51. New York Herald, September 20, 1876. (back to text)
52. Chicago Daily Tribune, July 28, 1876. (back to text)
53. Hutchins, The Army and Navy Journal, 25. (back to text)
54. Greene, Battles and Skirmishes of the Great Sioux War, 81. (back to text)
55. John Finerty, “The Fellows in Feathers,” in Cozzens, Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, vol. 4, 388. (back to text)
56. Jeffrey Pearson, “Military Notes, 1876,” in Cozzens, Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, vol. 4, 244, 246. (back to text)
57. Struthers Burt, “Dispatches from Crook’s Column,” in Cozzens, Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, vol. 4, 376; John Bourke, “The Battle of Slim Buttes,” in Cozzens, Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, vol. 4, 379; Chicago Daily Tribune, October 10, 1876. Crook’s estimate was thirty-odd lodges (Deland, The Sioux Wars, vol. 2, 247). Mills said fifty lodges (ibid., 216). An Indian named Samuel Charger claimed that there were forty-four families returning to their agency (ibid., 280). (back to text)
58. Langellier et al., Myles Keogh, 157, n. 5. (back to text)
59. Charles Diehl, “Terry’s Tribulations,” in Cozzens, Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, vol. 4, 409. (back to text)
60. Ibid., 411. (back to text)
61. Merkel, “Custer’s Forgotten Lieutenant,” 174. (back to text)
62. Ibid., 175–76. (back to text)
63. Carroll, The Lieutenant E. A. Garlington Narrative, 23. (back to text)
64. Mills, Harvest of Barren Regrets, 286. (back to text)
65. Barnard, Ten Years with Custer, 310. (back to text)
66. Bismarck Tribune, quoted in Nichols, In Custer’s Shadow, 235. (back to text)
67. Nichols, In Custer’s Shadow, 239. (back to text)
68. Reno, quoted in Mills, Harvest of Barren Regrets, 286. See also Nichols, In Custer’s Shadow, 239–40. (back to text)
69. Captain Robert G. Carter, in his July 6, 1923, memorandum, wrote of his “interview with Col. John Merrill (son of Major Lewis Merrill, 7th Cavalry) who as a boy heard the battle discussed in the post trader’s store at Fort Abraham Lincoln for months and was astounded to learn that three years later (1879) nearly every officer went before the Reno Court and testified to absolutely nothing which, in 1876 they had uttered as a positive conviction.” (back to text)
70. Omaha Bee, September 13, 1875, quoted in Sajna, Crazy Horse, 293. (back to text)
71. New York Herald, July 7, 1876. (back to text)
72. Hutchins, The Army and Navy Journal, 88. (back to text)
73. Bordeaux, Custer’s Conqueror, 61. (back to text)
74. Diehl, “Terry’s Tribulations,” 397. (back to text)
75. Jesse M. Lee, “The Capture and Death of an Indian Chieftain,” in Cozzens, Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, vol. 4, 529. (back to text)
76. Utley, The Lance and the Shield, 179–80. (back to text)
77. Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks, 104. (back to text)
78. Ibid. (back to text)
79. Sources for the last year of Crazy Horse’s life include Sajna, Crazy Horse; Pearson, “Tragedy at Red Cloud Agency”; Hardorff, The Surrender and Death of Crazy Horse; and Brininstool, “How Crazy Horse Died.” (back to text)
80. Jean Louis Legare to Camp, October 27, 1910, Camp BYU Collection; Haydon, The Riders of the Plains, 70; McGinnis, Counting Coup and Cutting Horses, 163. (back to text)
81. Sitting Bull, quoted in Utley, The Lance and the Shield, 232. (back to text)
82. Brininstool, “How Crazy Horse Died,” 6. (back to text)
83. Deland, vol. 2, 406–7. In 1881 Terry reported, “It is understood that there are still some thirty-five families of Sioux at Wood Mountain and Quappelle.” (back to text)
84. Hubbard and Holcombe, Minnesota in Three Centuries, 268. (back to text)
85. Smith, “Fort Peck Agency Assiniboines, Upper Yanktonais, Hunkpapas, Sissetons, and Wahpetons,” 248. (back to text)
86. Army and Navy Journal, October 7, 1876. (back to text)
87. Utley, The Lance and the Shield, 176, 186. As Long Dog and Inkpaduta were reported together in the area in September, and Long Dog went to Canada at roughly the same time as Inkpaduta, I have concluded that the two bands remained together during this time. If they were not camping together, they were in the same area. (back to text)
88. Larson, “A New Look at the Elusive Inkpaduta,” 35. (back to text)
89. Leckie, Elizabeth Bacon Custer, 199; Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, July 29, 1876; Billings Times, June 10, 1931. (back to text)
90. Johnson, The Unregimented General, 87. (back to text)
91. New York Herald, July 18, 1876. (back to text)
92. Scott, Some Memories of a Soldier, 29. (back to text)
93. O’Neil, GarryOwen Tidbits, vol. 4, 27. (back to text)
94. Hutchins, The Army and Navy Journal, 74; Big Horn Yellowstone Journal 3, no. 1 (Winter 1994): 21. (back to text)
95. O’Neil, GarryOwen Tidbits, vol. 5, 3. (back to text)
96. W. A. Falconer to William Ghent, November 19, 1934, Ghent Papers. However, in a New York Herald story, a reporter claimed that the postmaster of the town delivered the news personally to the Custer home. (back to text)
97. Frost, General Custer’s Libbie, 234. (back to text)
CHAPTER NINETEEN: THE LOST CAPTAIN
Chapter title: The Lost Captain was a dime novel written by Frederick Whittaker for Beadle and Adams in 1880.
Epigraph: Al. W. Crowell, “A Dedication to the Works of Capt. Frederick Whittaker, the Prince of Novelists,” Banner Weekly, November 30, 1895, quoted in Johansen, The House of Beadle and Adams, vol. 2, 300–1.
1. Much of the biographical material here is derived from Whittaker’s entry in Johansen, vol. 2, 301–2. (back to text)
2. Hall, History of the Sixth New York Cavalry, 318, 349. This book says that Whittaker was “wounded June, 1864 — place not given.” (back to text)
3. Johansen, vol. 1, 8, 33. (back to text)
4. There is no record of a brevet captaincy for Whittaker, and in the first few years of his writing career after the war, he claimed only the rank of lieutenant (Johansen, vol. 1, 301). See also “Another Campaign Lie Nailed,” New York Times, October 26, 1884. The subject of the article is apparently a Mount Vernon political squabble in which several citizens of that town signed a card stating: “Whittaker was not a Captain in any regiment, but was made a Second Lieutenant in the Sixth Regiment, Volunteers, in 1865, at the close of the war. . . . Whittaker is regarded in Mount Vernon as a crank.” One of the signers was the editor of the Mount Vernon Argus. (back to text)
5. Whittaker, “General George A. Custer.” (back to text)
6. “A subscription volume . . . to be sold by subscription only” (Publishers Weekly, September 16, 1876, 466); “sold only by subscription” (Galaxy, February 1877, 9). (back to text)
7. Army and Navy Journal, August 5, 1876. That Custer’s widow would receive a share of the royalties was affirmed by Sheldon and Company, the book’s publishers, in the company’s monthly literary magazine, the Galaxy (February 1877, 282). (back to text)
8. Lindell, “Bringing Books to a ‘Book-Hungry’ Land”; Thomas, “There Is Nothing So Effective as a Personal Canvass.” (back to text)
9. Though most researchers have concluded that the two never met, Whittaker wrote to Libbie: “Do you remember what I said in verse, before I ever thought I should know Custer’s wife and not see her face to face?” Whittaker to Elizabeth Custer, n.d., probably January or February 1877, Brice C. W. Custer Collection. (back to text)
10. Merington, Army Lady, 88; Whittaker to Elizabeth Custer, November 18, 1876, Brice C. W. Custer Collection. (back to text)
11. Carland to Elizabeth Custer, October 2, 1876, Merington Papers. (back to text)
12. Utley, The Reno Court of Inquiry, 172. Whittaker did not name O’Kelly specifically, but the correspondent’s letter to the New York Herald is almost certainly the missi
ve referred to. In a letter to Libbie Custer, Whittaker wrote, “Yesterday I met O’Kelly of that paper, who was out, and who published the first account of Reno’s incompetency” (November 28, 1876, Brice C. W. Custer Collection). (back to text)
13. One officer with the Seventh and another with Gibbon’s column supplied accounts, though Whittaker never identified them. Whittaker, A Complete Life of General George A. Custer, 583–85; Hutchins, The Army and Navy Journal, 129; Chicago Times, January 23, 1879. One of the officers was likely Lieutenant John Carland, a friend of Custer’s who later wrote to Libbie Custer to tell her, “I have written Mr. Whittaker — I hope he may find something” (October 2, 1876, Merington Papers). (back to text)
14. Whittaker to Elizabeth Custer, November 28, 1876. (back to text)
15. Merkel, “Custer’s Forgotten Lieutenant,” 191. (back to text)
16. Leckie, Elizabeth Bacon Custer, 210–11. (back to text)
17. Frost, General Custer’s Libbie, 237. (back to text)
18. Whittaker to Elizabeth Custer, November 28, 1876. (back to text)
19. Merkel, “Custer’s Forgotten Lieutenant,” 191–93. (back to text)
20. Whittaker, A Complete Life of General George A. Custer, 1–2. (back to text)
21. “His knuckles were very bony,” wrote Whittaker, describing a scene in which Custer dispatched a miscreant with his fists (ibid., 619). (back to text)
22. Ibid., 604. (back to text)
23. Ibid., 608. (back to text)
24. Slotkin, The Fatal Environment, 501–6. (back to text)
25. Nation, March 22, 1877, 180. (back to text)
26. Galaxy, February 1877, 282. (back to text)
27. Chicago Daily Tribune, March 31, 1877. (back to text)
28. Frost, General Custer’s Libbie, 240. (back to text)
29. Publishers Weekly, March 10, 1877, and March 17, 1877. (back to text)
30. Leckie, 210. See also the following letters from Whittaker to Elizabeth Custer: November 28, 1876; n.d., probably January or February 1877; and June 13, 1878, Brice C. W. Custer Collection. (back to text)
31. Whittaker wrote several articles for the Galaxy after his Custer biography was published, among them “The American Army,” “Bunker Hill,” and “Muhammad the Iconoclast.” (back to text)
32. New York Times, June 16, 1878. (back to text)
33. Whittaker to Elizabeth Custer, June 13, 1878. (back to text)
34. Nichols, In Custer’s Shadow, 245–55. (back to text)
35. New York Herald, November 16, 1877. (back to text)
36. Ibid., November 20, 1877. (back to text)
37. Hutchins, The Army and Navy Journal, 176. (back to text)
38. Nichols, In Custer’s Shadow, 270–71. (back to text)
39. “Men of Mark” manuscript, Camp IU Notes; “Address by Gen. Jesse M. Lee, U.S.A. Retired,” 1907, Indiana State Library. (back to text)
40. “Men of Mark” manuscript, Camp IU Notes. (back to text)
41. Jesse M. Lee ACP File, National Archives; Jesse M. Lee autobiography, unpublished manuscript, courtesy Ephriam Dickson. (back to text)
42. Chicago Daily News, January 16, 1879. (back to text)
43. Alberts, Brandy Station to Manila Bay, 236–37. (back to text)
44. Godfrey to Van de Water, May 21, 1931, Van de Water Papers. In a memorandum concerning the Reno court of inquiry, R. G. Carter wrote: “Reno’s record during the Civil War, although he was breveted as many others were, was clouded by at least one most discreditable affair, as related by General Wesley Merritt, formerly commanding the regular cavalry under Sheridan, and later the Fifth Cavalry” (August 23, 1932, Hagner Collection). (back to text)
45. Chicago Times, January 11, 1879. (back to text)
46. Davis and Davis, The Reno Court of Inquiry, 21. (back to text)
47. Army and Navy Journal, December 28, 1878. (back to text)
48. Johnson, “A Captain of ‘Chivalric Courage,’ ” 44. (back to text)
49. Davis and Davis, The Reno Court of Inquiry, 22. (back to text)
50. Ibid., 37. (back to text)
51. Fougera, With Custer’s Cavalry, 272. (back to text)
52. Ibid., 17–19. (back to text)
53. Inter-Ocean, January 11, 1879. (back to text)
54. Davis and Davis, The Reno Court of Inquiry, 20. (back to text)
55. Washington Post, January 25, 1879; New York Times, January 11, 1879; Chicago Daily News, January 11, 1879. (back to text)
CHAPTER TWENTY: FOR THE HONOR OF THE REGIMENT
1. Utley, The Reno Court of Inquiry, 5. (back to text)
2. Though several of the newspapermen present mentioned being forced to use their memories to write their stories in the absence of notes — the Chicago Times man boasted of his “extraordinary retentive powers” — there is abundant evidence that note taking occurred and that the story about using their memories was a badly concealed joke. (The Times ran a long, tongue-in-cheek account of the feats of their “memorizer” on January 16, 1879, and the next day claimed that many of the spectators “were attracted by a desire to see The Times reporter take his mental notes.”) (back to text)
Inter-Ocean, January 13, 1879: “These rules which have been adopted make it necessary for the representatives of the press to use their memories or their cuffs for notebooks.”
Inter-Ocean, January 14, 1879: During a break, “the reporters hastily gathered themselves into obscure corners and fell laboriously to work making cabalistic memoranda upon their note-books, and winking gravely at one or two sapient gentlemen who gave expression in grave asides, to the somewhat apocryphal information that ‘the reporters, d’ye see, have to rely on their memories.’ ”
Inter-Ocean, January 16, 1879: “Either Chicago reporters were to be set down as men of prodigious mentality, or refreshingly cunning fellows, for, if appearance counts for anything in visual tactics, they complied to the letter with the ruling of the court.” And when it was announced that notes would be allowed (“Col King: ‘The reporters will be allowed to take notes’ ”), “significant winks flushed from different quarters of the room, and an army of notebooks and pencils forsook the darkness and arrayed themselves in the light of day. It was a delightful moment. The transformation from distrustful secrecy to bold assurance on the part of the reporters was refreshing to contemplate.”
Chicago Evening Journal, January 16, 1879: “Lieutenant Lee, the Recorder, who had been holding a whispered consultation with the judges, interrupted the examination, saying: ‘I have to announce that the court permits the reporters to take notes.’ And thereupon white paper and pencils came out from the overcoat pockets of half a dozen pale and lofty-browed young men [who] stood incog. about the room, and quickly there was heard the music of the reportorial graphites as they merrily went about their work.”
Chicago Daily News, January 16, 1879: “The Court, after a few moments of consultation, agreed to the proposition, and the reporters will in the future not be obliged to write in their overcoat pockets, or compelled to cover their copy paper with their hats.”
Chicago Daily Tribune, January 17, 1879: “A short whispered consultation was held among the officers of the Court and the Recorder, at the end of which it was announced that the reporters were at liberty to take notes, whereupon a dozen whipped paper and pencils from their pockets simultaneously, and commenced a vigorous scratching upon their knees.”
Chicago Times, January 17, 1879: “A consultation was held with reference to the suggestion Mr. Gilbert had made. The result was that an order was promulgated that the newsmen might take notes of the proceedings if they so desired. Hereupon there was considerable rustling of paper, pencils were produced, memories were relieved from all distressing strain, and the scribes prepared to do their duty in their customary manner.”
New York Herald, January 17, 1879: “Immediately after this order the notebooks saw the light of day.”
St. Paul Pioneer Press, January 17, 1879: “After t
aking the suggestion under advisement Col. King said the reporters might be allowed to take notes. In a moment half a dozen hats, that had modestly been held in the hands of half a dozen knights of the Faber [a brand of pencil] went under a half dozen chairs and half a dozen notebooks forsook the darkness of the interior of a hat and sought the light of day. The testimony was resumed.”
3. Chicago Daily Tribune, January 14, 1879. (back to text)
4. Chicago Daily News, January 24, 1879; Chicago Times, January 15, 1876; St. Paul Pioneer Press, January 15, 1879. (back to text)
5. Inter-Ocean, January 14, 1879. (back to text)
6. New York Herald, January 16, 1879; Graham, The Custer Myth, 338–40. (back to text)
7. Nichols, Reno Court of Inquiry, 52. (back to text)
8. Ibid., 53. (back to text)
9. Ibid. (back to text)
10. McClernand, “With the Indian and Buffalo in Montana,” 27. (back to text)
11. That Wallace may have regretted his testimony is indicated by a statement he allegedly made to a good friend years later. That friend told Captain R. G. Carter the following story: “Major Henry Lemly, formerly of the Third Cavalry, told me this day that in a conversation which he had with Lieut. George D. Wallace, Seventh Cavalry, he [Wallace] said, with tears in his eyes, that when Custer separated from Reno, his plan was to march to the lower end of the villages, crossing at one of the lower fords, and make an attack there. His attack was to be the signal for Reno, just as soon as the latter saw or heard him, to press forward, in the reasonable expectation that the combined pressure would stampede the Indians out of the village. (back to text)
“Lemly was emphatic as to his recollections of what Wallace had told him and of the latter’s knowledge of Custer’s plan. The query still remains: Did Custer tell Wallace his plan, or did Wallace merely guess or surmise such an intention on the part of Custer?” R. G. Carter, memorandum, Box 29, Folder 24, Ghent Papers.
If this statement is legitimate and Wallace somehow knew of such a plan, it throws an entirely different light on all that followed the separation of Reno and Custer. However, this unsupported hearsay account is too tenuous to accept as history.
12. See Sklenar, “The ‘Wallace Factor’ at the Reno Court of Inquiry,” for an excellent and detailed analysis of Wallace’s testimony and its effect. (back to text)
A Terrible Glory Page 57