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

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  Terry’s June 21, 1876, letter in which he describes his anger over Reno’s actions no longer exists; before its disappearance it was quoted in Hughes’s “Campaign Against the Sioux in 1876” and is reprinted in Willert’s edition of Terry’s letters, p. 47. Hughes in “Campaign Against the Sioux in 1876” approvingly quotes Terry’s personal motto: “Zeal without discretion only does harm,” p. 43. Custer’s criticisms of Reno appeared in the July 11, 1876, New York Herald. Terry’s movements on June 20, 1876, are outlined in his Field Diary, p. 23. Peter Thompson tells of how Custer “upbraided” Reno in his Account, p. 9; he also states that “Custer and some other of the officers were anxious to witness the opening of the Centennial Exposition,” p. 10.

  Mark Kellogg’s description of Terry strategizing aboard the Far West appeared in the July 1, 1876, New York Herald. John Bailey writes of Terry’s background in his biography of the general, Pacifying the Plains, p. 5. Roger Darling writes insightfully about Terry’s mind-set in A Sad and Terrible Blunder, commenting that “he was proud of his plan,” p. 60. According to S. L. A. Marshall in The Crimsoned Prairie, it was “not a very bright plan; the synchronization of such movement over great distance being next to impossible,” p. 113. Robert Hughes in “Campaign Against the Sioux in 1876” writes of the inadequacy of the available maps: “A copy of the map then extant . . . [shows] that the Rosebud was an unexplored and unmapped region,” p. 35; Hughes also states that Terry’s belief that the Lakota and Cheyenne were in the vicinity of the Little Bighorn was based on the Crow scouts’ reports of “many smokes” in that region, p. 36. In a Jan. 1, 1892, letter to Godfrey, Brisbin described the scene in the cabin of the Far West, in Brininstool, p. 276.

  In his biography of Custer, Jay Monaghan wrote of Custer’s neglect of orders at the Battle of Gettysburg: “[H]e had successfully evaded a superior’s order and by doing so become a gallant—perhaps a key—figure in winning the greatest battle of the war,” p. 149. Or as John Gray comments in Centennial Campaign, “When perceptive disobedience snatches victory from defeat, who complains?” p. 148. Even Terry’s biographer, John Bailey, questioned Terry’s decision not to accompany Custer: “Terry might be faulted because he did not go in command of the Seventh Cavalry himself. He had experienced problems with both Colonel Custer and Major Reno and he might have kept them in the harness by his presence,” in Pacifying the Plains, p. 156. Terry’s comments about wishing “to give [Custer] a chance to do something” are in Brisbin’s Jan. 1, 1892, letter to Godfrey in Brininstool, p. 278. As Marshall comments in Crimsoned Plain, “Such deference to subordinates may be highly Christian but it is hardly military,” p. 118. Godfrey’s remark that “something must be wrong about Genl Terry” was recorded in The Field Diary of Lt. Edward Settle Godfrey, on Aug. 14, 1876, in Stewart, pp. 35–36.

  According to John Gray, “[W ]e must be wary . . . of statements made after the tragedy, not merely because of the vagaries of human memory, but because of the partisan interests and hindsight revisions,” Centennial Campaign, p. 141. According to Terry’s brother-in-law and aide Robert Hughes, if Custer had obeyed his orders, they would have won “one of the most brilliant victories over the Indians,” in “Campaign Against the Sioux in 1876,” p. 42. A good example of how the passage of time can change a person’s perception of a past event is the difference between Brisbin’s 1892 account of the meeting aboard the Far West (in which he claimed Custer was to postpone his attack until Gibbon and Terry had arrived) with what he claimed on June 28, 1876, as published in the New York Herald: “It was announced by General Terry that General Custer’s column would strike the blow and General Gibbon and his men received the decision without a murmur. . . . The Montana Column felt disappointed when they learned that they were not to be present at the final capture of the great village,” cited by Gray in Centennial Campaign, p. 145. Lieutenant James Bradley’s statement that “we have little hope of being in at the death, as Custer will undoubtedly exert himself to the utmost” was made in his Wednesday, June 21, 1876, journal entry, p. 215.

  Frances Holley in Once Their Home recounted Fred Gerard’s impressions of Terry’s verbal instructions to Custer: “with what he heard General Terry say . . . [Gerard thinks] General Custer did not disobey any instructions nor bring on the fight unnecessarily,” p. 266. Lawrence Barrett’s Oct. 3, 1876, letter in which he reported that Custer “was told to act according to his own judgment” is in Sandy Barnard’s “The Widow Custer: Consolation Comes from Custer’s Best Friend,” p. 4. There is also an affidavit in which Custer’s African American cook Mary Adams recorded her memory of Terry’s last words to Custer: “[U]se your own judgment and do what you think best if you strike the trail,” in John Manion’s fascinating analysis of this controversial document, General Terry’s Last Statement to Custer, p. 62. Mark Kellogg’s dispatch in the July 11, 1876, New York Herald records that Terry and the other officers estimated that fifteen hundred warriors were with Sitting Bull. Gibbon’s letter to Terry in which he says “perhaps we were expecting too much to anticipate a forbearance on [Custer’s] part” is in Brady’s Indian Fights, p. 223. Brisbin’s reference to how Terry “turned his wild man loose” is in his letter to Godfrey in Brininstool, p. 280. S. L. A. Marshall in Crimsoned Plain describes Custer as “the main sacrifice,” p. 121.

  Charles Hofling in Custer and the Little Big Horn: A Psychobiographical Inquiry comments on Custer’s “subdued, almost depressed state of mind in which he left the conference,” p. 96. Roger Darling in A Sad and Terrible Blunder writes that Custer’s “depression” may have “stemmed from the rejection of criticisms and proposals he may have presented,” p. 76. In a June 2, 1876, letter, Terry wrote, “I am becoming like ‘I.B. tough.’ I hope, however, that means [I] shall become like him not only ‘tough’ but ‘day-velish sly,’” p. 19. Bailey in Pacifying the Plains writes of Terry’s role in drafting the Treaty of 1868 and his assurance to Sheridan that an expedition into the Black Hills was legal, pp. 96, 108. Terry’s orders to Custer are reprinted in Hammer, Custer in ’76, pp. 257–58. According to Hughes, the language of Terry’s written orders meant that “Custer had no business to be at that time [afternoon of June 25] ‘in the presence of the Indians,’ ” “Campaign Against the Sioux in 1876,” p. 39. According to Walter Camp, “Terry was a lawyer as well as a soldier, and this order was so drawn that Custer, in case Indians did escape, would have been charged with responsibility whether he attacked or not,” in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 263.

  Darling in A Sad and Terrible Blunder cites James DeWolf’s May 23 letter describing Terry’s sympathies for the Indians, p. 77; the letter is in Luce, “Diary and Letters of Dr. James M. DeWolf,” p. 75. Kellogg wrote of Terry’s insistence “that there was to be no child’s play as regards the Indians” in the May 17, 1876, New York Herald. John Burkman’s account of Custer’s words with Terry and Gibbon in front of his tent are in Wagner, p. 133. Grant Marsh also noticed that “the general seemed in an irritable frame of mind that night,” in Hanson, p. 260. Godfrey described Custer as “unusually emphatic” in his meeting with his officers in “Custer’s Last Battle,” in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 130. Custer wrote of how the Crows had heard “that I never abandoned a trail” in a June 21, 1876, letter to Libbie in Boots and Saddles, p. 275. Edgerly’s account of his playful interchange with Custer about stepping high is in Merington, p. 309. Richard Thompson reported on Benteen and Custer’s argumentative exchange to Walter Camp in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 247. Burkman’s comments about Custer being “worked up over something” are in Wagner, p. 134. Sheridan’s vote of confidence prior to the Battle of the Washita is in Merington, p. 217. Charles DeLand writes that Custer’s fear of happening upon Crook “may well have increased his desire to refrain from marching southward,” in The Sioux Wars, p. 427. Custer’s disparaging words about Reno appeared in the July 11, 1876, New York Herald. Burkman’s description of the drinking that night is in Wagner, p. 135.

  Godfrey writes of how several o
fficers “seemed to have a presentiment of their fate” in “Custer’s Last Battle” in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 130. Custer described Cooke’s heroics against the Cheyenne in My Life on the Plains, pp. 90–97. Cooke and Gibson’s exchange is in Fougera’s With Custer’s Cavalry, p. 277. Brisbin’s letter describing how “we fixed poor Mark up for his ride to death” appeared in the Nov. 15, 1890, Sturgeon Bay, Wisc., Advocate, cited by Sandy Barnard in I Go with Custer, p. 133. Hanson describes Charley Reynolds’s conversation with Grant Marsh, p. 264, as well as the late-night poker game played in the cabin of the Far West, p. 263; according to Hanson, “Custer’s tent was pitched on the riverbank but a few feet away from the Far West,” p. 247. On Reno’s actions that night see Willis Carland’s Feb. 2, 1934, letter to William Ghent, in Edward Settle Godfrey Papers, LOC; Carland was the son of Lieutenant John Carland of the Sixth Infantry and wrote, “I remember . . . seeing Reno with his arm about father’s shoulder, both of them singing ‘larboard watch.’ ” John Burkman’s description of standing guard in front of Custer’s tent and finding Custer asleep with the pen in his hand are in Wagner, pp. 137, 138. John Gibbon wrote of Custer’s departure in “Last Summer’s Expedition Against the Sioux and Its Great Catastrophe,” p. 293; he also wrote of the scene in a letter to Terry in Brady’s Indian Fights, p. 223.

  Chapter 7: The Approach

  Arthur Brandt, in his introduction to Francis Parkman’s The Oregon Trail, suggests that Parkman’s illness, known as “mountain fever,” may have been linked to the alkaline in the drinking water, p. xiv. Once in the Black Hills, Parkman felt “a spirit of energy in the mountains,” p. 116; his descriptions of a buffalo hunt, pemmican, and the elders in their “white buffalo-robes” are all in The Oregon Trail, pp. 162–63, 160, 150. Gray tells of how the government’s attempts to buy the Black Hills “had thrown the rationing machinery of the government into chaos”; he also describes the effects of the embargo on selling arms and ammunition to the agency Indians in Centennial Campaign, pp. 33–34; he estimates the size of Sitting Bull’s village by June 18 to have been approximately four thousand people, p. 333.

  Dan Flores in “The Great Contraction” writes that the northern plains were “the scene of the nineteenth-century endgame for both bison and Plains Indians” and that it was “almost inevitable that the country just north of the Little Bighorn . . . should feature the final acts of almost 90 centuries of Indian/bison interactions in western America,” pp. 7–8. The Lakota who hugged the buffalo were Broken Arrow and He Dog; a herd of seventeen bison had been collected in a corral and put on display to local residents at Pine Ridge, many of whom had never even seen a buffalo; in the Apr. 26, 1891, New York World, cited by Robert Utley in The Indian Frontier, p. 227. Dan Flores calculates that the average Lakota ate about six buffalo per year in “Bison Ecology,” p. 64.

  John Gray describes how the size of Sitting Bull’s village doubled in just a week in Centennial Campaign, pp. 336–37. Kill Eagle noted that the camp’s large council lodge was yellow in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 55. Parkman wrote of the Lakota’s “characteristic indecision” in The Oregon Trail, p. 107. White Bull described the interior of Sitting Bull’s tepee and told of how a guest was typically welcomed in box 104, folder 22, WCC; according to White Bull, “Sitting Bull could take a joke on himself. I have been in Sitting Bull’s lodge many times and listened to the people cracking jokes. . . . It is true of Indians there are some who cannot take a joke.” Richard Hardorff reprints another White Bull account (box 105, notebook 24, WCC) in Indian Views of the Custer Fight, p. 150. Parkman described a typical evening in a Lakota lodge in The Oregon Trail, p. 145; he compared the light-filled tepee to a “gigantic lantern,” p. 169, “glowing through the half-transparent covering of raw hides,” p. 101. John Keegan writes of nomadism in Fields of Battle: “The nomad regards himself as a superior being, because he enjoys the greatest of all human endowments, personal freedom and detachment from material borders. Nomadism, anthropologists have concluded, is the happiest of human ways of life; and because of the happiness it brings, those who enjoy it react with ruthless violence against outsiders who seek to limit or redirect it,” pp. 277–78. Wooden Leg talked of the pleasures of “when every man had to be brave” in Marquis, Wooden Leg, pp. 383–84.

  Godfrey wrote of officer’s call on June 22, 1876, in “Custer’s Last Battle,” in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 135. Gibson’s letter describing Custer’s “queer sort of depression” is in Fougera, With Custer’s Cavalry, pp. 266–67. Edgerly also wrote about the scene in his letter to Libbie in Merington, p. 310. In a July 2, 1876, letter to Sheridan, Terry wrote, “I . . . at one time suggested [to Custer] that perhaps it would be well for me to take Gibbon’s cavalry and go with him. To this suggestion he replied that he would . . . prefer his own regiment alone . . . that he had all the force that he could need, and I shared his confidence,” in The Little Big Horn 1876: The Official Communications, Documents, and Reports, edited by Lloyd Overfield, pp. 36–37. According to James Willert, “The apparent undermining of his person before Terry angered him in no small degree,” Little Big Horn Diary, p. 219. Burkman spoke of Custer’s tendency to overreact in Wagner, p. 143. Benteen described his pointed interchange with Custer in his “Little Big Horn Narrative” in John Carroll’s Benteen-Goldin Letters, p. 162. Godfrey wrote of Wallace’s prediction that Custer would be killed in his Field Diary, edited by Stewart, p. 9.

  On the Seventh Cavalry’s difficulties with the pack train, see John Gray’s “The Pack Train on General George A. Custer’s Last Campaign,” pp. 53–68, and Richard Hardorff’s “Packs, Packers, and Pack Details: Logistics and Custer’s Pack Train,” pp. 225–48. According to Hardorff, “this new mode of transportation was totally ineffective. . . . [T]he implementation of this system could not have come at a more inopportune time,” p. 237. John McGuire told Walter Camp that it was “a great misfortune Gatling guns weren’t taken . . . as the ground was not nearly so rough as had been on Reno’s scout,” folder 73, Camp Papers, BYU. Vern Smalley discusses the pluses and minuses of buckskin clothing in More Little Bighorn Mysteries, section 18, pp. 1–3. Kill Eagle attested to the fact that Sitting Bull wore cloth clothing, testifying that “the last time I saw him he was wearing a very dirty cotton shirt,” in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 55. Charley Reynolds’s description of Custer as “George of the quill and leather breeches” is in a letter from George Bird Grinnell to Walter Camp, reel 1, Camp Papers, BYU. Richard Hardorff in a note in Lakota Recollections claims that in addition to the three Custer brothers and brother-in-law James Calhoun, five other officers wore buckskin, p. 67.

  Charles Mills in Harvest of Barren Regrets writes of the rift between Benteen and his father during the Civil War, p. 19, as well the ongoing feud between Benteen’s two commanding officers during much of the war, p. 65. For a reproduction of an erotic drawing by Benteen, see Camp Talk, edited by John Carroll, p. 103. In an Oct. 20, 1891, letter to Goldin, Benteen wrote, “I lost four children in following that brazen trumpet around,” John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, p. 197. Benteen described himself as a “Nihilist sure” in a Mar. 23, 1896, letter to Goldin, John Carroll’s Benteen-Goldin Letters, p. 294. Benteen wrote of the pride that kept him from leaving the regiment and of his curious decision to request Custer’s return prior to the Washita campaign in a Feb. 12, 1896, letter to Goldin, John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, pp. 259, 252. Corroborating Benteen’s claim that he had encouraged Sheridan to bring Custer back is Custer’s letter to Libbie: “even my enemies ask to have me return,” in Frost, General Custer’s Libbie, p. 174. Benteen described his struggles with the pack train in his narrative of the battle in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, pp. 162–63.

  The scouts’ description of Varnum as “Peaked Face” is in Libby, p. 197. Varnum recounted Custer’s words of praise during the Yellowstone campaign of 1873 to T. M. Coughlan in Varnum: The Last of Custer’s Lieutenants; Coughlan also wrote that Custer “and some
of his young officers had their heads shingled with clippers shortly before leaving Fort Lincoln,” p. 4. Custer’s insistence that Reno had “made the mistake of his life” by not following the Indian trail is also in Coughlan, p. 9. Custer’s letter to Libbie referring to “the valuable time lost” by Reno’s failure to pursue the Indians is in Merington, p. 305. Custer’s claim that a victory over just five lodges of Lakota was sufficient to claim success is in Libby, p. 58. According to Peter Thompson, “all men knew that General Custer, if left to his own devices, would soon end the campaign one way or another. Custer and some of his officers were anxious to witness the opening of the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in July 1876,” Account, p. 9.

  Benteen described how he reorganized the pack train in his narrative in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, p. 163. Thompson described the fall of Barnum the mule in his Account, pp. 11–12. In a Feb. 19, 1896, letter to Goldin, Benteen wrote: “The anti-Custer faction—if there was such a faction—were the people in the regiment that had all of the hard duty to perform and who did it nobly, because they loved their country and the ‘Service,’ ” John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, p. 273. Cooke’s Arikara name of “the Handsome Man” was listed in Mark Kellogg’s notebook in Sandy Barnard’s I Go with Custer, p. 207. Benteen told of Cooke’s defection to the Custer faction in a Feb. 17, 1896, letter to Goldin, in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, p. 269. Benteen describes his interactions with Cooke and Custer about the pack train in his narrative in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, pp. 177–78.