The Real Custer (46 page)

Custer met them dressed “in his well known frontier buckskin hunting costume, and if, instead of the comical seal-skin hat he wore, he had feathers fastened in his flowing hair, he would have passed at a distance for a great Indian chief.”
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The next day they took a train to the North Platte and then embarked on a fifty-mile ride over the snowy prairie to Red Willow Creek. Buffalo Bill Cody led, in fur-trimmed buckskin and black slouch hat, hair to his shoulders, and they were escorted by two companies of cavalry. The grand duke stayed long in the saddle, while others of his party did not. “There was so much real roughing it,” one report noted, “that the frills, the band, and the champagne wagons could not take the edge off the adventure for the Grand Duke.”

Near sunset they arrived at the well-provisioned, tented four-acre encampment dubbed Camp Alexis. Custer came loping in an hour late with his buffalo rifle over his shoulder, along with Ord, camp commander
General Palmer, and Lieutenant Starlagoff of the Russian Navy. Their wagon had broken down five miles out, and they had walked the rest of the way through the snow.

The main tents at Camp Alexis were “elegantly carpeted,” and even the smaller tents were “furnished with a degree of comfort and elegance rarely found out here on the wild plains of Nebraska.”
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A banquet was held that evening, featuring game hunted on the prairie. Custer had shot a prairie chicken on the way there, taking its head off, and Alexis insisted it be cooked and eaten as well. Alexis asked George and Buffalo Bill many questions about how to hunt the bison, and Bill loaned him his reliable hunting horse, Buckskin Joe, so that “when we went into a buffalo herd all he would have to do was to sit on the horse's back and fire away.”
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Custer's scouts located a herd about fifteen miles away, and the next day—Alexis's twenty-second birthday—they set out after it. Custer, the duke, and Buffalo Bill rode together, “all large and powerful, and all hardy hunters—they attracted the attention and admiration of everyone.”
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Custer and Cody were dressed in their frontier garb, and Alexis wore a grey outfit trimmed in green with brass buttons bearing the Russian imperial coat of arms and a dark pillbox hat. Alexis had a Russian hunting knife and a Smith & Wesson revolver with the coat of arms of the United States and Russia on the grip. They rode under a brilliant, sunny, cloudless sky, and it was warm enough that they did not have to wear overcoats.

They found the herd, which covered several square miles, and readied for the hunt. Russians were paired off with experienced American hunters. Alexis was given the opportunity to make first kill. Accompanied by Custer, Buffalo Bill, and two Brulé Indians, he approached downwind, concealed by a ravine that opened a quarter mile from the buffalo.

“Of course, the main thing was to give Alexis the first chance and the best shot at the buffaloes,” Buffalo Bill recalled, “and when all was in readiness we dashed over a little knoll that had hidden us from view, and
in a few minutes we were among them.” Alexis emptied his pistol at some bison twenty feet away but did not score a significant hit. Bill handed him another pistol, but Alexis again failed to drop a buffalo. Fearing the buffalo would run off without Alexis getting a trophy, Bill handed him his rifle “Lucretia” and “gave old Buckskin Joe a blow with my whip” to urge him toward a large bull.

“Now is your time,” Bill said. Alexis raised the rifle and felled the bull. Then he waved his hat, his party came riding up, and “very soon the corks began to fly from the champagne bottles, in honor of the Grand Duke Alexis, who had killed the first buffalo.”
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Then others were released to the hunt, “a wild rush of counts and cowboys, troopers and Indians.” Some riders went down but none was seriously hurt. There was more excitement than hunting, and at the end of the day, only four buffalo were taken. Alexis cut the tail from his kill as a trophy, and the head was cut off to send to a taxidermist. The hunting party returned to camp, announcing their arrival back with Indian-style whoops. A courier was sent to the nearest telegraph station to send a message to Tsar Alexander II that Alexis had “killed the first wild horned monster that met his eye on the plains of North America.”
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Not everyone was impressed with the royal hunt. The
Leavenworth Weekly Times
satirized the event, saying “the buffaloes, fully appreciating the distinguished honor done them by being the recipients of a visit from royalty, are turning out in great numbers, and in their best robes, to welcome his Highness with the right hoof of fellowship.” An ancient cow who had “gamboled with Pocahontas when she was a heifer, that is, the cow, came to the imperial camp on Monday evening, and waited patiently about, like Mary's lamb, for his Highness to come out and shoot her.” The paper noted that “instances of such great respect for royalty are very rare on the frontier. He shot her.”
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That night there was a festive, champagne-fueled dinner in camp. They were joined by fifty Brulé warriors, along with numerous squaws
and children, who had come at Sheridan's request to meet and entertain Alexis. Among the leaders were Spotted Tail, Red Leaf, Black Bear, Fast Bear, Conquering Bear, Little Wound, Brave Shield, and Custer's old adversary, Pawnee Killer. After the dinner, the young braves painted their faces and put on a war dance around a massive log fire. The chiefs held a powwow, and they, Alexis, Custer, Sheridan, and others smoked the peace pipe. Alexis generously gave the Indians silver coins, blankets, and hunting knives. Sheridan provided them with tobacco and other supplies and gave Spotted Tail an embroidered red cloth cap, a scarlet-trimmed brown robe, an ivory-handled hunting knife, and a gilt-inlaid general officer's belt of Russian leather. The mood was festive; Custer “carried on a mild flirtation with one of Spotted Tail's daughters,” Buffalo Bill recalled, “and it was noticed also that the Duke Alexis paid considerable attention to another handsome redskin maiden.”
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The next day, the Indians showed off their hunting methods, using the bow and arrow instead of firearms. Alexis, who had run into such difficulty taking down a buffalo with a pistol, was skeptical that bow hunting could amount to much. Custer took two Brulé bucks aside and told them to go find a buffalo, run it into camp, and demonstrate the lethality of the bow. Within an hour they returned, chasing a buffalo, whooping and yelling. They drove the animal into the camp where an eighteen-year-old Brulé named Two Lance “swiftly circled to her left and with bow full drawn drove his arrow into the body behind the shoulder. The animal fell, pierced through the heart.” Two Lance then removed the bloody arrow and presented it to Custer, who handed it to the duke. Alexis was so impressed that he gave Two Lance a twenty-dollar gold piece and also purchased his bow and quiver of arrows as souvenirs.

The hunting party set out, the air colder and the snow deeper than the day before. Hundreds more Indians had arrived for the hunt, and Buffalo Bill recalled the “picturesque assemblage” of the “magnificent savage allies, in all the rainbow brilliancy of their native garb and fantastic
adornment, mingled with the flower of the veteran cavalry of ‘Uncle Sam.'” He said the “brilliant array of famed officers, and the gorgeously accoutred foreign officials, admirals and generals, and a detachment of the flower of our army, made a pageant so spirited as to linger in memory as a scene in every respect unique beyond compare up to date, and one well-nigh impossible in the future to duplicate.”
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The royal party rode through a wide, winding canyon. Custer, in the lead, spotted the bison and gave a signal by riding in a circle, Indian style. Alexis rode up, and George pulled out his revolver.

“Are you ready, Duke?” he asked.

Alexis “drew off his glove, grasped his pistol, and with a wave of his imperial hand replied, ‘All ready, now, General.'”
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They charged the animals, who broke. Alexis pursued a cow that had nimbly gained footing on the sloping side of the ravine and rode up the slope heedless of danger. The cow turned on the duke, but showing off his riding skill he expertly circled her and emptied the contents of his revolver, killing her. Her calf, which had been running along nearby, was also felled. The cow's head and tail were taken for trophies, while the calf was brought back to camp whole and eaten the next day for breakfast.

Meanwhile, several hundred Indians readied to dash on the scattering herd. They had stripped down for the hunt, “only a breech-clout around their loins, moccasins on their feet, no saddle, no bridle, the ponies with only a thin leather hackamore between their teeth,” Buffalo Bill recalled. They were reducing weight so they could “ride like lightning.” The chiefs lined up the riders “with the ponies foaming, prancing, and stamping their feet, impatient as their masters,” and when the signal was given they were off in a cloud of dust.

“Thunder and lightning! What a tornado!” Bill wrote. “What a storm of horsemen, as, with impetuosity, these nomads dashed on their prey!” The scene became one of “an indescribable mix-up of flying arrows, accompanied with rifle shots, galloping horses, falling buffaloes,
and fleet riding Indians on their wild ponies.” Soon the prairie was strewn with fallen buffalo. “Calm and practical fellows were these Indians,” Bill wrote. “Even the horses began quietly pasturing on the grasses, while the hunters proceeded to pull off the hide and cut out the tongues and favorite pieces of their native cattle, and preparing the meat in strips for preservation.”
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Later that day there was another feast to close the hunt.

The royal party then headed for Denver, accompanied by Custer, Sheridan, and the other American escorts. Alexis was eager to continue hunting, and when they got word of another large herd 130 miles east near Kit Carson, he was game for the challenge. Sheridan made arrangements to make the trip on cavalry horses, but he warned the duke that untrained mounts were unruly and skittish around the buffalo.

Chalkley M. Beeson, a twenty-four-year-old cowboy who accompanied the party on the hunt, described Custer then as “in the prime of life, a gallant figure with his flowing hair and his almost foppish military dress. . . . He was the ideal cavalryman, and the idol of the western army.” Beeson loaned Custer an “almost unbroken” horse, and George proceeded to put the mount through its paces. Beeson said he had never seen a finer horseman. Custer “rode with the cavalry seat,” he recalled, “but as easily and as gracefully as a born cowboy.” George threw the reins on his neck and guided the horse “in a circle by the pressure of his knees, and drawing both his revolvers fired with either hand at a gallop with as much accuracy as though he were standing on the ground.” Alexis, “who had seen the Cossacks of the Ukraine, declared it was the finest exhibition of horsemanship he had ever seen, and applauded every shot.”
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After a long ride, scouts reported that the herd was just ahead, over a large rise. Custer gathered the hunters and gave tactical orders for the assault. “Boys, here's a chance for a great victory over that bunch of
redskins the other side of the hill,” he said. “Major B., you will take charge of the right flank, I will attend to the left. General Sheridan and the infantry will follow direct over the hill. Ready! Charge!”
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The two columns of hunters galloped off around the hill and descended on the bison.

The abrupt appearance of the hunters spooked the herd, which began to stampede. As Sheridan had warned, the government-issue horses became increasingly agitated and unmanageable. Alexis's animal broke and ran out of control toward the rushing bison. Custer charged after the duke and angled Alexis's panicking horse away from the stampeding animals, regaining control by whip and spur. Other horses were spooked and ran about haphazardly, their riders unable to stop them. Some ran into a prairie dog town, unhorsing many riders. Bullets were flying, not always well aimed. Russian Count Bodisco, the charge d'affairs in Washington, fired a shot that went through Colonel Michael V. Sheridan's coat.

Meanwhile, Phil Sheridan and the rest of the party walked toward the crest of the hill to watch the hunt. Nearing the top, they saw several wounded buffalo coming toward them and readied their weapons to shoot. “Just then the whole crowd of hunters charged the hill from the opposite, shooting at the buffaloes,” Chalkley Beeson recalled. Sheridan, directly in the line of fire, dropped to the ground and hugged the buffalo grass while bullets whistled by. “The bullets were dropping all around us,” Beeson said. “I yelled to them to stop firing, but they were so excited that it looked for a little bit as though they would wipe out the entire command of ‘infantry.'”
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When the chaos subsided, Sheridan leapt up and let out a string of curses at everyone available. “I think he was the maddest man I ever saw,” Beeson recalled. “He didn't spare anybody in the bunch, not even Custer and the Grand Duke, and he included all their kinsfolk, direct and
collateral. It was a liberal education in profanity to hear him.”
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But Alexis laughed off the incident and a diplomatic crisis was averted. The party returned with many cuts and bruises but no serious injuries.

Back at camp they found that the servants and camp followers had raided the Russian liquor trunk and were pleasantly inebriated. “Champagne bottles, liquor bottles, and every other kind of bottle littered the ground,” Chalkley Beeson noted. “That battle-field showed more ‘dead ones' than the hunting-ground did buffaloes.” Then it was Custer's turn to begin cussing, and by Beeson's reckoning it even surpassed what the enraged Sheridan had let loose earlier in the day. “I cannot pay his efforts a higher compliment,” the young cowboy wrote, “than to say that when Custer got through with that bunch they were pretty near sober, and that is cussing some.”
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