The Last Days of George Armstrong Custer (6 page)

Recruits were schooled in the manual of the saber, manual of the pistol, manual of the carbine, and principles of target practice. They were taught how to ride and care for their mounts and learned how to fight on horseback or dismounted. In garrison, they endured months of isolation, monotony, and rigid discipline, interrupted only by the occasional brief action against their enemy, the Plains Indians.

Reveille typically blew at 5:30, with the first drill commencing at 6:15. That would be followed by stable call, guard mount, construction, woodcutting, and water details, inspections and dress reviews, and various forms of drill. Taps sounded at 8:15 and the men would retire to crude bunks fashioned with pole or board slats and a straw tick, or in some cases during warm weather they preferred to sleep outside.

The cavalryman wore a dark-blue blouse, sky-blue trousers, a gray shirt, black boots, and a wide-brimmed hat of either army-issue blue or white straw during the summer months. His uniform was crisscrossed with leather straps that held certain necessities, such as cartridge pouches and his three-pound seven-ounce light cavalry saber. He was initially issued a seven-shot 56/50-caliber Spencer repeating carbine and a .44-caliber Colt or Remington percussion revolver, and later a .45-caliber Springfield Model 1873 single-shot breech-loading carbine and a six-shot .45-caliber Colt single-action revolver.

The cavalryman's campaign outfit consisted of his weapons, a shelter half, haversack, poncho, canteen, mess kit, and blanket, extra clothing, extra ammunition, a feed bag, fifteen pounds of grain, a picket pin and lariat, personal items, and several days' rations—usually greasy salt pork or salt beef and hardtack washed down with bitter coffee. Occasionally soup made of hominy would be served at the mess hall in garrison, but vegetables and fruits were virtually nonexistent.

And then there was the discipline aspect of duty. Orders from all officers and enlisted men of a superior rank were to be regarded as sacrosanct and were to be obeyed instantly and without question. Failure to obey even minor military rituals, such as saluting an officer or calling him sir, could result in punishment. The penalties could range from walking for hours while carrying a log of wood on your shoulder for being dirty to carrying around a saddle all day for not being present at an inspection at first call. For more serious offenses, a court-martial would be ordered and if found guilty the soldier could be sentenced to confinement and loss of his pay. And then there was the lure of the gold fields in California or Colorado. Needless to say, desertions were commonplace.

The primary mission of this newly formed regiment was to protect work crews on the Kansas Pacific Railway from hostile Plains Indian tribes, which had been incessantly raiding. Regimental headquarters remained at Fort Riley with four companies, while the other companies were assigned to garrison various posts along the Santa Fe and Smoky Hill Trails.

Custer and his cavalry experienced Indian fighting for the first time during the spring and summer of 1867 on what would be called the Hancock Expedition. While the troops had been back east fighting the Civil War and Western forts were for all intents and purposes abandoned, the Indians had been taking control of huge chunks of land. One of the most active areas was western Kansas. Cheyenne, Sioux, Kiowa, Comanche, and Arapaho warriors had been roaming the territory, incessantly menacing homesteaders and workers on the Kansas Pacific Railway.

By early spring of 1866, the line—known as the Union Pacific Railroad, Eastern Division (UPED)—stretched for some 115 miles from Kansas City to Manhattan but had been delayed by frequent attacks from marauding Plains Indians, whose number of warriors was estimated at six thousand. The task of protecting surveyors and work crews from these hostiles was heartily embraced by General Sheridan, whose responsibility as commander of the Department of the Missouri included William Jackson Palmer's railroad, the UPED, which traced the route of the Smoky Hill Trail.

It was determined that a military force commanded by Major General Winfield Scott Hancock would be sent into the field to demonstrate the might of the United States Army and punish these Great Plains marauders for their crimes.

“Hancock the Superb,” as he had been hailed by Civil War era newspapers, was born near Norristown, Pennsylvania, on February 14, 1824. He had graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1844 and distinguished himself in the Mexican War, had served in the Third Seminole War in the 1850s and the 1857 Utah Expedition, and was appointed brigadier general in the Union army in 1861.

Second Lieutenant George Armstrong Custer had served as a volunteer aide to corps commander General Hancock on May 5, 1862, in an engagement near Williamsburg when, as mentioned before, the first battle flag taken by the Union army was captured.

Hancock had become a bona fide hero at Gettysburg when, although he was badly wounded, his men held the Union center against Pickett's charge—unknowingly with help from Custer three miles to the east. He was formally thanked by Congress for his bravery but never fully recovered from his wounds received in that battle and accepted recruiting duty in Washington. Hancock was appointed commander of the Department of the Missouri in 1867 and was anxious to return to field duty in Kansas to show that he had not lost his fighting ability.

Construction of a transcontinental railroad had become a national obsession that had unified the post–Civil War country with purpose. The Union Pacific and Central Pacific were rushing to rendezvous from the west and east respectively when in 1865 a young railroad entrepreneur named William Jackson Palmer convinced investors that they could turn worthless land into expensive real estate by building a separate railroad line from Kansas City through the Great Plains to California.

Palmer, the future founder of Colorado Springs and better known for his Denver & Rio Grande Railroad, had traveled to Europe at age nineteen to study how coal burned in locomotives and then had worked as secretary to the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. He had commanded one of Phil Sheridan's brigades in the Civil War—for which he achieved the rank of brigadier general and later received the Medal of Honor. With such credentials, Palmer had little trouble raising the necessary cash for his new railroad.

In late March, more than fourteen hundred soldiers—including eight companies of Custer's Seventh Cavalry—marched down the Santa Fe Trail to the Arkansas River.

The country through which they passed was mainly prairie with a thin cover of pale-green and rusty grass above sandy soil beneath. The air was fresh and carried breezy fragrances of native grasses—sandbur, wheatgrass, bluestem, and prairie sand reed, to name a few. Various species of songbirds—lark buntings, meadowlarks, and goldfinches being the most prevalent—darted and dived in flight around the formation, calling out shrill warnings and gobbling up insects disturbed by the horses' hooves. Every now and then a family of quail scooted away with heads lowered or a small rodent or lizard would scurry from one hole to another. Above, red-tailed hawks glided majestically about in wide, swooping circles in search of prey. A herd of pronghorn antelope could occasionally be observed in the distance, the buck standing guard.

Along the way, the troopers were kept busy staging aggressive battle exercises that were intended to intimidate and impress the unseen Indian observers. This show of force convinced Custer that the Indians would “accept terms and abandon the war-path.”

Two notable members of the expedition were famed Civil War illustrator Theodore R. Davis representing
Harper's Weekly
and newspaperman Henry M. Stanley, who would later gain fame as the discoverer of the lost Livingstone in Africa. Davis and Stanley were the first correspondents to accompany an army campaign against the Plains Indians.

Earlier in the year, Davis had been traveling on a stagecoach bound for Denver when it was attacked by Indians. Davis and the other passengers held off the hostiles until rescued by the army. On February 17, 1866,
Harper's Weekly
published Davis' full-page depiction of this incident, which became the prototype of an Indian stage attack later shown on modern motion picture and television screens.

Stanley wrote about the prospects of engaging the Indians: “Custer is precisely the man for that job. A certain impetuosity and undoubted courage are his principal characteristics.”

On April 12 Edward W. Wynkoop, the former Fort Lyon commander who now served as an Indian agent for the Cheyenne and Arapaho, invited several Cheyenne and Sioux chiefs—including Tall Bull and Pawnee Killer—to Fort Larned for a parley with General Hancock. Hancock professed his desire for peace but made it clear that the chiefs must live up to the provisions of their treaties and cease hostilities. The general then decided to march his men twenty-one miles up the Pawnee Fork to the village of the Indians and resume talks at that location. The apprehensive chiefs, as well as Wynkoop, requested that Hancock keep his distance from the village. Their protestations, however, fell on deaf ears, and Hancock commenced his march.

The Indians responded by painting themselves for war and riding back and forth in front of the army column to indicate their intention to defend their village. Hancock countered by ordering his men into battle formation.

Halfway to the Indian encampment, Hancock, Wynkoop, and a handful of officers rode forward to meet with the chiefs. Both sides agreed to avoid a battle, if possible. As a show of good faith, Hancock promised that his men would not enter the village or in any way molest the inhabitants. The Indians retired to their village with Hancock's column following and eventually halting to camp three hundred yards away.

That pledge by Hancock to avoid the village apparently held little credence with the Indians. When the command arrived at its destination, scouts informed Hancock that while the chiefs had been delaying the troops the women and children had fled the village. Hancock believed that he had been tricked. In a counsel with the chiefs, he demanded that the women and children be returned. Instead, scouts later observed the warriors also preparing for flight.

Hancock awakened Custer at about midnight and ordered that his cavalrymen surround the village. Custer arrived to discover that the nearly three hundred lodges had been abandoned. The inhabitants had departed in such haste that they had left behind most of their personal belongings. They did not trust the white man and had thought it best to place their women and children out of harm's way until judging Hancock's intentions. To Hancock's inexperienced and arrogant way of thinking that his word had been ignored, this insulting action signified war. At dawn on April 15, Custer and his eight companies were dispatched to pursue these hostiles.

Custer chased his prey for some thirty-five miles but discovered that the escaping Sioux and Cheyenne had split into numerous smaller groups and had simply vanished into the rugged landscape.

At the same time, Hancock was contemplating whether or not to employ Civil War standards of warfare and destroy the Indian village on Pawnee Fork. His men already had been disobeying orders by ransacking the lodges and looting for souvenirs. Hancock's mind was made up when a courier from Custer arrived to report that the Indians had been attacking stagecoaches and stations along the Smoky Hill Trail. On the morning of April 19—against the advice of Agent Wynkoop and Colonel A. J. Smith—the village and its contents were burned to the ground, which served as a declaration of war to the Indians.

In the meantime, Custer continued down the Smoky Hill Trail to camp near Fort Hays, where he had expected to find forage and supplies. Instead, the supply trains had been delayed and he would be forced to endure an undetermined period of waiting.

The weather had turned cold and rainy, disgruntled troopers were deserting in great numbers, and Custer, a man of action, became deeply concerned by his inability to resume his march and punish the hostiles. His only solace was the presence of wife Libbie, who visited for two weeks. Also during this respite from the march, Custer had the opportunity to continue his ongoing discussions about the culture and customs of the local tribes with James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok, who had gathered valuable knowledge from years of experience on the Plains.

Throughout the last week of April, Hancock, now at Fort Dodge, met with various tribal chiefs, including Kicking Bird, Little Raven, and Satanta. Hancock was impressed by the unanimous declarations of peace, but his talks failed to produce positive results. The tribes had imposed their will on the territory for so long that they had no intention of seeking peace now. Promises made to white negotiators were never meant to be kept. Whites were the enemy, and nothing Hancock had said could change that fact. The raiding increased during the month of May. Stagecoach service along the Smoky Hill Trail at times was suspended, and no mail station or white traveler was safe.

On June 1, Custer and six companies—about 350 men guided by William “Medicine Bill” Comstock and Moses “California Joe” Milner—finally marched. The raiding had by then shifted from the Smoky Hill Trail to the Platte Road in Nebraska, the principal route to Colorado and California. Custer headed northward toward Fort McPherson with orders to clear out the hostiles in the area between the Republican and Platte rivers. The 215-mile march, however, was uneventful, other than the death of Major Wickliffe Cooper, who was said to have committed suicide—but it was later determined that he may have been the victim of murder.

Near Fort McPherson on about June 16, Custer held a parley with Pawnee Killer, who pledged peace and accepted gifts of coffee, sugar, and other goods. Custer believed that the chief was sincere, but later was chastised for his position by General William T. Sherman, who arrived the following day. Sherman was of the opinion that Pawnee Killer should have been detained and sent Custer out on the improbable mission of locating and convincing the chief to move his village closer to the fort, where his actions could be monitored.