Chapter 11: To the Hill
Wooden Leg described how he became aware of Reno’s attack and prepared for battle in Marquis, Wooden Leg, pp. 216–20. Red Feather insisted that Re-no’s battalion should have stayed in the timber; he remembered that he and his fellow warriors were pleasantly surprised to see them bolt to the south. “Some Indians shouted,” he remembered, “ ‘Give way; let the soldiers out. We can’t get at them in there,’ ” in Hardorff’s Lakota Recollections, p. 83. Moylan described the retreat from the timber as “the Sauve-Qui-Peut Movement,” i.e., “Everybody for himself,” in Hardorff’s On the Little Bighorn, p. 14. French told of being tempted to fire a “friendly bullet” into Reno, in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 342. Gerard insisted that “the timber was a splendid place for defense. . . . [H]ad a little determination been displayed in way of defense, [the Indians] would never have come into the brush to find the soldiers,” in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 233; he added, “Reno . . . seeing no support from the rear, lost his head, if he had any, and suddenly decided to run the gauntlet of the Sioux.” Newell disagreed, claiming that it was Sergeant John Ryan of M Company who saved the day by telling Reno, “There is nothing to do but mount our men and cut our way out. Another fifteen minutes and there won’t be a man left,” in John Carroll’s Sunshine Magazine, p. 10. Taylor wrote of the despair a soldier felt when he “sees his commanding officer lose his head entirely,” in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 344; he added, “Reno proved incompetent and Benteen showed his indifference. . . . Both failed Custer and he had to fight it out alone,” p. 344. Slaper remembered French telling Reno, “I think we had better get out of here,” in Brininstool, p. 51.
Thomas O’Neill of G Company heard Varnum object, “For God’s sake men let’s don’t leave the line. There are enough of us here to whip the whole Sioux nation,” in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 107. Varnum wrote in Custer’s Chief of Scouts of his difficult exit from the timber, p. 90, and of the warriors “with the Winchesters laying across their saddles and pumping them into us,” p. 66; he also recounted how Reno responded to his (Varnum’s) pleas to “get down and fight” with the words “I am in command,” p. 67. Wooden Leg saw the soldier riding with an arrow stuck in the back of his head, in Marquis, Wooden Leg, p. 221. Pretty White Buffalo Woman described how the warriors’ fresh ponies “flitted in and through and about the troopers’ broken lines,” in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 85. Wooden Leg told how he and Little Bird surrounded a mounted trooper, in Marquis, Wooden Leg, pp. 221–22. French melodramatically described how he “sought death” in his “singlehanded” defense of the retreating soldiers in a letter in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 342. French bragged about his heroics in the valley, but once he’d made it across the river, he showed little interest in organizing a covering fire for those attempting to cross the river. When asked by Sergeant Lloyd about doing just that, French said, “I’ll try—I’ll try,” then proceeded to follow Reno and the others up the hill. “But nothing was done,” Culbertson remembered, “and the Indians’ fire was not returned at all,” in W. A. Graham, RCI, p. 123.
Porter’s account is in L. G. Walker’s Dr. Henry R. Porter, pp. 56, 57–58. William Morris’s account of his and Stumbling Bear’s adventures is in Mangum’s “Reno’s Battalion,” pp. 5–7. Taylor wrote of the prairie dog village that made for “very unpleasant riding at our rapid gait,” in With Custer, p. 42. Herendeen described how after falling from his horse, he cried out to Charley Reynolds, “Don’t try to ride out,” in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 223. Rutten recounted his wild ride from the timber to Reno Hill and how his good friend Isaiah Dorman cried out, “Goodbye Rutten!” in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 119. On McIntosh and the picket pin, see Goldin’s April 5, 1933, letter to Albert Johnson, in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, p. 43. In a July 4, 1876, letter to his wife, Benteen wrote, “I am inclined to think that had McIntosh divested himself of that slow poking way which was his peculiar characteristic he might have been still in the land of the living,” in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, p. 158.
Morris estimated the western riverbank at the crossing was twelve to fifteen feet high, in Wengert and Davis’s That Fatal Day, p. 27. Brave Bear remembered how the sound of the troopers’ horses hitting the water “sounded like cannon going off. This was awful as the bank was awful high.” He also remembered seeing “lots of blood in the water,” in Hardorff’s Lakota Recollections, p. 84. Wooden Leg described how the “Indians mobbed the soldiers floundering . . . crossing the river,” in Marquis, Wooden Leg, p. 223. Flying Hawk’s account of Crazy Horse killing soldiers in the river is in Hardorff’s Indian Views, p. 124. The expression “shavetail”—used by Private Gordon to describe William Morris as the two soldiers climbed up the hill after crossing the river—refers to the practice of shaving the tail of a new, unbroken mule to distinguish it from the seasoned animals. Morris’s account of Hare’s brave actions after the retreat to Reno Hill are in Wengert and Davis’s That Fatal Day, p. 27. In a Jan. 31, 1896, letter to Goldin, Benteen claimed to have seen Moylan “blubbering like a whipped urchin, tears coursing down his cheeks,” in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, p. 243.
According to Trumpeter William Hardy, Sergeant Henry Fehler of A Company “had an unruly horse and could not get the guidon in [his] boot,” in Hardorff’s Camp, Custer, p. 88. DeRudio told of how he lost his horse while trying to pick up the A Company guidon, in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 253, and in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 65. DeRudio testified, “I went back for the guidon because I think it the duty of a soldier to preserve his colors at the risk of his life, though when I went, I did not think there was any danger,” in W. A. Graham, RCI, p. 115. O’Neill told how Jackson quieted his and Gerard’s horses by stuffing “a large bunch of grass” in each of their mouths, in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 108. My thanks to the Reverend Eugene McDowell for his explanation of what happens when a stallion and a mare find themselves in close quarters. Private Henry Petring recounted how he was midstream in the LBH when he jumped from his horse and swam back down to the timber, where he joined Herendeen and the others, in Hammer, Custer in ’76, pp. 133–34. Herendeen’s speech to the dozen or so troopers, in which he said he was an “old frontiersman” and “would get them out of the scrape, which was no worse than scrapes I had been in before,” is in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 258.
Red Feather told of seeing two Arikara “in white shirts and blue trousers running across the river. . . . Kicking Bear took after them and shouted, ‘These two are Indians—Palini!’ ” in Hardorff’s Lakota Recollections, p. 84. Young Hawk told of hugging his horse before launching into his own last stand in Libby, pp. 99–100. Black Elk described how he scalped the still-living soldier in DeMallie’s The Sixth Grandfather, p. 183. The Oglala Eagle Elk described Dorman’s death; he claimed a Hunkpapa woman named Her Eagle Robe shot Dorman, in Hardorff’s Lakota Recollections, pp. 101–2; as several scholars have pointed out, this is undoubtedly Moving Robe Woman. Although Moving Robe Woman does not mention the incident in her own narrative, it may have been because she feared possible retribution, given that the African American interpreter was well known at the Standing Rock Agency; see Gregory Michno’s Lakota Noon, p. 88. Years later, the cowboy Ed Lemmon remembered talking with Moving Robe Woman, whom he knew as Mary Crawler and who was “said to be the only real squaw who took part in the battle of the LBH in 1876. . . . She told of killing two wounded soldiers herself, shooting one and stabbing the other. She said she did it because some soldiers had hung an uncle of hers on Lance Creek a little before the battle,” in Boss Cowman: The Recollections of Ed Lemmon, edited by Nellie Yost, p. 88. My account of the mutilations inflicted on Dorman’s body is based on Hardorff’s The Custer Battle Casualties, pp. 148–50.
In a Jan. 28, 1934, letter, Goldin wrote, “McIntosh showed the Indian blood in his features very plainly,” in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, p. 47. In a June 5, 1934, letter to Goldin, Fred Dustin quoted Ch
arles Roe’s account of finding McIntosh’s body: “[I]t was naked, badly mutilated . . . and the features hammered to a jelly. As our sergeant-major picked up a gutta percha sleeve button, he said, ‘This may lead to its identification.’ ” Later that day, McIntosh’s brother-in-law, Lieutenant Gibson, said that “before leaving Fort Abraham Lincoln his wife gave him those sleeve buttons,” in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, p. 133. Charles White’s account of how Reno refused to go back for the wounded is in Hardorff’s Indian Views, p. 21. Several of the Lakota in the valley fight later told of an officer of unusual courage. It might have been Captain Thomas French, but it also might have been Dr. James Madison DeWolf. According to Charles Eastman in “Story of the Little Big Horn,” several Native participants told him there was an officer who killed three warriors before “a gunshot brought him down” after crossing the river. “The Indians told me,” Eastman wrote, “of finding peculiar instruments on his person, from which I thought it likely this brave man was Dr. DeWolf, who was killed there.” DeWolf made the mistake of taking the leftmost route up the bluff, where a group of Indians were waiting in ambush. Although the warriors apparently rifled through DeWolf’s medical kit, the doctor’s notebook diary was found intact. Later inspection showed that DeWolf had been killed by a gunshot to the chest, then shot four times in the face with his own revolver; see Hardorff’s The Custer Battle Casualties, II, pp. 121–24. Porter recounted Reno’s assertion, “That was a charge, sir!” in W. A. Graham, RCI, p. 63.
Benteen described his swing left as “valley hunting ad infinitum,” in W. A. Graham, RCI, p. 147. Gibson told Camp that he thought he did finally see the valley of the LBH before they headed back for the rest of the column. “He now thinks however,” Camp wrote, “that he only went far enough to look down on the valley of the south fork of Sundance Creek,” in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 80. Benteen wrote of his premonition of trouble in the LBH Valley in his narrative, in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, p. 168; he also described how he outwitted his horse Old Dick at the morass, p. 169. My thanks to Susan Beegel for pointing out that by taking the bit out of his horse’s mouth at the morass Benteen unnecessarily delayed his battalion. Camp wrote that Benteen “heard firing just before starting [from the morass],” in Hardorff’s On the Little Bighorn, p. 219. Godfrey heard one of the officers at the morass say, “I wonder what the old man is keeping us here so long for?” in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 75. Godfrey said that Weir impatiently said the battalion “ought to be over there” and left the morass without orders; “Benteen, seeing this, immediately ordered the column to advance,” in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 75. Godfrey recorded Kanipe’s claim “We’ve got them, boys!” in his Field Diary, edited by Stewart, p. 12. Martin’s description of his ride from Custer to Benteen, during which he encountered Custer’s brother Boston, is in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, pp. 290–91, and in Hammer, Custer in ’76, pp. 101, 104. Martin told Camp he never said, as Benteen claimed, that “the Indians were skedaddling,” in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 101; however, Edgerly claimed in a July 4, 1876, letter to his wife that Martin said, “The Indians skedaddled, leaving the village,” in Bailly, “Echoes from Custer’s Last Fight,” p. 177. Benteen wrote of Cooke’s note in a July 4, 1876, letter to his wife, in which he commented that Cooke “left out the K in the last packs,” in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, p. 152. Edgerly reported that Benteen responded to the message by saying, “If I am going to be of service to him I think I had better not wait for the packs”; he also heard Martin “telling the boys that Reno had attacked the village,” in Hammer, Custer in ’76, pp. 54, 55. When the battalion reached the split in the trail, Gibson heard Benteen say, “Here we have the two horns of a dilemma,” in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 80. Martin recounted Reno’s first words to Benteen, “For God’s sake . . . halt your command,” in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 101. Benteen wrote “My first query of Reno was—where is Custer?” in his narrative, in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, p. 170.
Chapter 12: Still Point
Martin claimed that after the battle, on June 27, he showed Benteen where he’d left Custer’s battalion, and Benteen estimated it was only about six hundred yards from the river at the base of Medicine Tail Coulee, in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 105. The interview with Sitting Bull appeared in the November 16, 1877, New York Herald and is in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, pp. 65–73. The Oglala warrior Shot in the Eye corroborated Sitting Bull’s account of there being a significant delay between Reno’s retreat and Custer’s attack: “It was . . . some little time after Reno had been pursued on top of the bluffs that Custer’s command suddenly appeared to the Sioux like an apparition,” in Michael Donahue’s Drawing Battle Lines, p. 164. Of this delay, Walter Camp wrote in a June 22, 1909, letter to Daniel Kanipe, “The Indians all tell me that Custer and his men were over across from the village a considerable time threatening to attack, the soldiers occasionally shooting over into the village, but that the soldiers did not at any time attempt to ford the river and come over. All this time the Sioux were crossing and getting ready to attack Custer,” in Hardorff’s On the Little Bighorn, p. 87.
Curtis’s account of his visit in 1907 to the LBH Battlefield with the three Crow scouts is in The Papers of Edward S. Curtis Relating to Custer’s Last Battle, edited by James Hutchins, pp. 37–48. According to Joseph Medicine Crow, the name White Man Runs Him is more accurately translated as “Chased by a White Man” and came from a “clan uncle who had once been chased in jest by a white trader, much to the amusement of some Crow men who had witnessed the incident,” in Herman Viola’s Little Bighorn Remembered, p. 105. White Man Runs Him’s account of Custer’s actions on the bluff, in which he tells how he “scolded” Custer for not assisting Reno, is in Hutchins, Papers of Edward S. Curtis, pp. 51–54. Theodore Roosevelt’s Apr. 8, 1908, letter to Curtis is in Hutchins, Papers of Edward S. Curtis, pp. 79–80. In a Feb. 9, 1908, letter to Colonel David Brainard about Curtis’s “Notes,” General Charles Woodruff wrote, “This all lends color to the theory that for three quarters of an hour or more Custer’s column was idle and he watching Reno, but it is an awful theory to contemplate,” in Hutchins, Papers of Edward S. Curtis, p. 76. In an Apr. 22, 1908, letter to Colonel W. H. C. Bowen, Curtis wrote, “I am beginning to believe that nothing is quite so uncertain as facts,” adding that “there certainly is no end of confusion in regard to the Custer affair,” in Hutchins, Papers of Edward S. Curtis, p. 85.
For an excellent summary of Walter Mason Camp’s association with the Battle of the LBH, see Hardorff’s Camp, Custer, pp. 11–34; according to Hardorff, Camp visited the battlefield a total of ten times, p. 28. Camp made the claim of interviewing 150 Native survivors and sixty soldiers in an Oct. 31, 1917, letter to Libbie Custer, in Hardorff’s On the Little Bighorn, p. 138. Camp’s notes contain an eloquent mission statement: “After having listened to the story of the LBH Expedition from the lips of some of the men who participated therein, the current literature on the subject seemed to present such a tangle of fiction, fancy, fact, and feeling that I formed an ambition to establish the truth. It occurred to me that the essential facts must rest in the minds of many men then living, and that these facts, if collected, would constitute fairly accurate history. This has been my plan: to gather my data from eyewitnesses,” in Hardorff’s On the Little Bighorn, p. 201. Camp dismissed White Man Runs Him’s story about Custer watching Reno’s battle from the bluffs as “entirely preposterous,” in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 178. Since the three Crow scouts were, by their own admission, the ones who pointed Benteen in the direction of Reno’s battalion on the top of the bluff, it is difficult to see how they could have been, as they claimed, on Weir Peak watching the Valley Fight with Custer several miles to the north at almost precisely the same time. Still, one can only wonder whether there is an element of truth in their suggestion that Custer demonstrated a less-than-sympathetic attitude toward Reno’s situation in the valley. Curley’s statement about the inte
rpreters being responsible for the different accounts attributed to him is in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 170. Burkman, who was with the pack train, claimed that he saw Curley with some Arikara scouts riding away from the battlefield behind a herd of captured Indian ponies, in Wagner, pp. 158–59. Burkman lived out his final days in Billings, Montana, where he repeatedly confronted the Crow scout. “Curley,” he was overheard to shout, “you lie when you tell folks you fought on Custer Hill,” in Wagner, p. 27. Kanipe told Camp of the time he witnessed a similar encounter at a Billings Hotel, in Hardorff’s On the Little Bighorn, pp. 176–77.
In a Mar. 24, 1914, letter to J. S. Smith, the editor of the Belle Fourche Bee, which was in the midst of publishing a serialized version of Peter Thompson’s manuscript, Camp recounted how he first came upon Thompson: “Some time after I began to study the battle of the LBH, Sergeant Kanipe . . . told me that a set of four had straggled behind Custer’s command, or in some way had been left behind, after Custer and Reno had separated, and that these four men all got back to Reno’s command before the Sioux did. He then said that if I could only find one Peter Thompson he could tell me all about the matter, as Thompson was one of the four. . . . No one to whom I wrote or talked had seen Thompson or heard of him since his discharge from the army in 1880, until finally I met an ex-soldier who told me that Thompson had gone to work in the Black Hills somewhere after leaving the army, but he had not seen him or heard of him since that time. . . . My inquiries had started some discussion of the man in Deadwood, and a former superintendent of the Homestake Mining Co. wrote me that Thompson had gone ranching some twenty years before that, and suggested that I address him at Alzada [Montana]. I did so, and soon had a reply from the object of my long search,” in the archives of the State Historical Society of North Dakota.
The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull and the Battle of the Little Big Horn Page 46