to hear the order passed knew of Reno’s command.52 Quite a few troopers, mostly from G Company, did not.53
Near pandemonium reigned as dismounted troopers yelled the names of their number four men with their horses and Indian bullets continued to zip among them, accompanied by high-pitched war cries. Varnum attempted to stay the developing stampede, yelling, “For God’s sake, men, let’s don’t leave the line. There are enough of us here to whip the whole Sioux nation.” That brought a few men back, but not for long.54 Reno asked Moylan his opinion as to where they should go, then pointed out a high point on the bluffs across the river, right where he had last seen Custer. They would go there to regroup, thought Reno, await further developments, and with any luck rejoin the regiment.55
Varnum entered the glade and yelled to Reno, asking where the company was going. Reno did not answer; he was trying to communicate with Bloody Knife, a few feet from him, asking him through sign language where the Indians would go once the command left the trees. Some of the mounted men — mostly those G troopers who had heard the order — replied for Bloody Knife: “They’re going to charge!”
Over among the soldiers on the left of the line, Sergeant John Ryan told his troop commander, French, “The best thing that we can do is to cut right through them.”56 French yelled, “To your horses, men!” One trooper without a mount grabbed Private William Morris’s and relinquished it only after the young redheaded recruit leveled his carbine at the man’s head and said, “Let go, or I will blow your head off!”57 A good many troopers mounted and began to ride in random directions until Ryan got them in some kind of order.58
Due to the sudden exodus from the line, the firing had greatly slackened. This emboldened the Indians, who now surged closer. A moment later, a volley erupted from a group of Indians who had reached some bushes in the rear, not more than thirty feet from the soldiers.59 One round hit Bloody Knife in the back of the head, and as he threw his hands up and fell over, his blood and brains spattered Reno’s face and front. The Arikara had been wearing the kerchief given to him by his friend Custer. A soldier hit with the same volley screamed, “Oh my God, I’ve got it,” then slumped forward and slid off his horse.60 Reno, startled, wiped bits of bone and blood off his face and gave the order to dismount — thick woods and underbrush were no place for mounted men to fight Indians on foot and at close range. But the hostiles appeared to have retreated after the single volley, so he quickly ordered his men to mount again, once more without bugle calls.61 The rapid-fire orders may have made sense to Reno, but they didn’t to his troopers, and further confusion set in as some obeyed and some did not.
Private Morris had just mounted his horse when French’s striker, a German immigrant named Henry Klotzbucher, was shot through the stomach. Klotzbucher yelled and toppled to the ground. French told Morris to dismount and take care of him. Morris and another trooper began to lift Klotzbucher onto Morris’s horse, but the pain was too much. “Leave me alone, for God’s sake!” the wounded man shrieked, refusing to stand. Morris and the trooper dragged Klotzbucher back into some thick underbrush and braced him against a tree.62
Many of the men were still on foot when Reno yelled, “Any of you men who wish to make your escape, draw your revolvers and follow me.” Reno spurred his horse out of the woods, down the dry riverbed a short way, and up onto the prairie.63 He made no arrangements for any rearguard action to cover the retreat — standard military procedure and more than warranted in this situation — and he paid little heed to the state of his command before galloping off. His wounded, and those men who had not heard the order to mount and charge, would have to fend for themselves.
Reno’s panic spread through most of the command. Someone hollered, “Every man for himself,”64 and desperate troopers jumped on any horse they could find, leaving others without mounts. Through thick underbrush and then suffocating clouds of dust, those men who had found horses followed the Major, climbing up the embankment and onto the prairie in a semblance of column of fours. A Troop was right behind them. Captain French made sure the men of M Troop got out of the timber, then followed them.65 Some of G Troop followed in ragged fashion.
Morris still remained with the wounded Klotzbucher. It seemed every other soldier had left, and it was all he could do to keep his horse from running after them.
Klotzbucher said, “Go on, don’t mind me, you can’t do me any good.”
“Captain told me to take care of you,” said Morris, holding his horse’s reins.
“Go on, you cannot do me any good.”
“All right,” said the young recruit. “If you say so, I’ll go.” He left Klotzbucher a canteen of water, then attempted to mount. Unable to get near his frenzied horse’s stirrup, he hurled himself up and grabbed the pommel of his saddle. The horse took off, Morris on his stomach across the saddle, holding on for dear life as he galloped up the embankment and after the command.66
“THE SIGHT that greeted my eyes was certainly very discouraging,” wrote one recruit years later of the exodus from the woods. “Not over two hundred yards away was a large and constantly increasing number of Indian warriors coming toward us as fast as their ponies could travel, a whooping, howling mass of the best horsemen, the most cruel and fiercest fighters in all our country, or any other.”67 The hundreds of hostiles fell back at first in the face of this unexpected movement in their direction. They parted as Reno led the fleeing men in a file of ones and twos up the prairie. But as they realized that the soldiers were not riding toward them but past them, the warriors turned and whipped their horses after the bluecoats, along their flanks. As the soldiers spurred their tired mounts by, those Indians with rifles started shooting, their Winchesters lying across their saddles pumping bullets, into the men. Some of the bolder Indians galloped into the soldiers’ ranks, though most stayed a safe distance — at least fifty yards — away from the six-shooters.68 Once a trooper stopped firing his revolver, the Indians rode closer to shoot him or knock him off his horse with stone clubs. Some Indians on the east side of the stream also fired into the long line of soldiers.
Death came swiftly and frequently. One rider’s horse broke from the ranks and galloped directly into the Indians; the soldier did not return.69 A Corporal from G Troop had his horse shot out from under him and was soon surrounded by the enemy. Private Roman Rutten galloped toward him, yelling, but the dismounted trooper never emerged.70 An Indian put an arrow into the back of a soldier’s head, but somehow the corpse remained mounted, the dead man galloping across the prairie. Only after another arrow went into his shoulder did he tumble to the ground.71
Some of the ground the battalion rode over was the site of a prairie dog village, and the holes and mounds presented a nasty obstacle course for horse and rider. More than one horse stepped into a hole and threw its rider, mount and man careening over the prairie.72 Doughty George Herendeen, one of the last to leave, had just cleared the woods when his horse fell, throwing him off, and ran away. The scout turned and made for the timber, barely avoiding about twenty Indians bearing down on the troopers. Herendeen had been in several large fights with the Sioux and knew of their reluctance to charge into woods.
On the way, he saw Charley Reynolds mounting his horse. Herendeen yelled, “Charley, don’t try to ride out. We can’t get away from this timber.”73 But Reynolds ignored him and galloped away until his horse was shot and he went down. He knelt on the ground behind his horse a
nd fired as many shots as he could before a Sioux round killed him.74
Upon reaching the woods, Herendeen ran into Lieutenant Charles DeRudio and about a dozen other soldiers, some with horses, some on foot. They had not heard the order to mount. (DeRudio had stopped to pick up the company guidon, which had been thrown away by a panicked Sergeant.)75 Herendeen told them to stay in the woods and conceal themselves.
Dorman, the black interpreter, was surrounded by Indians a short distance from the timber. He turned in his saddle and shot one through the heart, but his horse, riddled with bullets, went down.76 The big man dropped to one knee and began firing into the Indians with his sporting rifle. When his friend Rutten galloped by, Dorman yelled good-bye to him. Soon Dorman was surrounded by hostiles while the command passed him by. A bullet found him. Mortally wounded but still alive, he sat on the ground, his life flowing from him.77
MORE THAN ANYTHING, the Indians all agreed later, the battle resembled a buffalo chase.
The warriors pursued the column to the Greasy Grass and into the fast current. Sioux on the eastern bluffs just downstream took aim on soldiers in the water and on the banks. Sitting Bull followed his warriors, shouting encouragement and advice. Women and young boys who had not retreated to the hills ran among the downed soldiers, finishing off those still alive, mutilating the dead as was their tradition, and plundering their bodies.
Just a hundred yards southeast of the timber, along the trail of dead, Sitting Bull rode up to where several Lakotas were gathered around the wounded black man sitting in the dirt. He was known to them as Teat, married to a Hunkpapa woman named Visible. He was clearly close to death, a gunshot wound to his breast.
“My friends,” Teat said, “you have already killed me, don’t count coup on me.”
“Don’t kill that man, he is a friend of mine,” said Sitting Bull, remembering the day years before when the black man had given him some food.78 Sitting Bull dismounted and gave the dying man some water, then rode off toward the river.79
A Hunkpapa woman named Eagle Robe, mourning for her ten-year-old brother just killed by the wasichus, rode up and jumped to the ground.
“Do not kill me, because I will be dead in a short while anyway,” said Teat.
“If you did not want to be killed,” said the woman, “why did you not stay home where you belong and not come to attack us?” Her brother’s name was One Hawk. He had gone to the east with another man very early that morning looking for a horse that had strayed from the family herd. They had discovered the soldiers and then made for the camp as quickly as they could. They had just reached the Greasy Grass when some Arikara scouts ahead of the soldiers had killed him. The other man had escaped to warn the camp.
Eagle Robe raised a revolver and shot Teat in the head.
After killing him, Eagle Robe continued to the river, where she killed two more wounded soldiers. She shot one with her revolver and dispatched the other with her sheath knife. Behind her, other women began to mutilate Teat. They drove a picket pin through his testicles into the ground, slashed his body, and cut off his penis and stuffed it into his mouth.80
ABOUT TWENTY YARDS from the river, Rutten saw the buckskinned McIntosh having some difficulty. He had become separated from his orderly, who held his horse, Puff, and had appropriated one of his troopers’ — to his great dismay, since the animal refused his lead. The Indians were soon upon “Tosh” in force, twenty or thirty of them circling the half-breed lieutenant. They pulled him from his mount and shot him repeatedly until he fell dead.81 Rutten frantically galloped right through them and followed the command toward the water.
Three troopers became separated from the command and galloped upriver toward the original crossing. One soldier turned east and escaped into the timber along the river, while the other two continued southward. One turned right and made for the hills to the west, where he climbed a draw before he was overtaken and killed. The other reached the timber near the first ford, dismounted, and made a stand, wielding his six-shooter. The Indians surrounded and killed him.82 He was joined in death by fifteen of Reno’s men. The Major and his troops had been forced past one large loop of the river and around another. At one point, about twenty troopers broke off from the column and headed straight into the second loop, splashing through the water twice. The Indians pursued them. Only five soldiers survived to rejoin their comrades.83
The stream was forty feet wide and four feet deep at the point Reno reached, and the near bank was high, five or six feet above the water. The far bank was even higher — eight feet at least — and jutted sharply into the river. The only easy egress was a narrow buffalo ford that angled into the fast-rushing water and that quickly became clogged with frantic men and mounts trying to climb out. As the column reached the riverbank, the horses jumped in and surged across. Several men lost their seats in the process and had to swim across. Indians gathered on the bank and the bluffs above and shot down into the roiling mass of soldiers and horses. Streams of blood soon streaked the water. Some warriors jumped into the strong current to pull men from their mounts. One used a captured Springfield to club two troopers off their horses.84
Most of the Crow and Arikara scouts at the tail end of the column veered left to ford the river below the soldiers. Bobtail Bull made it to the east side and climbed up to the flat. There a Cheyenne warrior charged toward the Arikara leader, and the two fired their rifles at the same moment. Both pitched off their mounts, dead.85 Another Arikara, Little Brave, took a gunshot to the right shoulder but managed to cross the river downstream, take cover behind a low knoll, and begin firing at the enemy warriors. He killed one before several Cheyennes circled around and rushed him from the rear, beating and stabbing him to death.86
Just as Hodgson — “the Jack of Clubs,” as the enlisted men called the jaunty young officer87 — plunged into the stream, a shot felled his horse. Hodgson dismounted and tried to stand, the water around him red with blood. He reached for a nearby trooper’s stirrup but couldn’t catch it, then lunged for Private Morris’s, begging, “For God’s sake, don’t leave me here — I am shot through both legs.” As Hodgson seized Morris’s stirrup with both hands, Morris grabbed the lieutenant by the collar. Ahead of him two troopers were trying to climb through the narrow cut; Morris yelled at them to hurry. One made it out of the water, only to be killed. The next made it up safely. Morris’s horse lunged more than halfway up the bank before Hodgson was shot fatally in the head and slipped free.88
Varnum had been one of the last to leave the woods. He, too, was surprised to see the column veering left away from the enemy. His Kentucky thoroughbred quickly carried him the half mile to the river. By then he was near the head of the retreating column. Just before reaching the stream, he stopped and tried to control the frenzied abandonment, yelling, “Hold on, men, what’s the use of this? We’ve got to get into shape to fight it out. You can’t run away from Injuns.”
On his right, a voice interrupted. “I’m in command here, sir,” Reno announced.89
Reno may have been in command, but he had not been in control for some time. He halted on the near bank only a moment before jumping his horse into the cold water and crossing, again neglecting to order any covering fire for those men bringing up the rear. The Major scaled the far bank and crossed a scrub-covered flat area of a hundred yards or so. Then he scrambled up a ravine that led up along a series of steep bluffs, which ran back a quarter mile from the river and two hundred feet above it. The remnants of his battalion followed him, and the narrow exit from the stream was widened when enough horses’ hooves caved in the earth on either side. Under continuous fire, few troopers stopped after reaching the east bank. Instead, they goaded their weary mounts over to the bluffs and began the steep climb up one of the ravines.
Some men dismounted to lead their panting horses to the summit, while others grabbed the tails of their mounts as they struggled up the steep incline. Most who remained seated held on to their horses’ necks for dear life. At least
one exhausted horse refused to budge another inch even after its owner jabbed the trembling animal with his gun and delivered a final, furious kick before grabbing his carbine and attacking the bluff on foot.90
Varnum and his orderly began climbing a ravine a few ridges downstream but stopped when they heard men yelling at them and pointing to Indians lying in wait near its crest. They descended and found another draw that led to the top. Not far ahead of them were Reno and Moylan. On the way up, the orderly was hit, and Varnum dismounted to kneel beside him. He heard the men yelling again and turned to see Dr. DeWolf and his orderly taking the route he had tried first. The Indians above were training their rifles on them. As a teenage Corporal at Second Bull Run, James DeWolf had been wounded badly enough to be discharged with a pension. He had resigned his pension to reenlist as an artilleryman and had fought out the war. The next day, June 26, would have marked a year since his graduation from Harvard Medical School.91 Below on the flats, Wallace and Reno’s orderly, Private Edward Davern, fired on the hostiles,92 but before DeWolf reached the summit, he was shot dead.
About two-thirds of the way up a ravine, Private Morris stopped to catch his breath and looked back down the valley. Bodies of soldiers and horses marked a bloody path from the timber to the water below. Dead troopers floated down the river. Smoke reached toward the sky where the Indians had set the prairie on fire in an attempt to flush the soldiers from the woods.
Morris said to another Private a few feet away, “That was pretty hot down there.”
“You’ll get used to it, shavetail,” said the trooper, an Englishman named Gordon who had a few years’ service on Morris. A moment later, there was a volley of gunfire from a group of Indians on the bluffs to the right, and Gordon fell dead with a bullet through his neck. Another man near him, named Bill Meyer, was killed by a shot through his eye. Morris received a round in his breast but managed to grab his horse’s stirrup and reached the top, bleeding profusely.93
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