GREASY GRASS Chapter Six

 

I wonder what 38 year old Captain Thomas Benton Weir (above) expected to see a when he topped the twin promontory which bears his name?  It was about 5:45pm on Saturday, 25 June, 1876.  The Ohio Captain was one and a half miles in front of Reno Hill. And by advancing here, Weir was endangering the lives of the 30 or so men who followed him, plus the more than 300  men he had left vulnerable on Reno Hill.  Why was he doing this? What the hell did he really expect to find?

Thomas Weir had been a member of the Custer "Royal Family" (above) since the Civil War, basking in reflected warmth from the "Son of the Morning Star".  Libbie Custer enjoyed Weir's  "quick mind and wit," calling him “well read, and social in his disposition”, and Weir had made a point of endearing himself to her.  But eventually, as with the friend's of most addicts, a breaking point came. Libbie, who had converted "Audie" into a teetotaler, finally drew the line.  In the fall of 1874, after Reno had reprimanded the captain for being intoxicated on duty, Custer would accept no further excuses. The Royal Family had disowned Thomas Weir.  

On Sunday, 25 June, 1876, Captain Thomas Weir (above) was in command of "D" company, explicitly subordinated to Captain Benteen in his three company battalion sent to check the southern end of the Little Big Horn valley.   

At 5:15pm, Captain Thomas McDougall, his escorts and the pack train had reached the defensive position on "Reno Hill".   Major Marcus Reno now had 345 men - counting the 11 men the scout Gardner had just brought in from the valley fight.  They had 24,000 rounds of ammunition, 12 days of hardtack and 2 days grain for the horses. What they did not have was water. But for the first time since noon, when Custer had divided his command, the majority of the seventh cavalry was in a position to defend themselves.

While the command was using carbine fire to suppress the Indians who were still clambering up the bluff, the officers gathered to discuss the tactical situation. Abruptly  most of the Indians still in the valley mounted and rode northward. Remembered Benteen, “Heavy firing was heard down the river. During this time the questions were being asked: "What's the matter with Custer, that he don't send word? What we shall do?" "Wonder what we are staying here for?...but still no one seemed to show great anxiety, nor do I know that any one felt any serious apprehension but that Custer could and would take care of himself.”

It was now that Captain Weir approached Captain Benteen.  According to a private who overheard the exchange, Weir insisted, "Custer must be around here somewhere and we ought to go to him." Benteen replied that because they were surrounded by armed hostiles the command should remain where it was.  "Well, " replied Weir, "if no one else goes to Custer, I will go." Benteen said, "No, you cannot."  Despite this, Weir returned to his position, mounted up and with only an orderly, rode off to the north.  

Assuming Weir had received permission for the scout from Reno, his second in command, 30 year old Winfield Scott Edgerly (above) mounted "D" troop and followed toward the twin peaks of Weir Point, a mile and a half away.

But having arrived there, Weir dismounted. To see, what? The clear dry western air put his visible horizon over the rolling sage brush and grasses at more than 3 miles. And he stood there for a few moments with just his orderly, holding his horse, gazing into the distance. To his right, up the slope, he could see two Indians moving  to flank the advancing "D" troop. By hand signals he warned Lieutenant Edgerly, who threw out a skirmish line. But Weir still stood there, on Weir point staring into the distance.   What held him there? 

A few moments later two more soldiers rode up - 38 year old Sergeant James Flanagan and Private William Morrin, both of "M" troop. Eventually their arrival prompted Weir to point and announce, "That is Custer over there. "  Whereupon he mounted his horse, as if to gallop to Custer's rescue. 

He was stopped by Sergeant James Flanagan, who said, "Here, Captain, you had better take a look through the glasses; I think those are Indians." Weir had ridden out in search of Custer without a telescope or binoculars, making the endeavor even more of a hopeless pointless romantic act.  

In fact, Flanagan had seen more than that. He might have witnessed the death of perhaps the last man to escape last stand hill. When he first raised the binoculars  to his eye he had see a mile distant a trooper on horseback, being chased by Indian warriors, who cut the man off and killed him.

When Flanagan passed the binoculars to Weir, the captain saw across two to three miles of heat shimmers and mirages, according to the Sergeant, "...clouds of dust rising from the bluffs to the north where Custer and his men were wiped out."  According to Flanagan,  having gotten a good look through the magnifying glasses, and with Flanagan there to confirm what was visible , Weir changed his mind about leaving the place. Accordingly the men were dismounted and their horses were led behind the hill.”

The cranky Captain Fredrick Benteen, who would shortly join his rebellious officers,  explained what little he could see from the same perspective. "The air was full of dust. We could see stationary groups of horsemen, and individual horsemen moving about. From their grouping and the manner in which they sat their horses we knew they were Indians. "

Lieutenant Edgerly had thrown "D" troop out in a skirmish line on the right or east wing from Weir Point,  and within a few minutes the 42 year old Lieutenant Edward Settle Godfrey arrived and extended the skirmish line westward with his "K" troop.  Next to him 33 year old Captain Thomas Henry French placed his "M" troop in the skirmish line.  But they did not remain there for long. Benteen had come come not to support them but to bring them back to a better defensive position, closer to Reno's original hilltop.

A retreat was clearly called for. A trooper remembered the hills were covered with Sioux and Cheyenne warriors “...as thick as grasshoppers in a harvest field."  Another soldier recalled fresh dust rising in all directions converging on Weir Point.  Lieutenant French shouted the order to retreat to Edgerly. Both companies immediately mounted and began to ride to the rear. But Edgerly and his aide, Private Charles Sanders,  hung back to get in a last shot or two.   Then, just as Lieutenant Edgerly and his aide were preparing to run for it they discovered a wounded man crawling through the dry grass. 

Edgerly recognized him as Private Vincent Charley (above), a 22 year old Swiss born red haired member of  "D" troop. He had been shot through the hip, and hit his head when thrown from his horse. Charley begged the Lieutenant to take him with them.  But Edgerly felt they did not have time to help, and told Charley to hide in ravine somewhere. As the two men galloped away they looked back and saw two Indians fall upon the defenseless trooper. Three days later Vincent Charley's body would be found with a stake driven into the back of his throat.  And that was the cost of Thomas Weir's need to see what had become of Custer.

Lieutenant Godfrey's "M" troop provided skirmish line covering fire for the retreat, but Benteen quickly realized what Reno had learned some hours before - the skirmish line was easily out flanked and the gun fire not accurate enough to suppress direct the fire from repeating rifles and the indirect fire from bows and arrows.  

The entire surviving portions of the 7th Cavalry occupied a new position, a shallow depression with a steep cliff to the west over looking the Little Big Horn River.  Reno had the horses and mules gathered in the center, and stripped of their saddles and pack mounts, which the men used for barricades. 

Edgerly later explained, "The firing was heavy, but only a few men were killed, as most of the shots went over our heads. It continued for more than an hour, and until half an hour after dusk. That ended the first day's fight."  Throughout the night, Major Marcus Reno (below) passed along the line, talking to the soldiers, encouraging them and making minor adjustments to their positions. And almost all the men under his command - even those in the valley fight - survived. 

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GREASY GRASS - Chapter Five

I believe that some time around 4:30 pm, Saterday, 25 June, 1876, after pausing briefly at the bottom of the Medicine Trail Coulee, head of scouts Mitch Bouyer, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and German born "C" company bugler Henry Dose, all began crossing the Minniconjou Ford (above) together.  About midstream, Private Dose was shot and killed by a musket fired by the Cheyenne warrior Bobtail Horse.

Next to him the Sioux warrior White Bull aimed at the second soldier, who was “...riding a fine looking horse, a sorrel with...four white stockings."  According to White Bull he pulled the trigger, and that soldier fell into the river. “They all reined up their horses and gathered around where he had fallen....By this time the air was getting thick with gun smoke and it was hard to see...When it cleared a little I saw...Some of them got off their horses...and seemed to be dragging something out of the water, while others soldiers still on horseback kept shooting at us.”

Before the black powder smoke obscured the scene another witness saw soldiers fall while crossing the river. He was the young Crow scout Curley (above), who was watching from the bluffs above. Telling his story years before and miles apart from White Bull, Curley said one of the men who was shot crossing the river was ridding a sorrel horse with white stockings. 

And that day the only officer, scout or trooper who was riding a sorrel horse with four white leggings (above)  was George Armstrong Custer.

According to several witnesses who helped recover his body two days after the battle, Custer had received a gunshot wound in his left chest "near the heart".  Assuming the bullet missed that vital organ, it would have caused a massive spontaneous pneumothorax (above) - damaging his rib cage before puncturing the upper lobe of his left lung and leaving behind a sucking chest wound.  

Air and blood filled the chest space outside his now deflated lung causing intense pain, rapid and continuing blood loss and the inability to draw a deep breath. Custer was probably conscious, but would be unable to communicate coherently.

Lieutenant William Winer Cooke (above) was probably the first officer to reach Custer's side, and with the help of enlisted men they would have lifted Custer and thrown him across the back of his horse.

They lead the animal away from the river and up the first escape route which presented itself - not the Medicine Trail Coulee, which angled south , back the way the regiment had come, but to the right, northward (above, left), away from the rest of the regiment, up what is now called the Long Coulee.

Captain Myles Walter Keogh (above), leading the 3 companies directly behind Custer, threw "C" and "I" companies into skirmish line to hold off the warriors with their carbines, while  "L" company followed Custer's body up the Long Coulee.  But this skirmish line, like Reno's earlier, did not hold for long.

"Suddenly we heard war cries behind us", continued White Bull.  "I looked back and saw hundreds of Lakotas and (Cheyenne)  warriors charging toward us....The soldiers must have seen them too, for they fell back to the far bank of the river, and those still on horseback got off to fight on foot. As warriors rode up to join us...a big cry went up.  Hoka hey!" the Lakotas were shouting. "They are going!" I saw this was true. The soldiers were running back up the coulee and swarming out over the higher ground to the north."

As the skirmish line fell apart, Lieutenant James Calhoun (above), along with his second in command, 

...20 year old 2nd Lieutenant John Jordan Crittenden (above), lead the 34 men of "L" company back up Medicine Trail Coulee, chased closely by warriors all the way.  At the top of drainage, and finding that his men were isolated,  Crittenden tried  to form a defense, dismounting on a height later named Calhoun Ridge. Crittenden was naturally hindered by his glass eye, the result of a shot gun injury years earlier. Warriors were able to stampead the troop's horses, leaving the men on foot in the center of the now sprawling battlefield.

Among the warriors who swarmed up Medicine Trail Coulee in pursuit was the 28 year old Cheyenne warrior Two Moon (above). He recalled, “The shooting was quick, quick. Pop—pop—pop very fast. Some of the soldiers were down on their knees, some standing. Officers all in front. The smoke was like a great cloud, and everywhere the Sioux went the dust rose like smoke....”

A 22 year old Southern Cheyenne girl, Antelope Woman, later named Kate Big Head, was singing war songs in the Cheyenne camp, in support of her brother, White Bull. Then she learned that her nephew, Noisy Walking,  had been wounded in the fight across the river. Grabbing a horse she galloped up the right drainage, Medicine Trail Coulee.  At the top she found “The soldiers had lined themselves out on a long ridge.” 

She later told an interviewer, while the Indians, “...hid themselves crawling forward...gradually creeping closer...by following the gullies or dodging from knoll to knoll...within a few minutes there were many hundreds of warriors wriggling along the gullies all around the soldiers...their saddled horses standing near them showing all of the warriors where the white men were.”

Moving around, searching for her nephew, Antelope Woman saw, "The soldier horses got scared and all of them broke loose and ran toward the river." Abandoned of their means of escape she saw the soldiers begin to use their last pistol shots to end their own lives. "Right away," she said, "all of them began shooting themselves or shooting each other....For a short time the Indians just stayed where they were and watched. Then they rushed forward. But not many of them got to strike coup blows on living enemies."

Not seeing her nephew, Antelope Woman turned north, crossing what was later called Keogh Ridge. But the fight there was already over,  all the soldiers dead. So she pushed on until she reached "Last Stand Hill". There she observed, "The Indians were crowded on the (northern) side of the ridge along it's two sides.  I followed, but keeping myself back so I would not be hit by a bullet. I stopped and looked over a little hill and watched a band of soldiers on the ground at the norther slope of the ridge"

The same destruction which had been brought to Lieutenant Crittenden and Captain Keogh's commands now befell the last group of soldiers who had followed Custer to the river ford. The loss of their leader had dissolved the unit cohesion. Isolated, and bewildered, the last of the men under Custer were surrounded, picked off and killed. They had stripped his chest, looking to tend his chest wound, but it had done no good. He might have been already dead when someone, probably Lieutenant Cooke, whose body was found beside Custer, put a bullet in Yellow Hair's brain, to save him the agony if the Sioux or Cheyenne had reached him first.    

"At the time there must have been hundreds of warriors for every white man," remembered Antelope .Woman.  "The shots kept coming from the place where the soldiers were lying behind their dead horses. All the Indians jumped up and ran forward...But there were seven of the White men who sprang to their feet and went running toward the river (down the Deep Ravine),...There was such a rush and mix up that it seemed the whole world had gone wild."

Two Moon saw the last of them. "One man all alone ran far down toward the river...I thought he was going to escape, but a Sioux fired and hit him in the head. He was the last man. He wore a braid on his arms."  It meant that he was an noncommissioned officer.

As did many other warriors, White Bull went among the dead soldiers, looking for ammunition. On the top of the ridge he found a naked white man's body. He turned the corpse over and recognized him as the soldier on the sorrel horse he had shot at the river.  "I remembered how close some of his bullets had come, so I thought I would take the medicine of his trigger finger to make me an even better shot. Taking out my knife. I began to cut off that finger." But a woman's voice stopped him. She said, "He is our relative."

It was the attractive young Cheyenne woman  Mona Setah (above) , whom White Bull had been courting.  She had brought her 7 year old son to this butcher's ground. His name was Yellow Hair, for the blond highlights in his rich black mane. Seven years earlier Mona Setah had been taken captive at the battle of the Washita, and during the slow march north she had been raped by George Armstrong Custer.  That fall she had given birth to her boy.  It was Custer's body which lay naked before them at that moment.  While White Bull watched Mona Setah's  mother shoved a sewing awl deep into each of Custer's ears, "So Long Hair will hear better in the spirit land."  And, said White Bull, "That was the first I knew that Long Hair was the soldier chief...I shot at the ford."

It was now approaching 5:30pm.  In less than an hour of fighting 210 soldiers under the direct command of George Armstrong Custer had been killed.  At most one, or perhaps two white men escaped.  As heartbreaking as the loss of so many soldiers' lives was, no white families would starve during the coming winter.  According to the Cheyenne count, seven of their sons had been killed driving the white soldiers from their village. The Sioux had lost 19 men and boys who would no longer  feed their families. Between 10 and 20 native women and children were also killed. Remembered Two Moon,  "We had no dance that night. We were sorrowful." 

Antelope Woman eventually found her nephew in a deep gulch. "He had been shot through the body and had been stabbed several times. I stayed with him while a young man friend went to the camps to tell his mother." She brought a travois to carry her son back to the family lodge, where the young man died that night."

The day had changed the lives of every Sioux and Cheyenne who had camped along the Little Big Horn River on 25 June, 1876. The Hunkpapa warrior Gall, who had seen his family members murdered by white soldier's bullets, and who in a rage had used his war club to bludgeon many white men to death that day, would never fight again against anyone, white man or Indian. 

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GREASY GRASS - Chapter Four

 

I suspect it was the most normal thing to happen on that Sunday, 25 June, 1876.  A young Sioux brave was trolling the Cheyenne village, hoping to "accidently" run into a particular young woman. He was an  alpha male in his prime - 26 years old -  and his name was White Bull (above, ten years older).  

Both his father and grandfather were leaders of the Minneconjou band of Northern Sioux. His mother was sister to the Hunkpapa Sioux medicine man Sitting Bull (above). White Crow had survived 19 fights, 10 against white soldiers. He had counted 7 coups, taken 2 scalps, killed 3 enemies, wounded another, rescued 6 wounded Sioux and under fire recovered a dead fellow Sioux warrior.  

White Bull had captured 45 horses, 10 on a single raid, and twice willingly endured the tortures of the Sun Dance (above). He had been invited to join three warrior societies, choosing to become a Fox Warrior.  

Just a week earlier, at the Battle of the Rosebud (above) - 17 June, 1876 - he had fought man to man against a Shoshone , scouting for the white soldiers.  After dismounting his opponent  White Bull had "ridden him down" and counted coup again, leaving the man crippled with a sliced tendon in his right leg. 

But today, White Bull was looking to convince the reluctant young southern Cheyenne woman named Mona Setah, to walk with him under the marriage blanket. So far she would only speak with White Bull in private through the buffalo hide of her family's lodge. Finally, " I...saw her carrying firewood up from the river....(Her son) was with her, so I just smiled and said nothing. I rode on to visit with my Cheyenne friend Roan Bear....We settled down to telling each other some of our brave deeds in the past."

The stories were interrupted when a man rode into the Cheyenne circle shouting an alarm. Soldiers were attacking the Sioux circle a mile to the south. White Bull jumped on his horse and rode to the camp of his uncle Sitting Bull. Seeing that his own family were all safely mounted on his pony herd, and that Sitting Bull had entered his lodge to make magic, White Bull rode off to defend the Sioux pony herd from the White Man's Indian scouts. 

High up on the bluffs, near the head of Medicine Trail Coulee, the French man Mitch Boyer solemnly ordered the scouts White Man Runs Him, Hairy Moccasin,  Curley and Goes Ahead, "You need go no further. You have guided Custer here, and your work is finished. So you had better go back to the pack train and let the soldiers do the fighting." Boyer then rode away over the ridge to join Custer down Medicine Trail Coulee.  But Curley stayed to watch what happened down below, at the river crossing. 

White Bull (above) helped drive off the Crow scouts who tried to capture the pony herd, and then chased the soldiers into the river. But just as he reached the water, "I heard someone behind me yelling that soldiers were coming...to attack the north end of the camp...We all raced downstream together."

Arriving back in the Cheyenne camp White Bull saw the soldiers coming down the Medicine Tail Coulee, He dismounted and, with a handful of other warriors, took cover behind the berm along the river's edge, ready to defend the women and children to his death.

Then, according to White Bull, "...the soldiers had stopped at the edge of the river...One white man was wearing a big hat and a buckskin jacket...On one side of him was a soldier carrying a flag and riding a grey horse, and on the other was a small man on a dark horse. This small man didn't look much like a white man to me, so I gave the man in the buckskin jacket my attention." 

"The man in the buckskin jacket seemed to be the leader of these soldiers, for he shouted something and they all came charging at us across the ford. "Bobtail Horse fired first, and I saw a soldier on a gray horse fall out of his saddle into the water. The other soldiers were shooting at us now. The man who seemed to be the soldier chief was firing his heavy rifle fast. I aimed my repeater at him and fired. I saw him fall out of his saddle and hit the water."

Up on the bluffs above, Crow scout Curley saw two men leading Custer's command fall into the river. And suddenly the attack stopped.

And everything that was about to happen, most of the mysteries of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, also known as Custer's Last Stand could be explained if the white man who was shot and fell into the river was George Armstrong Custer - shot in the chest, and badly wounded. That quickly the head of the royal family had been cut off. All that was left was for the body to twitch and fall. 

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