The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  Chapter 14: Grazing His Horses

  Gibson recounted how after the warriors fired a pair of rifle shots at 2:30 a.m. on June 26, Benteen ordered the trumpeters to sound reveille, in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 81. Trumpeter Hardy’s account of “a large body of Indians [dressed] in the uniforms of Custer’s men” is in a footnote in Hardorff’s Camp, Custer, p. 83. Prior to fooling Reno’s battalion, the Indians dressed in soldiers’ clothes had also fooled their own village. According to the Cheyenne Two Moons: “The young people of the Indian camp must have robbed the dead of clothing for next day they appeared up the river above the camp mounted on captured horses, dressed in soldier clothing, which led the Indians to think other troops were coming, which alarmed the camp until it was discovered who these mounted persons were,” in Hardorff’s Indian Views, p. 112. William Taylor described the warriors’ fire on the morning of June 26 as “a perfect shower of bullets” in With Custer, p. 54. Sergeant Stanislas Roy told Camp, “They fired at us so heavy that [the bullets] cut down all of [the] sage brush in front of us,” in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 114. In a July 4, 1876, letter to his wife, Gibson wrote that “my only wonder is that every one of us wasn’t killed,” in Fougera’s With Custer’s Cavalry, p. 269. Unless otherwise indicated, all of Benteen’s quotations in this chapter are from his narrative in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, pp. 172–75. Windolph’s description of the death of the soldier beside him and the shattering of his rifle butt are in his I Fought with Custer, p. 103. Windolph told Camp about how “someone cried: ‘Get the old man back here quick,’ ” in Hardorff, On the Little Bighorn, p. 180. Besides Benteen, Edgerly also testified to seeing Reno “in a pit with Captain Weir,” in W. A. Graham, RCI, p. 181. As to Reno’s drinking on the twenty-sixth, Private Corcoran, who was with the wounded that morning, told Camp that Reno came into the hospital with “a quart bottle of whiskey and [Corcoran] saw him take a big drink out of it,” in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 150; Corcoran also told how Benteen called out to the men gathered in the corral, “Come on back, and we will drive them off. You might as well be killed out there as in here.” In a Sept. 21, 1904, letter, William Morris wrote that when Benteen ordered M Company “out of their pits to reinforce his troop . . . [t]here was some dissatisfaction . . . as the men believed that the necessity was due solely to the neglect of ‘H,’ in digging pits,” in Brady’s Indian Fights and Fighters, p. 404. Taylor described Benteen walking calmly as the bullets flew around him in With Custer, pp. 57–58.

  John Keegan gives credence to the statement that the Battle of Waterloo was “won on the playing-fields of Eton,” in The Face of Battle, p. 194; the same might be said of the survival of the Seventh at the battle of the LBH, but instead of cricket it was the baseball diamonds of the northern plains. In a collection of sketches about his experiences in the West, Benteen described how after a confrontation with a Cheyenne war party in the spring of 1868, “the baseball nine of my troop [gave] Troop K’s nine a sad trouncing at our national game (each captain, of course, being captain, and playing as one of the nine of his troop). To play the match, the surrounding country was strongly picketed to avoid being interrupted during progress of the game by wary Indians or by herds of buffaloes, as it was quite possible that one or the other of them might . . . attempt to interfere with our sport. Is there another case on record where baseball has been played under similar circumstances?” in Cavalry Scraps, edited by John Carroll, p. 5. For information about H Company’s baseball team, I have relied on Harry Anderson’s “The Benteen Base Ball Club,” pp. 82–87. Private George Glenn described how Benteen’s shirttail worked out of his pants as he exhorted the men, “[T]his is a groundhog case,” in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 136. Goldin wrote of Benteen’s claim that he was protected from the warriors’ bullets by the medicine sewn into his uniform, in an Apr. 5, 1933, letter to Albert Johnson, in Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, pp. 43–44. Although we will never know what his wife, Frabbie, had sewn into Benteen’s uniform for “medicine,” here is an educated guess: In their correspondence the Benteens exchanged, in addition to the occasional pornographic picture, what they poetically and punningly referred to as sprigs of “Wild Thyme,” which the biographer Charles Mills claims were strands of their pubic hair, in Harvest of Barren Regrets, p. 295. This may be what Benteen considered his powerful medicine. Windolph told how the warriors were “coming on foot, singing some kind of war cry,” in Hardorff’s On the Little Bighorn, p. 180. Windolph’s account of Benteen’s invitation to “stand up and see this,” is in Hardorff’s On the Little Bighorn, p. 78. Windolph claimed that Benteen led three different charges on the warriors that morning, but almost all other participants (including Benteen) speak of only one charge. Windolph remembered Benteen’s speech about telling “the Old Folks . . . how many Indians we had to fight today” was before the second charge when H Company was assisted by French’s M Company; I have assumed that this was the one that Benteen and the others referred to as the charge.

  For information on Long Road, I have depended on Hardorff’s Hokahey! pp. 87–91. Camp recorded Pigford’s account of how “the Indian killed near Co. H was the one who had charged up and stopped there. . . . Every little while this Indian would rise up and fire. Once when he rose up he exposed the upper half of his body, and Pigford taking deliberate aim, killed him,” in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 144. Ryan wrote about retrieving the mortally wounded Tanner in a blanket; Ryan also described the death of Private Voight and how both Tanner and Voight were buried in the same grave, in Sandy Barnard’s Ten Years with Custer, p. 300. Newell told of Tanner’s final words in John Carroll’s Sunshine Magazine, p. 13. Peter Thompson told of how he draped an overcoat over Tanner and how he found another coat to make a pillow, in his Account, p. 41.

  Reno’s inability to see that the warriors were about to charge his position had much to do with how his men were positioned on the surrounding hills. Normal procedure during a siege was to set up the line of defense on the enemy side of the hill so that the defender had an open field of fire. On Reno Hill, however, about half the soldiers had elected to use the hill as a protective barrier, which severely limited their field of fire. As a consequence, the warriors in some instances could come to within thirty feet of the line without being fired on. See William Rector’s “Fields of Fire: The Reno-Benteen Defense Perimeter,” pp. 66–67. Peter Thompson wrote that Reno “would have pulled the hole in after him if he could,” in his Account, p. 41. Several officers testified to the interchange between Benteen and Reno and how Benteen called out, “Now charge and give them hell”; see in particular Edgerly in W. A. Graham, RCI, pp. 164–65. Varnum told of how he was injured during the charge, in Custer’s Chief of Scouts, pp. 93–94. Edgerly described the death of Private Patrick Golden, known as “Paddy,” in a July 4, 1876, letter to his wife, in Bailly, p. 179. Herendeen testified that warriors fired at such long range that “we could pick the balls up as they fell [italics in the original],” in Utley’s Reno Court of Inquiry, p. 242. An account of the packer J. C. Wagoner being hit in the head with a spent bullet is in a footnote in Hardorff’s On the Little Bighorn, p. 179; see also Nichols’s Men with Custer, pp. 342–43. Peter Thompson remembered seeing this same packer: “His bandaged head and blood-stained face made him look ‘tough,’ ” in his Account, p. 44.

  Herendeen told Camp that when his dead horse was hit by a warrior’s bullet he could “hear the hiss of escaping gas,” in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 225. In a July 4, 1876, letter to his parents, Varnum wrote, “[T]he men lay in the trench beside corpses with flies and maggots. . . . I will not attempt to describe the horror of the situation. We had no water, and the men became furious,” in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 343. Godfrey described the men’s “almost maddening” thirst and how they blew the hardtack from their mouths “like so much flour,” in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 145. The reference to soldiers drinking horse urine is in Royal Jackson’s An Oral History of the Battle of the Little Bighorn fro
m the Perspective of the Northern Cheyenne Descendants, p. 55; my thanks to John Doerner for bringing this source to my attention. Porter’s account of the wounded men “crying and begging piteously for water” is in L. G. Walker’s Dr. Henry R. Porter, p. 66. Like his account of having seen Custer beside the Little Bighorn, Peter Thompson’s insistence that he went for water on his own initiative on the morning of June 26 has been viewed with skepticism by many historians. But as Camp learned from other troopers who were there, “Thompson is said to have been the first . . . to make the trip.” See Michael Wyman and Rocky Boyd’s “Coming to an Understanding,” which also cites the account from Young Two Moons (see below), p. 47. By the time Thompson ventured to the river a second time, Madden, the K Company saddler, was, as Mechling recounts, sitting at the mouth of the ravine. This sequencing is further proof that Thompson was the first to go for water. See also John McGuire’s letter to Camp in which he states, “Peter Thompson took two canteens and went to the river and filled [them] with water and returned to us safely except for a wound through the hand which he had previously received,” Camp Collection, box 1, folder 2, reel 1, BYU. Unless otherwise indicated, my account of Peter Thompson’s activities in this chapter comes from his Account, pp. 33–46. My description of the ravine down which Thompson went for water is based, in part, on my own experience walking this same ravine in July 2009.

  Thompson seemed unsure of exactly how many times he went down to get water—hardly surprising given that he’d lost enough blood after suffering the gunshot to his hand and elbow that he’d passed out in the hospital prior to making his first trip to the river. In his Jan. 26, 1909, letter to Camp he wrote that he’d taken six trips to get water. In an undated note at the LBHBNM archives, Camp recorded a conversation with Thompson in which Thompson claimed to have made just three trips: “going first about 9 a.m—had to run down across open space to make gully. Then crept along watching at every turn in ravine to see if any Indians ahead. Had neither carbine, pistol nor knife. Finally got down to river for water. No sooner did I emerge from the mouth of the gully than a volley of about 20 shots was fired at me from same side of river and further upstream. There were no Indians directly across the stream. In all my trips I went for water alone.” In a May 24, 1877, letter recommending Peter Thompson for a medal “of conspicuous gallantry,” Captain Henry Jackson, then commander of C Company, wrote that Thompson had made three trips to the river even though “he was remonstrated with by Sergeant Kanipe, then in charge of the detachment of the Company.” (My thanks to Rocky Boyd for bringing this letter and the undated Camp interview to my attention in his unpublished manuscript, “Statements Related to the Water Carriers.”) In his published Account, Thompson described a total of four trips to get water. According to Thompson’s daughter Susan Taylor, those who doubt that the seriously wounded Thompson was capable of making three or more exhausting trips for water “do not understand an independent, patriotic Scotsperson who will do whatever he sets out to do or almost die trying. Patriotism and independence seem too rare to be believed, apparently,” in Susan Taylor MS, pp. xiii–xiv. When Thompson’s daughter was still a child, he reenacted many of his experiences during the battle. “He taught me . . . ,” Susan Taylor writes, “how to dip water out of the river with a kettle in my left hand under ‘Indian fire’ from the buckrush across the river. He taught me to ‘stroll’ under Indian fire on a pretend Reno Hill. This ‘strolling’ was more like a squatty shuffle, my mother said, and he should describe it that way in his MS. He said that would not sound ‘dignified.’ He said [that during the battle] he did not want to crawl on the filthy ground because of his wounded hand. He said he simply had to move around because his arm and hand hurt too much to sit still in the hot sun, and besides, he wanted to do something useful,” p. xv. Susan describes the injury to Thompson’s elbow and hand in the Susan Taylor MS, p. xii. Young Two Moons’ account of seeing “one soldier stripped to his underclothing” running to the river on June 26 is in Jerome Greene’s Lakota and Cheyenne: Indian Views of the Great Sioux War. “When he reached [the river],” Young Two Moons told an interpreter, “he threw himself in [the] water, filling his vessels and drinking at the same time. Half the time they could not see him because of the water thrown up by the bullets,” p. 72. Susan Taylor writes of how Thompson was questioned about the injury to his head when he returned from his first trip to the river; she claimed her father had a total of three bullet scars on the top of his head, in Susan Taylor MS, p. xii. Daniel Newell wrote that Private McVay, the same trooper who threatened to shoot Peter Thompson if he didn’t give him his canteen, offered him (Newell) seventy-five dollars for a drink, in John Carroll’s Sunshine Magazine, p. 13.

  Mechling described his trip to get water and how Benteen’s extended drink from his canteen almost started a rush for the river, in Hardorff’s Camp, Custer, pp. 76–78. In the opinion of Private William Taylor, Benteen’s decision to organize a detail of water carriers was “foolish and uncalled for” since it took away men who were vitally needed to defend the entrenchment, in With Custer, p. 60. Thompson wasn’t the only one who heard someone shout curses at the soldiers in English. Private John Siversten claimed that warriors on the other side of the river said, “Come on over on this side, you sons of [bitches] and we will give it to you! Come over!” in Liddic and Harbaugh’s Camp on Custer, p. 110. Reno claimed the Seventh fought “all the desperadoes, renegades, and half-breeds and squawmen” in his July 5, 1876, report, reprinted in W. A. Graham, RCI, p. 277; see Walter Boyes’s “White Renegades Living with the Hostiles Go Up Against Custer,” pp. 11–19. William Taylor’s description of the “dirty and haggard” survivors watching the departing Indian village is in With Custer, p. 60. Edgerly’s comparison of the Indians’ pony herd to “a great brown carpet” is in the Official Transcript of the RCI, edited by Ronald Nichols, p. 780, and is cited by Stewart in Custer’s Luck, p. 428. Trumpeter Hardy described the departing Indian village “as a long black cloud at the foot hills across the bottom”; he also recounted Reno’s exclamation, “For God’s sake, Moylan, look what we have been standing off!” in a footnote in Hardorff’s Camp, Custer, p. 83. Ryan’s claim that he and French fired the last shots of the battle are in Barnard’s Ten Years with Custer, p. 301. Gerard’s account of overhearing the “cries of children . . . [and] the death chanting of the squaws” is in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 234. Edgerly told of how the horses skidded down the bluff to the river, adding, “Their rush for the river when they got near to it was very pathetic,” in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 58. Roy’s account of the horses plunging their heads into the water is also in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 116. McDougall’s nuanced description of Reno’s character is in W. A. Graham, RCI, pp. 196–97. Peter Thompson told how Benteen inspired the men in his Account, p. 42. The description of Benteen as the “savior of the Seventh” is cited by James Donovan in A Terrible Glory, p. 250.

  Brisbin’s account of Terry’s “anxiety and impatience to get on” is in Brininstool, p. 281. All quotations from Lieutenant Bradley are from his “Journal,” pp. 219–24. Charles Roe’s account of horsemen “clothed in blue uniforms” is from his Custer’s Last Battle, p. 7. Gibbon’s account of the column’s arrivalI at the battle site is in his “Last Summer’s Expedition Against the Sioux and Its Great Catastrophe,” pp. 298–99. In his diary, edited by Barry Johnson, Dr. Paulding wrote, “I picked up a buckskin shirt . . . marked Porter,” “Dr. Paulding and His Remarkable Diary,” p. 62. Windolph described Terry as openly crying as he approached the survivors of the Seventh, in I Fought with Custer, p. 109. Roe told Walter Camp of Benteen’s insistence that Custer “is somewhere down the Big Horn grazing his horses,” in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 249. Benteen’s response to discovering Custer’s dead body is in Hardorff’s Custer Battle Casualties, pp. 19–20.

  Chapter 15: The Last Stand

  In writing this chapter, I have relied primarily on Native accounts. This does not mean, however, that there is a monolithic �
�Indian view” of what transpired during the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Much of the oral testimony that has been recorded over the course of the last 130 years is contradictory—as is, it should be pointed out, the evidence associated with the army’s side of the battle. However, the issues associated with Native testimony are particularly complex. Since few of the Indian participants spoke English, an interpreter was required, and as Curley complained to Walter Camp, interpreters were often suspect; but so were the interrogators, many of whom had a preconceived agenda they hoped the Indians’ testimony would support. There were also the warriors’ legitimate concerns that they might suffer some form of retribution if they told their questioners, many of whom were soldiers and government officials, anything they didn’t want to hear. The accounts collected by the Cheyenne tribal historian John Stands in Timber, who knew many battle veterans and who could speak both Cheyenne and English, is of special interest, since the testimony was not filtered by an interpreter.