Wooden Leg, noted Northern Cheyenne warrior.
White Bull, nephew to Sitting Bull and a great warrior in his own right.
Hunkpapa warrior Rain in the Face.
The three members of the Reno Court of Inquiry. Above Left: Col. John King, presiding officer. (Courtesy U.S. American Military History Institute) Above Middle: Col. Wesley Merritt, friend and rival of Custer’s. (Courtesy U.S. American Military History Institute) Above Right: Lt. Col. William Royall. (Courtesy U.S. American Military History Institute)
Capt. Frederick Benteen with Lyman Gilbert, Reno’s counsel. (Courtesy U.S. American Military History Institute)
Lt. Jesse Lee, Recorder of the Reno Court of Inquiry. (Courtesy U.S. American Military History Institute)
A newspaper cut, from a photograph, of deliberations of the Reno Court of Inquiry. The three members of the Court — Merritt, King, and Royall — sit at left. The stenographer, H. H. Hollister, sits at the center table. Recorder Lee questions Lt. DeRudio at right, and Frederick Whittaker takes notes in the right foreground. Reno sits facing left at the window at right center.
Officers of the Seventh Cavalry, including four survivors of the Little Bighorn battle, a few days after the Wounded Knee massacre. Seated in front (left to right): Capt. Winfield Edgerly, Capt. Charles Ilsley, Capt. Henry Jackson, Capt. Charles Varnum, Col. James Forsyth, Maj. Samuel Whitside, Capt. Myles Moylan, Capt. Edward Godfrey, unidentified.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The following individuals and institutions were unfailingly gracious and generous with their time and knowledge: Tamara Vidros, Knight Library, University of Oregon; Shannon Bowen, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming; Irene Adams, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University; Marty Frogg, Oglala Lakota College; Anthony Tedeschi, the Lilly Library, Indiana University; Terry Black, Indiana State Library; Sister Ruth Boedigheimer, Sisters of the Order of Saint Benedict; Susan A. Harmon, Putnam County Public Library; Ardys Milke, Beatrice Public Library; Joyce Martin, Labriola American Indian Data Center, Arizona State University; Clifford Johnson and George Miles, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University; Patsy Tate, Washington State University; Ellen Zazzarino, Denver Public Library; Heidi Kennedy, McCracken Research Library; Liza Posas, Braun Research Library; Jelena Radicevic and Susanna Garza, Chicago Public Library; Ken Robison, Joel F. Overholser Historical Research Center; Debbie Vaughan at the Chicago Historical Society; Evelyn L. James, Historical Society of Dauphin County; Al Johnson, at Fort Abraham Lincoln, who in his role of Sgt. John P. Ryan personifies the spirit of the Seventh Cavalry; the solicitous staff at the United States American Military History Institute, especially Art Bergeron; the helpful and always patient librarians at the University of Oklahoma Western Collections; the Denver Public Library; the Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin; and the Manuscript Reading Room at the New York Public Library. At the excellent DeGolyer Research Library, Russell Martin, Director, and Kathy Rome were always gracious and accommodating. The folks at Dallas’s J. Erik Jonsson Library, a superior example of its kind, were just as helpful, especially the mistress of Inter Library Loan, Marilyn Jackson; librarians David Compos, Patrick Guzik, Terri Huff, Paul Oswalt, Sally Peden, Pat Tackett, and Heather Williams; and Lloyd Bockstruck and his staff at one of the best genealogy centers in the country. The latter two institutions deserve particular praise, as I was an almost daily visitor/pest at one or the other for more than three years.
For reading parts of the manuscript in rough form and/or rendering invaluable advice and assistance, I thank Robert Utley, dean of western historians; Cheyenne expert David Halaas; the all-knowing Bruce Liddic; editor-cum-expert Elisabeth Kimber; Mike O’Keefe, magnanimous with his time, knowledge, and the use of his superlative library; George Getschow and Frank Coffey, editors extraordinaire; the Reverend Vincent Heier, owner of the greatest Custeriana collection, period; and John Doerner, historian at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, for being generous with his time and expertise. Others much more knowledgeable than I in various fields who patiently answered an endless array of questions and/or were helpful in many other ways included Sandy Barnard, Louise Barnett, Joan Croy, Brice Custer, Chip Custer, Ephriam Dickson, Jeffrey Eger, David Evans, Sam Fore, Gary Gilbert, Jerry Greene, Kenneth Hammer, Dale Kosman, Mike Koury, Shirley Leckie, Darrell Linthacum, Elizabeth McClain Lockwood, Ryan Lord, John Mackintosh, Billy Markland, Jim May, Frank Mercatante, Diane Merkel, Greg Michno, Ron Nichols, Lee Noyes, Jack Pennington, Tim Phelps, Brian Pohanka, Glen Swanson, and Jeff Wilson.
Others I have need to thank: Chip Watts, owner of the Seventh Ranch, for the wonderful ride over much of the battlefield on horse-back — now I know how those new recruits felt after a long day in the saddle; Superintendent Darrell Cook of the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, for permitting me to walk the battlefield, from Deep Ravine to Custer Hill and beyond; saddle pal Mike O’Keefe, again, for accompanying me on those two treks; and B. J. Robbins, my agent, who is also my friend.
An author writes the words, but to make of them an actual book — especially one as elegant as this one — takes a talented team. At Little, Brown, that includes Michael Pietsch, publisher, who believed in this book from the start; Geoff Shandler, my editor, who performed as thorough and as pitch-perfect an edit as I’ve ever seen; Junie Dahn, his assistant, who rendered an excellent line edit and an endless amount of assistance; copyeditor Barbara Jatkola, who gave it that final polish; proofreader Katie Blatt, who rendered an underappreciated but valuable service; cartographer Jeff Ward, whose superb maps are everything I envisioned and more; Renato Stanisic, whose interior design made it elegant within; and Nneka Bennett, whose gorgeous cover design made it elegant without. I thank you all.
Finally, my wife, Judith, and my daughter, Rachel, for putting up with me. Ditto for Caleb and Katie, cat and dog of the first order. Thank you one and all.
Any mistakes, of course, are mine and mine alone.
James Donovan
NOTES
The following abbreviations are used in the notes. These and other sources are listed in the bibliography.
Camp BYU Notes William M. Camp Papers, Brigham Young University
Camp IU Notes William M. Camp Papers, Indiana University
Ricker Tablets Eli Ricker Collection, Nebraska State Historical Society
PROLOGUE: A GOOD DAY TO DIE
1.The description of the Crow’s Nest scout is based on the following sources: the accounts of the Arikara scouts in Libby, The Arikara Narrative of Custer’s Campaign; Lieutenant Charles Varnum’s story in Carroll, Custer’s Chief of Scouts; and the story of the Crow scouts as told by them in Dixon, The Vanishing Race, and Graham, The Custer Myth. Varnum, in his several narratives, claimed to have ridden seventy miles that day, but he may have exaggerated somewhat. Though he never mentioned it, he probably changed horses sometime during the day. (back to text)
2.Boyer’s diminutive stature is from the Joseph White Cow Bull interview, McCracken Research Library; Gray, Custer’s Last Campaign, 398; and Coughlan, Varnum, 10. Other accounts have an Arikara awaken Varnum. (back to text)
CHAPTER ONE: THE DIVINE INJUNCTION
Chapter title and epigraph: Bryant, History of the Great Massacre by the Sioux Indians, Minnesota: North Star Publishing, 1882.
1.Myers, “Roster of Known Hostile Indians at the Battle of the Little Big Horn,” 2; Stewart, Custer’s Luck, 82. (back to text)
2.Utley and Washburn, Indian Wars, 24. (back to text)
3.Brandon, Indians, 196–98; Utley and Washburn, 23. (back to text)
4.For a thoughtful discussion of this point, see Brandon, 253–54: “In a word, the Indian world was devoted to living, the European world to getting.” (back to text)
5.Merk, History of the Westward Movement, 67–69. (back to text)
6.For specific instances, see Hinsdale, “The Western Land Policy of the British Government,” 223. (back to text)
> 7.Quoted in Capps, The Indians, 157. (back to text)
8.Ironically, before the Revolutionary War, Washington, the retired officer and Virginia planter, had been in the forefront of those claiming veterans’ land warrants (grants of land given in lieu of money). He also bought those of other veterans and helped to found the Mississippi Land Company, a venture into wilderness real estate. By 1770 he had laid claim to 20,000 acres in the West and sent settlers there to hold his claim (Clary, Adopted Son, 31). (back to text)
9.There is some doubt as to whether Little Turtle was present at Fallen Timbers. The Indian forces were badly directed, unlike the impressively led triumph on the Wabash River in 1791 dubbed St. Clair’s Defeat. (back to text)
10.Stephen H. Long, quoted in Prucha, “Indian Removal and the Great American Desert,” 299. (back to text)
11. Prucha, “Andrew Jackson’s Indian Policy,” 532. (back to text)
12. Ibid., 532, 537. Jackson acquired a reputation as an Indian hater, but despite his hard-line stance, that seems a harsh assessment. He once took a year-old Indian orphan about to be killed by Indians into his home to be raised along with his adopted son, Andrew. He named the boy Lincoyer and referred to him as one of “my two sons.” He may have initially intended Lincoyer as merely a playmate for Andrew, but Jackson grew to care for the young Indian and even aspired to send him to West Point. Lincoyer died at age sixteen, probably of tuberculosis. That relationship is telling, for Jackson consistently treated Indians as children, to be punished harshly when they were “bad.” But chiefs of the Five Civilized Tribes often called on him at his home, the Hermitage, for support in their relations with the government; they considered him harsh but fair and honest. See Remini, Andrew Jackson and His Indian Wars, 211–12, 228; and James, Andrew Jackson: The Border Captain, 311, 357. (back to text)
13. Prucha, American Indian Treaties, 167. In his landmark decision Johnson v. McIntosh (1823) and other cases, Chief Justice John Marshall recognized the right of native possession of land and thus established the basic rule of U.S. jurisprudence in regard to Indian land and landownership. (back to text)
14. Boyer, The Oxford Companion to United States History, 379. (back to text)
15. Act of 1834, quoted ibid., 7. (back to text)
16. “White persons crossed at will over the Indian’s lands, killed his game, seized his land, and even entered his reservation to sell him whisky and steal his annuities” (Welty, “The Indian Policy of the Army,” 371). (back to text)
17. Jackson, quoted in Peters, Indian Battles and Skirmishes, 6. (back to text)
18. Smith, “The Bozeman: Trail to Death and Glory,” 35. (back to text)
19. Journalist John O’Sullivan coined the phrase to justify U.S. expansion into Texas, Oregon, and Mexico. Boyer, 470. (back to text)
20. Lee, “Lieutenant Phil Sheridan’s Romance in Oregon”; Lockley, “Reminiscences of Martha E. Gilliam Collins,” 367–68; Cooper, “Benton County Pioneer-Historical Society,” 83. (back to text)
21. It seems likely that Sidnayoh also bore Sheridan a child, a girl named Emma. See Olney, Who Are You and Who Am I? 21–22, and Sheller, The Name Was Olney, 46–47. (back to text)
22. Hutton, Phil Sheridan and His Army, 8. (back to text)
23. Ellis, The History of Our Country from the Discovery of America to the Present Time, 1483. Sheridan was replying to a Comanche chief, Tosawi, who had just surrendered his band of Indians and said, “Tosawi, good Indian.” (back to text)
24. Utley, The Indian Frontier of the American West, 52. (back to text)
25. This description of the Sioux derives chiefly from White, “The Winning of the West,” and Hassrick, The Sioux. (back to text)
26. Lazarus, Black Hills, White Justice, 18. (back to text)
27. Ibid., 41–46. (back to text)
28. Thomas Fitzpatrick, quoted ibid., 63. (back to text)
29. Folwell, A History of Minnesota, vol. 2, 232. (back to text)
30. Peters, 7. (back to text)
31. Camp IU Notes, 437. (back to text)
32. Ibid., 336. (back to text)
33. See Calitri, “Give Me Eighty Men,” for a well-sourced reinterpretation of Fetterman and his ill-fated band. (back to text)
34. This summary of Crazy Horse’s life is based on Sajna’s fine Crazy Horse; Hardorff, The Oglala Lakota Crazy Horse; Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks; Hinman, “Oglala Sources on the Life of Crazy Horse”; Joseph C. Porter, “Crazy Horse, Lakota Leadership, and the Fort Laramie Treaty,” in Rankin, Legacy; and Eli S. Ricker’s interviews in the Ricker Tablets. (back to text)
35. Carroll, Who Was This Man Ricker? 48. (back to text)
36. He Dog, quoted in Sajna, 29. (back to text)
37. Captain Jesse M. Lee wrote that he was not over five feet six inches (Lee to Camp, May 24, 1910, Camp BYU Collection), but others have said he was five feet eight inches. (back to text)
38. Hinman, 40. (back to text)
39. Mrs. Charles Tackett, quoted in Sajna, 29. (back to text)
40. Smits, “The Frontier Army,” 322–23. (back to text)
41. Utley, “Origins of the Great Sioux War,” 49. (back to text)
42. Vestal, Sitting Bull, 110. (back to text)
43. Thorndike, The Sherman Letters, 321. (back to text)
44. George H. Stuart, quoted in McFeely, Grant, 239. (back to text)
45. Ibid., 306. (back to text)
46. The 1870 army appropriations bill was amended to prohibit military officers from holding civil appointments (largely to regain the advantages of patronage). Grant turned all seventy-three agencies over to church groups, a flagrant violation of the nation’s doctrine of church-state separation, which was ignored at the time. Smith, Grant, 528. (back to text)
47. Welty, 371. (back to text)
48. Utley, “The Celebrated Peace Policy of General Grant,” 130. (back to text)
49. Prucha, The Great Father, 164–65. Another reason was a growing movement to treat Indians as wards of the government and not equals. (back to text)
50. One Methodist minister, Dr. Wright, who was appointed Crow Indian agent in 1873, “had always been a good and honest man, until he got into the Indian Department. Dr. Wright’s wife . . . was anxious to make money” (Lyndel Meikle, “No Paper Trail: Crooked Agents on the Crow Reservation, 1874–1878,” in Walter, Speaking Ill of the Dead, 26). (back to text)
51. For a convincing discussion of this, see Smits. (back to text)
52. Lee, Fort Meade and the Black Hills, 2. (back to text)
53. Krause and Olson, Prelude to Glory, 268. If the search for gold was an official directive of the column, there is no record of it. All of Sheridan’s official communications to Custer mention the search for a suitable location for a fort as its purpose. Custer’s direct superior, Brigadier General Alfred Terry, denied that the expedition’s purpose was the search for gold: “Plunder is not the objective of this expedition. . . . It seeks neither gold, timber nor arable land” (ibid., 3). Also, it’s unlikely Custer would have had to pay the two accompanying miners out of his own pocket, or specifically request a geologist (who would go on to disagree publicly with the expedition commander’s positive reports of the discovery of gold). Finally, the army sent another expedition into the Black Hills the next year to verify Custer’s claims, further proof that the goal of the 1874 expedition was not to find gold. For a convincing discussion of this point, see Jackson, Custer’s Gold, 82 and chap. 3, “The Scientific Corps.” (back to text)
54. Custer to Barrett, May 19, 1874, quoted in Frost, “The Black Hills Expedition of 1874,” 11. (back to text)
55. Ibid., 3. (back to text)
56. Ibid., 24. (back to text)
57. Hutton, Phil Sheridan and His Army, 168. For further confirmation hat gold was found, as Custer asserted in one report, “among he roots of the grass,” see William H. Wood, “Reminiscences of the lack Hills Expedition,” in Cozzens, Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, vol. 4, 178. (back to text)
58. Custer, quoted in Slotkin, The Fatal Environment, 365. (back to text)
59. Kime, The Black Hills Journals of Colonel Richard Irving Dodge, 11. (back to text)
60. Lazarus, 78. (back to text)
61. Lone Horn, quoted in Sajna, 268. (back to text)
62. Crook, quoted in Andrist, The Long Death, 247. (back to text)
63. Utley, The Lance and the Shield, 126. (back to text)
64. Hutton, Phil Sheridan and His Army, 299. (back to text)
65. Andrist, 85. (back to text)
66. Lazarus, 83–84; and Gray, Centennial Campaign, 23–31. (back to text)
67. Quoted in Lazarus, 85. White Bull, outstanding Lakota warrior and nephew of Sitting Bull, said that runners from the agency did not reach them to tell them to come to the agency (Hardorff, Indian Views of the Custer Fight, 162). (back to text)
68. Sheridan, quoted in Gray, Centennial Campaign, 33. One agent requested an extension of the deadline. It seems that a mixed band of Lakotas had attacked a friendly tribe on the upper Missouri. This assault had prevented the agent’s representatives from reaching the other hostiles (John Burke, Standing Rock agent, to Commissioner of Indian Affairs J. Q. Smith, January 30, 1876, in Fay, Military Engagements Between United States Troops and Plains Indians). No extension was granted. (back to text)
69. Stewart, Custer’s Luck, 80. About three hundred lodges of northern Sioux would come in to Standing Rock Agency in late February, with the promise of more to come (Anderson, “A Challenge to Brown’s Sioux Indian Wars Thesis,” 40–49). (back to text)
70. “Annual Report of Lt. General Sheridan, 1874,” cited in Merkel, Unravelling the Custer Enigma, 86. (back to text)
71. Beadle, Western Wilds, 550. (back to text)
CHAPTER TWO: “THE BOY GENERAL OF THE GOLDEN LOCK”
Chapter title: quoted in Wert, Custer, 85.
A Terrible Glory Page 45