The Real Custer (56 page)

The village stretched over four and a half miles along the river. The six tribal circles included bands of Teton Sioux: Hunkpapa, Sans Arcs, Miniconjou, Oglala, Blackfoot, Two Kettle, and Brulé. The Yankton and Santee Sioux were there, along with 120 Cheyenne lodges. The Hunkpapa circle was closest, at the southern tip of the village; the Cheyenne at the northern end.

Reno's troops galloped into the valley in columns of twos around 3:00 p.m. Resistance was light at first, and the Indians seemed to be scattering. “Thirty days' furlough to the man who gets the first scalp!” shouted Lieutenant Charles A. Varnum.
¹³

Myles Keogh and Lieutenant William W. Cooke had ridden with Reno to the ford to get a sense of things and quickly estimate how the plan would unfold. During the advance, Cooke had told Reno that scout Fred Gerard reported the Indian village “three miles ahead and moving. The General directs you to take your three companies and drive everything before you. Colonel Benteen will be on your left and will have the same instructions.”
¹⁴

Keogh and Cooke then returned to Custer's battalion, which had peeled off onto the ridgeline. As Reno neared the village, he set up a dismounted skirmish line with the right flank anchored on a wooded section of dry riverbed. This was not part of the plan. Custer clearly had expected Reno to charge into the village mounted. Some say Custer waved his hat as he moved along the high ground, encouraging Reno or maybe urging him to keep moving. The story of the wave, like many details about the battle, is disputed. But if true it was the last Reno saw of Custer.
¹⁵

Reno explained he thought he was “being drawn into some trap, as they would certainly fight harder and especially as we were nearing their village which was still standing.” Also he “could not see Custer or any other support, and at the time the very earth seemed to grow Indians.”
¹⁶

The Indians did not expect the attack. “The soldiers charged so quickly [the Sioux council] could not talk,” Chief Red Horse recalled. “We came out of the council lodge and talked in all directions. The Sioux mount horses, take guns, and go fight the soldiers. Women and children mount horses and go, meaning to get out of the way.”

Crazy Horse led a growing number of Indians toward Reno's line on foot and horseback. Reno's men were firing on the village, with little effect at first. “It seemed to me that we were not within range,” trooper Thomas O'Neill said, “as all our bullets fell short, and though the Indians were firing at us I did not see anyone hit.”
¹⁷
Cheyenne leader Two Moons, watching from a distance, recalled the chaos of the mêlée. “I saw the white soldiers fighting in a line. Indians covered the flat. They began to drive the soldiers all mixed up—Sioux, then soldiers, then more Sioux, and all shooting. The air was full of smoke and dust.”
¹⁸

Indians moved on Reno's left, and some got close enough to engage hand-to-hand. Reno pulled back and pivoted counterclockwise 90 degrees, into a wooded bend in the river with his back to the water. It was a better position to deal with the growing threat he faced, but it was defensive; Reno was no longer able to press on the village. Fighting continued for another quarter hour, with Indians creeping through the underbrush up to Reno's position. The horses had been led back into the brush and were in danger of being taken, so an order was given to get to them, causing some confusion on the firing line. “I was fighting odds of at least five to one,” Reno explained. “My only hope was to get out of the wood, where I would soon have been surrounded, and gain some higher ground.”
¹⁹

“Reno ordered his men to mount and ‘charge'—he called it—to the rear,” Dr. Porter recalled.
²⁰
As Reno was giving the order to withdraw, Bloody Knife, Custer's favorite scout, took a bullet to the head, showering Reno with blood and brains. Reno panicked and bolted out of the timber, riding hard a mile upriver and crossing. Some followed, at least those who had noticed what was going on.

“Don't leave the line men!” Lieutenant Varnum called out. “There are enough of you here to whip the whole Sioux nation!”
²¹

“What is this—a
retreat
?” Lieutenant Benjamin “Benny” Hodgson said as men bolted by him.

“It looks most damnably like a
rout
,” another lieutenant replied. Hodgson rode for the river but was shot from his mount as he went down the bank. “For God's sake,” he implored a passing trooper, “take me to the river!” He grabbed a stirrup and was dragged across, but Hodgson was shot again and killed as he staggered up the opposite bank.
²²
Two Moons likened the sight of the men barreling over the riverbank and into the water to “buffalo fleeing.” Some troopers took cover in the woods; others concealed themselves in folds in the steep riverbank. Some would survive, others not. But Reno's attack was over. By 4:00 p.m. he was digging in to a hilltop defensive position as Indians finished off whatever members of his battalion they could find. Reno had lost three officers and twenty-nine enlisted men killed, with seven wounded.
²³

Meanwhile, Custer had moved north along Sharpshooter Ridge and was unaware of how Reno's attack was developing. His exact route is unknown, but he was probably east of the crest, concealing his movement but also not allowing him to see Reno's lack of progress. When he topped the ridge and saw the extent of the village, Custer was exultant.

“We've caught them napping,” he said to John Martin, a.k.a. Giovanni Martini, an Italian immigrant and Custer's orderly and trumpeter. He turned to his officers downslope behind him, waved his hat, and shouted, “Hurrah boys, we've got them!”

“There were no bucks to be seen,” Martin recalled, “all we could see was some squaws and children playing and a few dogs and ponies. The General seemed both surprised and glad, and said the Indians must be in their tents, asleep.”
²⁴
Reno's men had yet to open fire, and most of the village was not yet on alert.

Sergeant Daniel Kanipe of Tom Custer's Company C said, “At the sight of the camp the boys began to cheer. Some horses became so excited that some riders were unable to hold them in ranks, and the last words I heard Custer say were, ‘Hold your horses in boys, there are plenty of them down there for all of us.'”
²⁵
According to Martin, Custer told the men they would go down, make a crossing, and capture the village. “The whole command then pulled off their hats and cheered,” he said. “And the consensus of opinion seemed to be among the officers that if this could be done the Indians would have to surrender when they would return, in order not to fire upon their women and children.”
²⁶

Custer sent Sergeant Kanipe back to urge Captain McDougall to bring up the pack train. A short time later, around 3:30 p.m., Cooke handed Martin a note Custer had dictated. “Trumpeter,” Custer said, “go back on our trail and see if you can discover Benteen and give him this message. If you see no danger come back to us, but if you find Indians in your way stay with Benteen and return with him and when you get back to us report.”
²⁷
Martin set off south. Along the way he passed Boston Custer, coming up from the pack train.

“Where's the General?” Boston said.

“Right behind that next ridge you'll find him,” he replied. Boston rode off, the sound of gunfire already audible to the north.
²⁸
Lieutenant Edgerly, with Benteen's troop, also saw Boston pass by. “He gave me a cheery salutation as he passed,” Edgerly recalled, “and then with a smile on his face, rode to his death.”
²⁹

Custer and his men rode down a ravine called Cedar Coulee, which joined Medicine Tail Coulee, ending at a ford leading into the north end of the village near the Sans Arc and Northern Cheyenne lodges. At some point in this movement he released his scouts, White Man Runs Him, Goes Ahead, Hairy Moccasin, and Curley. According to the traditional
account, Custer sent E and F Companies under Captain George Yates down to the ford, while he with C, I, and L Companies withdrew to the heights and headed north along Nye-Cartwright Ridge. Stories differ on whether Custer also went to the ford with Yates. Some say he was killed there. It might have been characteristic of Custer to charge down to the ford, but on the other hand he might have been planning a bolder move further on. John Martin says the whole command went down to the river.

Some Indians were already moving toward the ravine, and Yates repelled them with fire near the ford before heading back up to join the rest of the command at around 4:15 p.m. They rode northeast up Deep Coulee, meeting Calhoun with L Company on the high ground. Myles Keogh was on the slope behind him with I Troop, and Henry M. Harrington with C Company fronting a ravine to Calhoun's right. Yates and Smith took F and E Troops north one thousand yards to a prominence now known as Last Stand Hill.

The Last Stand came about by circumstance. By this time Indians, probably Crazy Horse's mounted Sioux and some Cheyenne, had gotten in front of the column. Custer's forward movement was blocked and the planned attack had failed, so he went from column to line and fought the battle he had. It was not the first time Custer was in a tough spot far from help. After all, he had made it through Trevilian Station and Brandy Station during the Bristoe Campaign. Custer might have moved north trying to locate Terry's column. He had ordered Benteen to join him, and if Custer knew that Reno had pulled back he might have hoped his battalion would come, too. But if he sent an order to Reno to come up, it never arrived.

Perhaps Custer felt that if he could consolidate the regiment, they could either hold off the enemy until Terry arrived, or fight their way north toward the approaching forces. Had Custer's battalion commanders reacted quickly to shifting circumstances, if they had his
dash or intuition, had everything worked perfectly, even at this point there might have been a chance to come out of it alive. But as the Indians closed around him, and he looked vainly north for Terry and Gibbon, or south for Reno and Benteen, George may have realized that he had gone a ridge too far.

CHAPTER THIRTY

“HE WILL NEVER FIGHT ANYMORE”

N
o one can say for certain when George Custer died during the battle, or where. The Indian survivors of the action at what they called Greasy Grass Creek gave conflicting accounts, conditioned by time, memory, and the fog of battle.
¹
Some said his soldiers fought bravely. “I never before nor since saw men so brave and fearless as those white warriors,” Ogalala Chief Low Dog later recalled.
²
Others said they were cowardly. “[Custer's] soldiers became foolish, many throwing away their guns and raising their hands, saying, ‘Sioux, pity us; take us prisoners,'” Red Horse said. “None were left alive for even a few minutes.” Sitting Bull gave various unreliable accounts, in one version engaging in lengthy negotiations with Custer via letters exchanged in the days before the battle, and during the fight claiming the Great Spirit struck down many soldiers and their horses with lightning.
³
An old trapper who had known Custer and spoken to the
Sioux after the battle concluded, “I do not believe there is a man living, red or white, who knows how Custer died.”
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