More Than Cowboys

by Tim Slessor

  There was talk of riding towards that distant firing. Maybe Custer was, even now, whipping the Indians. Maybe he needed help. Maybe they should go and find out. Reno was not enthusiastic. But, regardless of Reno’s indecision, a Captain Weir and about 40 troopers set off. They rode north for well over a mile to a high point (now called Weir’s Point) near the northern end of those bluffs. From there, looking across more than 2 miles further to the north, over flatter country, they could make out hundreds of mounted Sioux milling around in a low cloud of smoke and dust. The firing had almost stopped. Then they realized that they had been seen and that some of those warriors were now racing toward them. They turned, to find that the rest of the command was now coming up behind them. They all turned. Perhaps 15 minutes later they were back on Reno’s Hill, frantically trying to scrape out some defenses. They had very few digging tools, just five small spades and some axes that had come up with the mules. The men used cups, mess tins, knives and their bare hands to make shallow trenches. They used saddles and boxes and even dead and dying horses to form thin barricades. Fortunately in the middle of the hilltop was a low depression, a degree of shelter for the wounded.

  The Sioux were quick to surround the hill - at a distance. So now, from their own hills 300-400 yards away, their best shots aimed to take out any soldier who showed himself. The Sioux were in no hurry; they knew something the soldiers did not: Custer and his command were finished. But to those near-desperate men hunkered down on their hill, there must have still been the faint hope that Custer would be back, once he had dealt with the enemy. Or did some of them suppose that once their ammunition was exhausted, they too - like Major Elliot and his detachment back at the Washita - would be left to their fate?

  So what had happened to Custer and his five companies? Unlike those men waiting up on their hill, we now know some of the answers. True, there were no survivors, and as a consequence there are many details that are still debated, but quite enough can be deduced to provide a broad sequence of events. Earlier, Custer and his command would have had an unopposed ride along a line back from (but parallel to) those bluffs which, in turn, paralleled the river. Somewhere along that line (his exact path is debated) he rode across to the crest of a bluff from where he could see out over to the village. Presumably, surprised (shocked?) by the size of the village he now saw before him, he sent a Sergeant Kanipe galloping back to fetch the mule train which was carrying the regiment’s reserve ammunition. A few minutes later, he ordered his Italian orderly-bugler to ride back to Benteen with a message that he, Benteen, should join up with mule train and escort it forward as quickly as possible. Because the orderly, Giovanni Martini, was a recent immigrant (four years earlier he had been serving with Garibaldi) who spoke imperfect English, Custer’s adjutant thought it prudent that Martini should carry the message in writing: “Benteen. Come on. Big village. Be quick. Bring Packs. PS Bring pacs [sic].” Martini rode off. He was the last man to see Custer and all his immediate command alive. (Today, that famous and iconic scrap of paper is preserved at West Point.) There is a small but interesting question inherent in this “bring packs” scenario. How and where was the Italian orderly meant to find Benteen - last ordered to proceed away to the south-west, with no indication of when or where he was to turn round to return? None of the standard accounts are much help with an answer to this intriguing question.

  Anyway, having dispatched his message, Custer rode on. He would have been looking to his left for a way down to the river and a ford, so that he could cross the river and get into the village. Presently he found what he was looking for: Medicine Tail Coulee. Only 200-300 yards long, it is more of an extended gully than a valley, and leads directly to the Little Big Horn. How far he or his leading company got down this coulee -maybe even to the river itself - is one of those details still debated. It does not much matter. The fact is that, either at the ford or some way short of it, his leading companies must have run into such strong opposition that they were forced to turn back.

  Now, surely, when Custer first saw the numbers and the vehemence of the enemy as they came streaming across the river, and heard the exultation of their war-cries, the realization of what was happening must have been heart-stopping. Suddenly, he would have known that he had placed himself and his men in an almost suicidal predicament. Advance was impossible. Retreat was the only option. But where to?

  Sioux drawings of the battle of Little Big Horn

  If, today, one stands somewhere near where Custer may have been when he first recognized what was unfolding, one looks north over a rolling and broken terrain of sagebrush and coarse grass. The land rises slowly away from the river toward a rather unimpressive ridge rather less than a mile to the north-east. We do not know how orders were given to ride for that ridge. Maybe there was too much noise for orders. But from where the bodies were later found (marked by small marble slabs today), it seems that there must have been a running fight all the way. Today, military men would say that there was an ever-increasing degree of “tactical disintegration”. Those marble markers come closer to each other as they get nearer to the ridge. Elsewhere, sometimes hundreds of yards from the main grouping, there are other markers. Some are in small clusters; some are on their own. It seems that many of the troopers got separated and had to fight their own lonely battles. Some were shot, some were run down and clubbed to death. We don’t know how long the killing lasted. One would guess that it was not long, maybe less than 30 minutes. We know from Sioux accounts that, at times, the firing was almost continuous or, as one of them said later, it was like the sound of the tearing of a blanket. We know that most of the warriors, having first repulsed Reno, then dashed back through the village to meet the new threat. Together with others who joined them, they surged pell-mell across the river and up across that sagebrush. We know that Crazy Horse and his people crossed the river lower down and then came galloping round to take the last pocket of soldiers from behind. That final pocket has long been called the Last Stand. That is where they found Custer. Some think that he may have shot himself; it seems unlikely that he found it necessary, such would have been the weight of incoming fire. One can reasonably assume that he was one of the last of his 215 men to go. Like most of them, he was stripped naked. Unlike most of them, including his two brothers, his nephew and his brother-in-law, he was not scalped.

  On their hill, Reno and Benteen would have known nothing certain of what had already happened nearly 4 miles to the north. They had problems of their own. The incoming fire was frequent and, given the range, surprisingly accurate. Several troopers were killed, others wounded. It was fortunate that the Sioux did not know just how weak were the hill-top defenses. But gradually, with the fading light, the firing faded too. Soon it was dark. They could hear drumming and shouting from the village; they could hear the off-key squirling of a bugle. During the night some missing troopers came in; cut off in the retreat, they had been hiding in those cottonwoods down along the river.

  The Sioux and Cheyenne snipers were back at first light. But the scrapes and shallow trenches that the troopers had made the previous evening, and further strengthened during the night, were enough - just. The Indian sharp-shooters seemed to concentrate on the horses. All morning and into the afternoon, the siege went on. How would it all end? What had happened to Custer? For the troopers, the problem of thirst was becoming almost as important as dodging the bullets. Some of the wounded were already delirious. In desperation, a small party risked their lives in creeping down to the river to fill as many canteens as they could carry. But among so many, that water could only last so long. The fact that the besieging Indians chose not to guard against that water “break-out” confirms again their lack of strategic forethought. (Subsequently, the water carriers were each awarded a Medal of Honor.)

  Presently the soldiers realized that the shooting had slowed, and then stopped. Perhaps the Indians were gone. Slowly and very cautiously, suspecting a trap, a few crept
forward to a point from where they could overlook the plain and the village. In the evening light they could see that the Indians, in their thousands, were packing up and moving out. Long lines of them were trailing away to the south-west, toward the Big Horn Mountains. The reason for the Indian departure became partially apparent early the next day (27 June). They had seen a cloud of dust coming slowly towards them from the north; and they were low on ammunition.

  Within a few hours, men from Gibbon’s command climbed the bluffs; they told that they had found Custer and his men. By the time they finished counting, they concluded that Custer must have lost 215 officers and men; several bodies were never found. Reno had lost 53 killed and 52 wounded; 32 of them were killed down on the valley floor and in crossing the river. Some of the wounded would die within a few days. The Indian losses have never been assessed; guesses hover between 50 and 150.

  So why, one might ask, with the exultant wind of a great victory behind them (to say nothing of their earlier defeat of General Crook) did the Sioux and their Cheyenne allies not stand and fight Gibbon and his advancing infantrymen? They themselves may have been imprecise about the reasons for their withdrawal; after all, although they had leaders - Crazy Horse, Gall and Sitting Bull come to mind - the making of what today are called “command decisions” was not an Indian way of doing things. If they had stayed, who knows what might have happened? Gibbon’s regiment of infantrymen was smaller than Custer’s. Perhaps the Indian withdrawal was prompted by a certain weariness, and a feeling that they had done enough for the time being. Also they had lost some brave warriors. Further, with so much ammunition now expended (including that at the earlier fight with Crook), they needed time to rebuild their reserves; this was probably the key reason. And they may have sensed that, before many moons, a far bigger force would come looking for them; retribution was almost inevitable. Anyway, it was time to restock their food supplies and to move their pony herds on from what would have become a very worn-out pasture. Whatever the reason - probably a combination of all those possibilities - the fact is that, within a very few days, the Indians had scattered themselves over hundreds of square miles. They would never again come together in such numbers.

  Over the next three days, Reno’s wounded were carefully carried to the Far West; she had come upriver as far as her shallow draft allowed. Then, at a speed and with a skill never repeated, Captain Marsh took her the 710 miles down the Yellowstone and the Missouri to Bismarck and Fort Lincoln in just 54 hours (13 m.p.h.). She flew the national flag at half-mast. And she carried a long dispatch from General Terry, for telegraphing to the Army’s command in St. Paul. Libbie Custer and her sister-in-law, Margaret Custer Calhoun, were given the news. Margaret had lost her husband, three brothers and a nephew. Then the two women had to find and comfort 37 other wives who were also widows.

  So that narration, with certain compressions and omissions (but I hope not too many inaccuracies), is my version of what is still the most debated battle in the nation’s history. Over the years, many historians, while readily acknowledging the fascination of what happened, have been dismissive of its significance. It did not, they say, change anything that was not going to change anyway. They are probably right. The defeat made a humiliated army determined to finish off the Hostiles once and for all. In pursuing that focused end, nothing and nobody would be spared. Thus astonishingly, within less than 12 months, the Sioux and the Cheyenne as free-roaming and independent peoples were finished for all time. In short, the battle accelerated by a few years what many, even at the time, saw as inevitable - and had been from the moment the first white settlers came ashore on the continent.

  So while, to the world, what happened is often known as Custer’s Last Stand, it might be better recognized as the Last Stand of the Sioux. Therein, surely, lies its real significance. Yet, strangely, that does not fully explain why the battle is so famous, why it has held the imagination for so long. For part of the answer one must look to the terrible drama of that afternoon: a drama that Hollywood has often embellished beyond recognition. Another part of the answer lies more seriously in the questions that surround Custer’s immediate conduct of the affair: questions to which, by definition, there are no finite and final answers, and which therefore, even today, more than 130 years later, still provoke almost endless debates, questions and intriguing “what ifs?”.

  What if Custer had not been in such a hurry? What if, as ordered, he had gone another day up the Rosebud and then turned to arrive at the southern end of the village in concert with Gibbon coming from the north? Answer: it would probably have made no difference because, in fact, Gibbon did not arrive at the site of the village until a day later than planned. What if Reno had pressed home his charge? The likelihood is that he and his three companies would have been swallowed up in that vast village and all would have been killed. One of Reno’s men later said that had Reno not been a coward, “We all would be dead.” Was Reno a coward? Well, he was no hero, but, given that he found himself quite unsupported and in real danger of being outflanked, did he have any choice but to retreat? Anyway, rather more than half his command lived to tell the tale - which is more than Custer, for all his guts, managed for his command.

  Why did Custer not support Reno as he had promised? Because he seems never to have had immediate or close support in mind. Rather, he intended to give more or less simultaneous support by attacking from the right flank. Was this made clear to Reno? No, but to be fair to Custer, such a two-pronged attack is a fundamental tactic, still taught to cadets at West Point and Sandhurst. But it is also taught that a proper degree of coordination between the two prongs is essential. Custer entirely ignored even the most elementary pre-planning. What part did Custer’s wish to rescue his reputation (after what he saw as the injustice heaped on him following his “Belknap” evidence) play in his thinking and in his impatience? Custer himself might not have been able to define an answer to that question. But that it played some part seems almost certain.

  What would seem to have been Custer’s biggest single mistake? Answer: apart from his careless trusting to Custer’s Luck, it was surely his over-confident decision to divide his command into three units (four if one includes the pack-train). He thereby ensured that no single element was capable of coping with the enemy’s superior numbers, on which he had disregarded his scouts’ estimations. What if he had not divided his command? Who knows? It seems just possible that the 7th Cavalry, all eleven companies (not counting the one escorting the pack mules) charging as a single unit, might, despite heavy casualties, have succeeded where Reno’s much smaller charge failed. Why did Custer not carry out a reconnaissance? Answer: apart from the fact that he had never been a strong believer in looking too hard before he leapt, he judged that, with his approach discovered, he had to attack before the Sioux and Cheyenne had time to flee. Given that this was by far the most important determinant of his tactics, he has been much criticized for his assumption that the Indians would flee, and thus escape. But, if one is fair, that criticism must be measured against the general assumption among all senior Indian-fighting officers of those times that, faced with an attack by a sizeable force, flight was almost invariably what could be expected of the Indians. The generals and, more importantly in this particular context, Custer had every right to base their (and his) tactics on that assumption. So perhaps his misjudgment, though serious, was less of a key factor behind the disaster than the fact that, quite unprecedentedly and in overwhelming numbers (“too many Indians”), the Sioux and Cheyenne did the very opposite of what almost everybody (except a few of his scouts) had a right to expect. Custer’s Bad Luck? Or is that too charitable?

  There are so many more things one could say. One could detail the obvious and touching devotion of Libbie for her husband, and his for her. They wrote many-paged letters to each other almost every day. She wrote three books about their life together, and she vehemently defended his reputation until the day she died, aged 90, in
1933. Consequently a number of informed critics of her husband hung back in deference to her, but died before she did. She was buried next to him at West Point. One could sift through the intricacies of the Court of Inquiry that was held three years later at the request of Major Reno in response to the whispers (some of them quite loud) about cowardice; he was cleared, but he died a broken man. One could turn to the confidential reports of Generals Terry, Sheridan and Sherman and their estimations (in places rather self-serving) of what had gone wrong. One could quote from the many accounts given in later years by some of the warriors who were there and saw it all happen (well, most of it); the last four (all in their late 90s) turned up as honored guests to reminisce on the battlefield 75 years later, in 1951. One could recite from the conflicting editorials, reports and reflections in the journals and newspapers of the day; many of them blamed government policies rather than Custer. One could examine the many-stranded nature of the debates that even today, more than 130 years later, still exercise the experts; they will discuss every aspect of the affair, from the flaws in the overall strategy to the possible reasons why Custer was not scalped. One could look at reappraisals about the final 60 minutes of Custer and his immediate command, as prompted by archaeological evidence: some of it uncovered by metal detectors after recent grass-fires. Finally, one might attempt to summarize the conclusions of the 50 most outstanding (and contrasting) books on this almost endless subject, which would require some very subjective judgments - yet that is more or less what I have just done.