More Than Cowboys

by Tim Slessor

  The plan was simple: a major campaign would be mounted that winter when the “hostile” encampments were at their most vulnerable. So, in early December 1875, Indian couriers were sent to all the outlying Hostile bands; the message they carried was simple: anyone who had not peaceably reported in to one of the several Bureau Agencies scattered across the Great Reservation by the last day of January would be liable to attack without further warning. Some of the bands sent back word that when the snowdrifts of winter had gone and when their ponies had recovered their strength, they would think about it - but that could not be before the spring. Others never got the message and a few, defiant and contemptuous, did not bother to send back any reply. Interestingly, some of the messengers did not themselves get back until after the deadline, such were the winter storms.

  The truth is that the authorities had already calculated that many of the Hostiles would ignore the summons. To that end, the Army had been planning its winter campaign for several months, since well before that “deadline” message had been drafted. It was judged that the Hostiles would be in winter camps somewhere in the lands that were loosely known as the Powder River country, between the Black Hills and the Big Horn Mountains. So the intention was for a two-pronged advance. The distances were considerable: 150 miles for General Crook coming north from a base (Fort Fetterman) on the Platte, and twice that for Colonel Custer coming west from Fort Lincoln. In the event, the prolonged snows, sub-zero temperatures and a shortage of supplies stalled Custer before he had even made it off the parade ground. General Crook did manage to get away and make slow progress until a blizzard (at 400F below freezing) stopped his command for four days. A week later, his scouts reported a medium-sized village; the ensuing attack went badly awry and the Hostiles got away. By now the fight was against the weather rather than the Sioux; snow-blindness, frostbite and diminishing supplies (as usual) were the problems. Crooke turned round and struggled back to base.

  So now a spring campaign was planned. This time there would be three converging contingents. Crook would again come up from the south. Custer, again starting from Fort Lincoln, would close in, as planned before, from the east. A third group, under Colonel Gibbon, would advance from the west, from Montana down the line of the Yellowstone River. During his preparations for this renewed attempt to “whip the Sioux into subjection”, Custer found himself suddenly ordered back to Washington. This interruption seems to have had a real (though sometimes under-recognized) influence on Custer’s behavior two months later. Were it otherwise, the tale would hardly be worth telling...

  For some years, Custer and other officers serving on the plains had become evermore irritated at what they saw as increasing corruption high up in the War Department. The Department gave licenses for civilian traders to set up shop (literally) in its army forts and Indian Bureau’s Agencies across the West. In the more isolated encampments and forts it was a lucrative monopoly: selling the officers and enlisted men all the “civilian” supplies that they might need, from clothing and “extras” for enhancing their army rations to soap, whiskey and tobacco. The prices charged were high; they had to be because a number of senior officials back in Washington expected their cut for both the initial granting of the license and, thereafter, on the retail turnover.

  An unsigned article about the scandal had recently appeared in The New York Times. Many thought that Custer was the whistle-blower, if not the actual author. But, whatever his precise role, he was summoned to Washington to give evidence at an official inquiry. Once in the capital he was, as was his habit, more impetuous than he had need to be. He implicated one of President Grant’s closest cronies, the Secretary of War, General Belknap. The chairman of the inquiry, who was no friend of President Grant or General Belknap, led Custer on. His further testimony pointed at Orvil Grant and his wife. Orvil was the President’s brother. In short, elements of President Grant’s administration were allegedly rotten. Grant was furious. So when, with his testimony delivered, Custer set off back to Fort Lincoln, he was ordered off the train, on the direct order of the President. He asked to see Grant. Indeed, uninvited, he hurried to the White House and sent in a note asking to be allowed to return to his regiment. In agony, he waited all day in an ante-room. Grant’s door stayed shut.

  Desperate to get back, and hearing a rumor that another officer might be nominated to command his regiment, Custer secretly left Washington on the next train. Changing trains two days later in Chicago he was arrested on orders direct from the President. Now, even more desperate, he appealed to Generals Terry and Sheridan to intercede on his behalf. Reluctantly, they did so. Eventually, Grant relented - even more reluctantly. He had been pushed by The New York Times and other newspapers that were sympathetic to Custer and his allegations of corruption. But the President ordered that Custer should no longer be in overall command of both the northern contingents, as originally planned; General Terry would now fill that post. One can imagine Custer’s reaction. Anyway, less than a week after Custer rejoined his regiment, he led it out of Fort Lincoln. The wives and children waved them off. There were some tears. Beside the cavalry, there were three companies of infantry, three Gatling machine guns, a wagon train, a hundred or so pack-mules, and a small beef herd. As civilian helpers with the pack-train, Custer’s youngest brother, Boston, and his nephew, 17-year-old Autie Reed, went along too.

  Even for the northern plains, that spring was unusual: first there was driving rain, then snowstorms into early June. The terrain also slowed the column: too many swollen streams to cross and the contorted geography of some badlands to negotiate. In the event, it was five weeks before Custer and General Terry eventually met up with Colonel Gibbon coming from the west. Also arrived was a steamer, the Far West. Loaded with supplies and under the command of a skilful skipper, Grant Marsh, she had navigated 700 difficult miles from Bismarck and nearby Fort Lincoln, up the Missouri and then the Yellowstone. Now Terry held a council of war in the ship’s small saloon.

  It was assumed that many of the Sioux would be camped in one extended village; that was their usual summer custom. Further, the officers all agreed that, having first found the village, the over-riding problem would be how to prevent the Hostiles from scattering. Even at this stage, despite the mutterings of several civilian scouts - old hands who knew the Sioux well enough to guess what, following the invasion of their Black Hills, would be their reaction - the possibility that the quarry might stand and fight did not occur to any of the assembled officers. And even if it had occurred to one or other of them, the boast among regimental commanders was always much the same: any regiment, even at sub-strength, could “whip” (a favorite verb) any provocation from the Indians, any Indians in any strength. Additionally, there was the assumption, despite further mutterings from the scouts, that they were unlikely to find more than 700-800 warriors in the village.

  As they leaned over their rather inaccurate maps, Terry and his officers would have wondered how far General Crook’s converging advance from the south had come. But there was no way of finding out because, even assuming that Crook was already on the move, the intervening distance (of over 100 miles) was far too dangerous for any scout to go to find out, let alone then to return. So, as far as planning was concerned, any possible contribution from Crook’s column had to be ignored.

  More immediate was a lack of intelligence about the exact whereabouts of the Hostiles. Nevertheless, partly based on the direction of a large and recent trail found some days earlier during a short probe to the south (under Major Reno, second-in-command of the 7th Cavalry), the conclusion was that the Sioux were probably camped on one or other of two of the Yellowstone’s north-flowing tributaries: the Rosebud or the Little Big Horn. Although the area of search was fairly large (at least 40 by 40 miles), the strategy worked out some time before would still apply: Custer and his regiment, by first going south and then swinging west, would get “below” the enemy. Then, with any luck at all, by picking up tell-
tale trails, Custer would be able to get a reasonable fix on the village. Gibbon and his infantry, having been ferried across the Yellowstone by the Far West, would advance southward and thus, with luck, be “above” the enemy. When the Sioux attempted to flee from one or other of these two forces, they would find themselves running into the other face of the vice. That, broadly, was the plan.

  Colonel Custer was always having his photo taken; here he poses beneath one taken earlier

  With hindsight, the plan had several weaknesses. But one stands out: it did not/could not take account of the possibility (the probability?) that the glory-hunting Custer might be working to what today would be called “his own agenda”. What if he made contact with the Sioux first - as he had allegedly told a few of his closest friends he had every intention of doing? The Sioux, thus alerted, might flee north toward Gibbon. But Custer certainly would not have seen himself as a mere “beater” flushing the quarry onto someone else’s guns. Where was the prestige and acclaim in that? And he must have had another concern. What if the Sioux did not flee directly away from him, north toward Gibbon, but, much more likely, went sideways - west and then south toward their nearest sanctuary, the Big Horn Mountains? They would escape altogether, and he would get all the blame. The answer in his mind (the evidence surely lies in his actions four days later) must have been that he must find the enemy first and then hit them with such sudden force and surprise (shock and awe again) that they would simply not have time to escape - in any direction. That way the victory and all the acclaim would be his. Did he look back to his success, based entirely on surprise, at the Washita? Or, in his mind, did he go back even further, even subconsciously, to those thundering charges at Brandy Station, Audie or Culpepper?

  Whatever else he may have been, Custer was very human. So, in addition to his inherent thirst for glory, one can surely assume that he was also still harboring something between resentment and dismay at the humiliation so recently thrown at him by President Grant and his cronies. So now, all the more reason why he should want to show his critics and his enemies (in and beyond the Army) how wrong they had been. But, to do that, he would have to get there first and, above all, he would have to take the Indians by surprise - so that they could not run.

  Shortly before the column set off the next morning, Terry handed Custer his orders - confirmation, one assumes, of the decisions taken at that meeting in the Far West. They ran to two handwritten pages. There are two passages that have long been the focus of debate. “You should proceed up the Rosebud in pursuit of the Indians whose trail was discovered by Major Reno a few days ago. It is, of course, impossible to give you any definite instructions in regard to this movement, and were it not impossible to do so, the Department Commander [Terry is referring to himself; this arcane use of the third person is still common in the American Army] places too much confidence in your zeal, energy and ability to impose upon you precise orders which might hamper your action when nearly in contact with the enemy.” Custer must have been delighted; he had been given what he wanted: a blank check, so far. But then Terry goes on: “You should proceed up the Rosebud until you ascertain definitely the direction in which the trail spoken of leads. Should it be found, as it appears almost certain that it will be found, to turn toward the Little Big Horn, he thinks that you should still proceed southward, perhaps as far as the headwaters of the Tongue, and then [emphasis added] turn toward the Little Big Horn...” In other words, having found the trail, Custer should not immediately and directly follow it to the Indian camp, but should proceed for another 25 miles or so (a day’s march) and then turn toward the camp. But why would Terry wish to send Custer this further distance? It has been suggested that he wanted to place Custer firmly across the path of the Indians who, if Gibbon were to make first contact, might try to escape south-westward to the fastness of the Big Horn Mountains. But this assumes that Gibbon, with his slower-moving infantry, was going to find the village (or its outliers) before Custer’s cavalry. This was never very likely. Surely, the more probable reason for putting an extra day into Custer’s itinerary was to delay him until Gibbon’s slower infantry (as compared with Custer’s faster cavalry) could take up a blocking position to the north of where the village might be. In short, Terry did not want Custer to attack until Gibbon was in position. But, again, he seems to give Custer latitude; he only “thinks” that Custer should proceed a day or so further before turning toward the Hostiles. Experienced soldiers will maintain that, then as now, when a commanding officer says that he “thinks” something should be done, it should not be regarded as a mere suggestion; it is very close to an order. But why was Terry not more direct? Why so polite? The answer may be that Terry was conscious that he himself had had no experience of Indian fighting, whereas Custer (as he would have made very clear) had been on and off the western plains for some years. Nevertheless, Terry was the man in charge; so his deference to Custer is rather curious.

  Equally curious is Terry’s lack of detail about the timing of the convergence of the two columns (Gibbon’s and Custer’s) on the Little Big Horn. We know from others who were involved that the date decided was 26 June. Perhaps the plan had been so much discussed that Terry did not think that detail now had to be spelled out. But no one has ever doubted that a significant degree of coordination was intended. Confirmation lies in a much-reported incident when Custer mounted his horse and took his final leave. Gibbon is alleged to have called out, “Now Custer, don’t be greedy; wait for us.” To which, as he rode away, Custer is said to have shouted back, “No, I won’t.” Did he mean that he would not be greedy? Or did he mean that he would not wait? Given that there is no way of knowing, Gibbon’s “wait for us” is the more interesting part of that exchange; it implies (confirms?) that there was the intention that his column and Custer’s would start tightening the vice on the Indian camp from north and south at the same time. But Custer would have known that, if he hurried (and ignored Terry’s “thought” that he should proceed further up the Rosebud), he would reach the enemy well ahead of what he undoubtedly saw as Competition.

  Custer’s desire for speed, and thereby the sole glory, would seem to be further confirmed by his rejection of Terry’s offer of those Gatling guns. Heavy, awkward, and of little use in a swiftly developing attack, they would just slow him down. He was right in that analysis. Yet on that first day, because of a late start, the 7th Cavalry only made 12 miles. If there is any doubt about the imperative of Custer’s haste, it is surely now resolved by the pace he subsequently demanded of his men. On a forced march, a cavalry regiment and its supply column of pack-carrying mules might cover 35 miles in a day, but to require the 7th, as Custer now did, to average that kind of distance, in noon temperatures of over 900F (320C), for each of the next three days meant that some men and their mounts would be near to exhaustion. Furthermore, by the second day there were increasing signs of recent Indian presence. Nerves would have been tightening.

  By the third day, the trail they found - made by the Indian ponies and the furrows of their dragging tepee poles - was becoming fresher and broader; in places it was over half a mile wide. (The freshness of pony droppings indicated the recentness of any trail.) Both the white and Indian scouts were now nervously revising the numbers they thought were ahead: they reckoned that this was a trail made by maybe 4,000 adult Sioux; that could mean well over 1,000 warriors. Then the trail swung away from the Rosebud and lifted up over the higher ground that lay between the valleys of the Rosebud and the next-door river, the Little Big Horn. This intervening divide often appears on maps as the Wolf Mountains, but the terrain is really just a range of high pine-clad hills.

  It was evening and they had already come nearly 35 miles that day. But with the fresh trail now so clearly before him, Custer’s blood was up. He would abandon Terry’s tentative “thought” that he should continue on further to the west - if indeed obedience had ever been part of his calculations. Instead, the regiment would follow
the trail through the night until they were a little short of the crest of the divide. There they would hide and rest during the following day while some skilled scouts were sent ahead to locate the enemy, preliminary to a “shock and awe” attack at dawn the following day. The Washita again?

  The night march was not easy. They were already very tired and now, in the dark, there was much stumbling, confusion and bad temper. Even so, they managed to reach a point somewhere just short of the crest. They had come 10 miles, and it was well after midnight. At dawn, someone reported that one of the mules and its cargo had gone missing during the night march. A small detachment was detailed to go back. They found the mule’s load. It was being examined by four Sioux. The Sioux made off.

  It seems that Custer was not immediately informed of this small incident because he had been called forward to a look-out point high on that ridge-line. Earlier, from that look-out and in the sharpness of the early morning light, the Crow scouts reported that they could see, across 15 miles of country, indications of what they said was a very large village. From the look-out (since known as the Crow’s Nest) one can, today, see what the scouts could and could not see. They would not have been able to see the village itself; it would have been hidden behind a long, low bluff. But what they could observe was the dust of a very large pony herd. Indeed, they claimed that they could see part of the herd itself and, rising from beyond that distant bluff, a smoky haze seeping up from what could have been a host of cooking fires. That much pony dust and smoke would have indicated something about the size of the village. Already nervous, they were now even more so. But when Custer came up to have a look an hour or two later, he was dismissive. It seems that while Custer accepted that the position of the village was now more or less fixed, he was quite unpersuaded about its size. After all, his Indian scouts had been jumpy ever since leaving the Yellowstone. They were likely to be exaggerating.