47. Nichols, Reno Court of Inquiry, 86. Both Gerard and Herendeen testified that they heard Custer verbally deliver this order and his follow-up about taking the scouts (ibid., 35, 80–81). So did Sergeant Thomas O’Neill (O’Neill to Godfrey, August 17, 1908, Hagner Collection) and Sergeant Daniel Kanipe (Hammer, Custer in ’76, 92). There are variations in the exact wording of these orders. (back to text)
48. Libby, 159. (back to text)
49. Graham, The Custer Myth, 13. (back to text)
50. Hardorff, On the Little Bighorn with Walter Camp, 53, 101. (back to text)
51. Varnum to W. M. Camp, April 14, 1909, Camp BYU Collection. (back to text)
52. Carroll, I, Varnum, 21. (back to text)
53. Libby, 122. (back to text)
54. Hammer, Custer in ’76, 84. (back to text)
55. Utley, The Reno Court of Inquiry, 237, 312, 332. Herendeen testified that they reached the river in five or six minutes (Graham, The Reno Court of Inquiry: Abstract, 81). (back to text)
56. Hammer, Custer in ’76, 148. (back to text)
57. There is no testimony that mentions Keogh returning from the river, but when Gerard galloped on the back trail to notify Custer of the enemy’s actions, he found only Cooke. I have taken this to mean that Keogh either left earlier than Cooke or outdistanced him enough so that Gerard didn’t notice Keogh when he found Cooke. (back to text)
58. Hammer, Custer in ’76, 84. (back to text)
59. Graham, The Custer Myth, 263. (back to text)
60. Nichols, Reno Court of Inquiry, 114. (back to text)
61. Hammer, Custer in ’76, 112. At least six troopers (Roy, Brinkerhoff, Donohue, Petring, O’Neill, and Newell), three officers (Varnum, Wallace, and DeRudio), and one scout (Gerard) later claimed to have seen Custer on the bluffs. Brinkerhoff said that they saw him once or twice on the charge down the valley, and the men waved their hats and cheered (see note 78 for source). (back to text)
62. Libby, 172–73; Graham, The Reno Court of Inquiry: Abstract, 38, 44. (back to text)
63. Snedeker, “The Porters,” 35. (back to text)
64. Rickey, Forty Miles a Day on Beans and Hay, 58–59. (back to text)
65. Graham, The Custer Myth, 345. Porter at least was wearing his, since his bloody buckskin blouse was later found in the deserted Indian village with a bullet hole in the breast area. (back to text)
66. A few months before the battle, Custer attended a luncheon in his honor in New York, during which he was heard to express exactly these sentiments. Perkins, Trails, Rails and War, 193. (back to text)
67. Ibid., 13. For his superb reconstruction of Custer’s trail to Medicine Tail Coulee, I am beholden to Richard Hardorff’s “Shadows Along the Little Big Horn,” in Hutton, Garry Owen 1976. (back to text)
68. Hardorff, On the Little Bighorn with Walter Camp, 53, 101. (back to text)
69. Daniel Kanipe said that it was “about a half mile from the ford of [the] Little Big Horn to the place where we turned to the right.” Quoted ibid., 7. (back to text)
70. However, two individuals, Curly the Crow scout and Private Theodore Goldin, claimed that they were dispatched about this time with messages to Reno. But Curly’s story cannot be reconciled with other independent sightings of him. For example, Private Augustus DeVoto, who was with the pack train, stated: “We passed a tepee in which there was a dead Indian. Presently we began to hear firing. Soon afterward we met a Crow Indian coming from the direction General Custer had gone. He could not talk much English. We asked him how about the soldiers. He made motions with his hands saying, ‘Much soldiers down,’ no doubt meaning killed” (Schoenberger, “A Trooper with Custer,” 70). John Burkman also saw Curly two miles east of the Little Bighorn with the Arikara scouts, driving a captured herd of Sioux horses and mules (Camp BYU Notes, Reel 5, 55). Since Curly was the only Crow traveling alone, he did not remain with Custer and Boyer and then escape by riding to the east, as he said in at least one account. Goldin was an incorrigible liar who, until his death fifty-nine years later, told plenty of stories that were provably false. One example: In a letter written years later, Goldin stated that he was in Chicago during the Reno court of inquiry and talked to all the Seventh Cavalry officers there, including Captains Thomas French and Thomas Weir. Neither was anywhere near Chicago at the time — French was confined to quarters during his own court-martial at Fort Lincoln, and Weir died in December 1876. (back to text)
71. Nichols, Reno Court of Inquiry, 397. (back to text)
72. Hammer, Custer in ’76, 188. (back to text)
73. Ibid., 388. (back to text)
74. In other accounts, Sergeant Daniel Kanipe said that he believed the reason Custer turned north was that the General had seen the band of Indians. See Hammer, Custer in ’76, 92; Graham, The Custer Myth, 249; and O’Neil, GarryOwen Tidbits, vol. 8, 27. (back to text)
75. Camp BYU Notes, Reel 5, 463. (back to text)
76. Trooper John Sivertsen claimed that Reno immediately ordered a gallop (Coffeen, Teepee Book 2, 579), but this is contradicted by all other accounts, and other parts of his account are suspect (see note 78). (back to text)
77. Barnard, Ten Years with Custer, 291; New York Herald, July 8, 1876. (back to text)
78. “California Veteran Writes ‘True Story’ of Battle of Little Big Horn in 1876,” undated newspaper story, probably Billings Gazette, clipping file, Billings Public Library; Taylor, With Custer on the Little Bighorn, 36. I have combined Brinkerhoff’s account of the men cheering (see note 61) with Taylor’s account of Reno shouting, as they make sense together. Brinkerhoff, in the first account listed above, also said, “Although he had three miles farther to go we were sure he would be at the lower end of the village to help us in the fight,” which suggests that at least some of the men knew what Custer was planning to do. Sivertsen, oddly enough, wrote that Reno encouraged the men’s yelling (see note 76). (back to text)
79. Nichols, In Custer’s Shadow, 184–85. Reno claimed later that he had only 112 men plus the scouts. Other counts vary. Historian William Ghent counted 146, and latter-day researcher John Gray claimed 175 (140 soldiers and 35 scouts). Another recent researcher, Joe Sills Jr., arrived at 165, which seems the most accurate to me. Since several of the Arikaras were concerned with a small horse herd on the right bank of the river, I have deduced 150 men actually involved in Reno’s charge. (back to text)
CHAPTER TWELVE: THE CHARGE
Epigraph: Smyth, quoted in Brady, Indian Fights and Fighters, 66.
1. Gregory Urwin, “Was the Past Prologue? Meditations on Custer’s Tactics at the Little Big Horn,” in 7th Annual Symposium, 31. (back to text)
2. Hunt, I Fought with Custer, 82. (back to text)
3. Hammer, Custer in ’76, 93–94. (back to text)
4. Hardorff, Camp, Custer, and the Little Bighorn, 86. (back to text)
5. Hammer, Custer in ’76, 232. (back to text)
6. Bateman, “Female Casualties at the Little Big Horn,” 121; Graham, The Custer Myth, 260. (back to text)
7. Libby, The Arikara Narrative of Custer’s Campaign, 96. (back to text)
8. Overfield, The Little Big Horn, 1876, 60–62; Hardorff, “Some Recollections of Custer,” 18. (back to text)
9. Liddic, Vanishing Victory, 63; Hammer, Custer in ’76, 66; Utley, The Reno Court of Inquiry, 402. (back to text)
10. Brininstool, Troopers with Custer, 48. Later eyewitness estimates of the enemy force ranged from 50 to 500 and even more. A close reading of these estimates reveals a certain consistency: it appears that 40 to 50 Indians could be seen harassing the troops several hundred yards away, and many more occasionally could be glimpsed beyond them through the thick dust. Scout Billy Cross stated that about 1,000 Indians attacked Reno (New York Times, July 13, 1876), and Sergeant Ferdinand Culbertson testified that there were between 1,000 and 1,200 (Utley, The Reno Court of Inquiry, 305). Moylan said that there were no more than 600 to 700 Indians (Camp IU Notes, 112), and Varnum testified:
“I don’t believe there were less than three or four hundred, and there may have been a great many more” (Carroll, Custer’s Chief of Scouts, 124). (back to text)
11. Michno, Encyclopedia of Indian Wars, 258–59. (back to text)
12. Brady, 402. (back to text)
13. Graham, The Reno Court of Inquiry: Abstract, 213. (back to text)
14. Ibid., 40. Wallace said that they got within 100 yards of the village (ibid., 18), but no other witness mentioned this degree of proximity. Porter testified that the nearest tepee was a quarter mile away from where he could view the village through an opening in the woods (Nichols, Reno Court of Inquiry, 194), though on the next day of testimony, he said that the command was about a mile from the main village (ibid., 196). Scout Billy Cross said that Reno got within 400 yards of the village (New York Times, July 13, 1876). Private Edward Davern estimated that it was 1,000 yards to the nearest tepee from the glade in the timber (Nichols, Reno Court of Inquiry, 334). Corporal John Hammon claimed that the battalion dismounted about three-fourths of a mile from the village and advanced on foot to within 200 yards of it (Deland, The Sioux Wars, vol.1, 483). (back to text)
15. Nichols, Reno Court of Inquiry, 48, 229; Chandler, Of Garryowen in Glory, 69; Libby, 173. (back to text)
16. Nichols, Reno Court of Inquiry, 382; Graham, The Custer Myth, 344. The horse holder assigned to care for the mounts was usually the oldest and most experienced of the four. (back to text)
17. Nichols, Reno Court of Inquiry, 106, 122. (back to text)
18. The carbine extractor problem did exist, though it probably had little impact on the outcome of the battle. DeRudio testified that “the men had to take their knives to extract cartridges after firing 6 to 10 rounds” (ibid., 347), but “the men” seems to have been an exaggeration. Private Daniel Newell mentioned the problem (Carroll, The Sunshine Magazine Articles), as did Sergeant William Heyn (Hardorff, Camp, Custer, and the Little Bighorn, 61). See also Hedren, “Carbine Extractor Failure at the Little Big Horn,” and Reno’s official report concerning the problem in Overfield, 60–62. (back to text)
19. Graham, The Custer Myth, 290; Utley, The Reno Court of Inquiry, 313. (back to text)
20. Camp BYU Notes, Reel 5, 445. (back to text)
21. Graham, The Custer Myth, 15. (back to text)
22. Ibid., 12–25; Hammer, Custer in ’76, 174–75. Readers knowledgeable about this part of the battle will have noticed that Curly is uncharacteristically absent from this point on. Ever since the battle, writers and researchers, from Lieutenant Bradley to John Gray, have succumbed to the romance of the young Crow scout and his claim, in many different accounts, to being the only survivor of Custer’s Last Stand — not to mention the comfort factor they have derived from his detail-rich accounts, which provide the only “Custer” voice beyond the point at which trumpeter John Martin was dispatched. But I find his many stories — from carrying a message to Reno (and even delivering a reply!) to fighting hand to hand with a Sioux warrior in the Calhoun area — irreconcilable and highly unreliable far beyond the vagaries of time, translation, and memory. In his last account, given to his friend interpreter Russell White Bear, he refuted his earlier stories and claimed that he left Custer’s command somewhere in Medicine Tail Coulee after Custer had dispatched Yates’s battalion down the Little Bighorn. There are also several other accounts, from Arikara and Crow scouts to a soldier with the pack train, that place him far away from where he claimed to be. All three of the other Crow scouts with Custer’s battalion denied that Curly rode with them past Reno Creek. Hairy Moccasin said in one interview that “Curley left before Custer separated from Reno” (Hardorff, Camp, Custer, and the Little Bighorn, 59). White Man Runs Him said, “There were only three of us, Hairy Moccasin, Goes Ahead and myself. We did not see Curley. . . . The Sioux were coming up fast. Curley would have been one of the live ones because he was with the Arikarees and the horses. . . . Curley left us up on Reno Creek. I do not like to quarrel with Curley, but that is the truth” (Graham, The Custer Myth, 15, 18). He also said, “I have heard many people say that Curley was the only survivor of this battle, but Curley was not in the battle. Just about the time Reno attacked the village, Curley with some Arikara scouts ran off a big band of Sioux ponies and rode away with them. Some of the Arikaras, whom I met afterwards, told me that Curley went with them as far as the Junction (where the Rosebud joins the Yellowstone)” (ibid., 24). General Hugh Scott, an indefatigable and conscientious Indian researcher, wrote after spending time with Custer’s Crow scouts, “Goes-Ahead is sure Curley, the Crow scout, was not with him [Custer]. . . . At this point both Curley and Black Fox, Arikara scout, disappeared” (quoted ibid., 20). Scott also wrote, “Curley & the other scouts do not agree with each other most disagreeing over Curley’s movements. . . . They [the other three Crows] say Curley did not come that far but left about the time the Rees [Arikaras] did. . . . The three Crows against Curley hang together. White-Man-Runs-Him impressed me with his honesty by his manner & I believe Curley left long before he says he did” (Scott to Luther Hare, November 28, 1919, quoted in O’Neil, GarryOwen Tidbits, vol. 4, 8–9). See also Hardorff, “Shadows Along the Little Big Horn,” in Hutton, Garry Owen 1976, and Joe Sills Jr., “The Crow Scouts: Their Contributions to Understanding the Little Big Horn Battle,” 5th Annual Symposium. The most likely account of Curly’s doings was probably the one he gave to a clerk named Fred Miller at the Crow Agency, in which he said that he left Custer’s battalion long before it got near the upper reaches of Medicine Tail Coulee (Marquis, Custer on the Little Bighorn, 55–56). Custer’s striker, John Burkman, told a writer that Curly’s story was “pure fiction. . . . [Burkman] said that about two miles from where they joined Reno, they saw Curly and Billy Cross, a halfbreed and some other scouts, driving along a herd of 80 horses, with Sioux following them. Officers told them to let the horses go as it would draw all the Sioux on them. Curly caught a buckskin horse with a white face and let the others go and the Sioux surrounded the main bunch and drove them back. This in Burkman’s opinion was sufficient evidence that Curly left Custer before the fighting began, if he was with him at all” (Hardin [Montana] Tribune Herald, April 1, 1932). (back to text)
23. Carroll, Custer’s Chief of Scouts, 65, 137. (back to text)
24. Ibid., 142. (back to text)
25. Hammer, Custer in ’76, 232. (back to text)
26. Hardorff, Cheyenne Memories, 152. (back to text)
27. Robinson, A History of the Dakota, 430–31; Hubbard and Holcombe, Minnesota in Three Centuries, 267–68; Hardorff, Indian Views of the Custer Fight, 135. (back to text)
28. Marquis, Custer on the Little Bighorn, 37. The Sioux and Cheyenne accounts overwhelmingly depict a camp surprised by the attack. (back to text)
29. This account of Wooden Leg’s participation is drawn from Marquis, Wooden Leg, 215–19. (back to text)
30. Powell, People of the Sacred Mountain, 1009. (back to text)
31. Stands in Timber, Cheyenne Memories, 197; Stands in Timber Manuscript, 356–57. (back to text)
32. Box 104, Folder 2, Campbell Collection. (back to text)
33. Hardorff, Indian Views of the Custer Fight, 144. (back to text)
34. Brady, 402. (back to text)
35. Graham, The Reno Court of Inquiry: Abstract, 73. (back to text)
36. Nichols, Reno Court of Inquiry, 53, 249. (back to text)
37. Hammer, Custer in ’76, 232; Camp IU Notes, 775; Camp BYU Notes, Reel 4. (back to text)
38. Mangum, “Reno’s Battalion,” 5; Carroll, The Court-Martial of Thomas M. French, 72; Atlanta Journal, May 24, 1897. (back to text)
39. Barnard, Ten Years with Custer, 293. Three troopers claimed that O’Hara was killed on the skirmish line (see Hammer, Custer in ’76, 118, 143, 148). (back to text)
40. Carroll, The Sunshine Magazine Articles, 11. (back to text)
41. Brininstool, Troopers with Custer, 105. Several Indian accounts mention this adjunct portion of the larg
er village; see also Brust, “Lt. Oscar Long’s Early Map Details Terrain,” 6, 10. (back to text)
42. Coughlan, Varnum, 13. (back to text)
43. Sergeant Ferdinand Culbertson later testified, “I have had men tell me that they fired 60 rounds,” and that he himself expended 21 (Nichols, Reno Court of Inquiry, 376, 382). Gerard and DeRudio testified that the men expended between 30 and 40 rounds of ammunition (ibid., 104, 344). Moylan thought that the skirmish line stood for forty minutes and fired 50 rounds (Camp IU Notes, 112). (back to text)
44. Brininstool, Troopers with Custer, 106. Unlike some other regiments that carried all their cartridges on their persons, to keep them at hand and avoid their loss if the mounts were stampeded, the troopers of the Seventh had always been ordered to carry theirs in the original packages in their saddle pockets (R. G. Carter, November 13, 1921, Hagner Collection). Private Peter Thompson wrote: “My belt contained seventeen cartridges for my carbine. . . . I had nearly a hundred rounds in my saddle bags, but owing to the incomplete condition of my prairie belt I was unable to carry more with me. . . . Belts for carrying ammunition were, at this time, just coming into use, and a great many of us had nothing but a small cartridge box as means of carrying our ammunition when away from our horses” (quoted in Brown and Willard, The Black Hills Trails, 159). (back to text)
45. Hardorff, Indian Views of the Custer Fight, 101. (back to text)
46. Dickson, “Reconstructing the Indian Village on the Little Bighorn,” 10. (back to text)
47. Carroll, I, Varnum, 13. (back to text)
48. Graham, The Reno Court of Inquiry: Abstract, 38. (back to text)
49. Ibid., 39. (back to text)
50. According to an account of the battle written by Francis Gibson, New York Evening Post, February 20, 1897. Gibson expressly stated of Reno: “He said the last he saw of Custer was on the crest of the hill we were then on, but that his troops must have been behind the slope, as he did not see them. Custer, he said, after seeing him engaged, waved his hat, which Reno took for a token sign of approval” (ibid.). Reno intimated as much himself on the eve of his court of inquiry in 1879. In an article that appeared in the St. Paul Pioneer Press on January 13, 1879, based on an interview with Reno, the correspondent wrote: “I then asked him whether Custer was aware of his [Reno’s] engagement with the Indians. The Major said he [Custer] could see from the eminence where he halted for a brief time, that the Indians were fighting my command, but he did not come to my assistance, and had we not retreated just as we did, would have been wiped out.” Reno may only have been told of Custer’s presence on the bluff later, but this sounds more like a witness than mere hearsay. Though Reno would later claim that he had no idea where Custer was at the time of his retreat from the timber and that no one in his command had told him that they had seen Custer from the timber, it stretches credulity to believe that Reno, who had been so worried about Custer’s support, would, when surrounded by hostile Indians in a life-or-death struggle, neither ask if anyone had seen Custer and his command nor be told if someone had. Indeed, the Major would have to have been deaf and blind. At the first fording of the river, just minutes before the charge began, troopers had been openly discussing Custer, whom several had seen on the bluffs opposite. At least ten men with Reno admitted that they had seen Custer. Sergeant Stanislas Roy wrote that Custer’s command “was seen by many” (Hardorff, On the Little Bighorn with Walter Camp, 38, 43, n. 2), and Private Henry Petring recounted that when he saw Custer across the river on the bluffs, “some of the men said, ‘There goes Custer. He is up to something, for he is waving his hat’ ” (Hammer, Custer in ’76, 133). Sergeant Brinkerhoff wrote, “As we were going down the Little Big Horn river valley, driving the Indians ahead of us, we saw Custer once or twice very plainly, and at one time we cheered him and waved our hats” (“California Veteran Writes ‘True Story’ of Battle of Little Big Horn in 1876,” undated newspaper story, probably Billings Gazette, clipping file, Billings Public Library). Private Dan Newell told Walter Camp that when he saw Custer, he exclaimed, “There he goes! Look at him! And we here a fighting!” (Camp BYU Notes, Reel 5, 464). Private John Donohue wrote in 1888, “Just before we commenced firing we could see General Custer’s battle flag on bluffs on the same side of the river we had left” (Saum, “Private John F. Donohue’s Reflections on the Little Bighorn,” 45). Sergeant Thomas O’Neill stated in 1897, “Custer’s band was now a mile and a half distant, and passing behind a high bluff was out of sight, and was never again seen alive” (Washington Post, July 12, 1897). Ten years later, he was quoted in the June 23, 1907, Washington Sunday Star: “Gen. Custer’s command advanced in the same direction as ours, on the opposite side of the river, and, when the fight was begun, Custer and Reno were about a mile and a half apart. The general and his command disappeared behind a high bluff and that was the last we saw of them alive.” After interviewing O’Neill in 1919, Walter Camp wrote: “When about half way down to where skirmish line was formed he saw Custer and his command on the bluffs across the river, over to the east, at a point which he would think was about where Reno afterward fortified, or perhaps a little south of this. Custer’s command were then going at a trot” (Hammer, Custer in ’76, 106). O’Neill appears to have seen Custer more than once. An unidentified member of Reno’s battalion wrote, “Reno was already engaged in the valley below, and as Custer rode along the ridge above him he raised his hat, and a cheer to their comrades burst from the throats of the 250 men who were following the standard of their beloved commander. On down the ridge with Custer they rode, over a little ridge, disappeared from sight, and we never saw them again alive” (New York Herald, July 30, 1876). Gibson’s 1897 account quoted above states in no uncertain terms that Reno said he had seen Custer on the bluffs. See also Forrest, Witnesses at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, 5, for a letter written by Gibson in which he said of the meeting between Reno and Benteen: “We did not know whose command it was until we came together, and Benteen asked Reno where Custer was, and when told, Benteen said — Well, let us make a junction with him as soon as possible” (italics mine). Fred Gerard testified that when he saw Custer’s command on the bluffs across the river, “There was quite a cloud of dust coming from it,” which would have made it even more unlikely to be missed (Utley, The Reno Court of Inquiry, 133). In another account, Gerard stated: “Not more than four rounds had been fired before they saw Custer’s command dashing along the hills one mile to their rear. Reno then gave the order: ‘The Indians are taking us in the rear, mount and charge.’ . . . Reno led his men in Indian file back to the ford above which he had seen Custer’s command pass” (Libby, 173). In his article on the battle, Godfrey wrote: “Major Moylan thinks that the last he saw of Custer’s party was about the position of Reno Hill”; undoubtedly, he received this information directly from Moylan (Godfrey, “Custer’s Last Battle,” 182). Lieutenant Edward McClernand, an officer with Gibbon’s column, wrote of their finding Reno and the Seventh Cavalry on June 27: “ ‘Where is Custer,’ they were asked. Wallace replied, ‘The last we saw of him he was going along that high bluff (pointing in a general direction to a point on the bluffs down stream from the position where he had located Reno), toward the lower end of the village. He took off his hat and waved to us. We do not know where he is now’ ” (McClernand, “With the Indian and the Buffalo in Montana,” 27). That Wallace had seen Custer on the bluffs is further indication that Reno either had seen him (as Gibson recounted in two different accounts) or had been told of his presence on the bluffs (by Wallace or one of the many men who had seen him). DeRudio saw Custer five minutes before the retreat from the timber, at a high point on the edge of the bluffs (Utley, Reno Court of Inquiry, 284–86), and Varnum saw the Gray Horse Troop on the bluffs while on the skirmish line (Nichols, Reno Court of Inquiry, 157–58). Daniel Kanipe, who was with Custer, told Walter Camp that “Custer and all his men proceeded north along the bluffs so far west that they had full view of Reno’s men and the Indian village a
ll the time instead of some distance back and out of sight as stated and mapped by Godfrey” (Hammer, Custer in ’76, 97). Kanipe also told Camp that Custer “struck edge of bluffs [a] few hundred feet north of where Reno afterward corralled, and after going about ¼ mile farther on [Kanipe] was sent back” (Hardorff, On the Little Bighorn with Walter Camp, 209). Even allowing for some exaggeration, this shows Custer to have been in full view of Reno’s battalion for quite some time. Finally, the Arikara scout Red Star said: “When Custer stood at the bank where Hodgson’s stone stands, Curly and Black Fox were there with him” (Libby, 119). (back to text)
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