Private William Ephraim (Billy) Morris, from M company, who claimed to be 22, but was actually only 14, heard Major Marcus Reno tell his soldiers, "Men, we are surrounded, draw your revolvers and follow me." As they did, the mystical 34 year old Lakota warrior Crazy Horse (Lakota name Thasunjke Itko), shouted to his men, " “Here are some of the soldiers after us again. Do your best, and let us kill them all off today, that they may not trouble us anymore."
Crazy Horse (above) was told in a vision that as long as he did not take scalps in battle then bullets would never hurt him. However the modification of "in battle" had to be added to his magic in 1870 when Crazy Horse went on a "buffalo hunt" with Black Buffalo Woman. Her husband, fellow Lakota No Water, tracked the lovers down and shoved a pistol into their tepee and set off a cap The previously impervious Lothelo took a bullet to the jaw. He recovered, but collected a couple of horses when the elders fined No Water for his excessive zeal.
And on this day, according to witnesses, Crazy Horse was right among the soldiers, "shooting them down as in a buffalo drive." The Cheyenne Two Moons described the running battle as "All mixed up. Sioux, then soldiers, then more Sioux, all shooting."
As George Herendon came out of the brush his horse stumbled and fell, throwing the scout to the ground and leaving him dismounted. He scrambled back into the brush, and encouraged his fellow refuges to let their horses go and hide.
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As scattered shots poured into the defensive position, the question on everyone's mind was where was Custer?
Crazy Horse (above) avoided ostentation in dress, never took part in the public dances, rarely joked in public, and never sang. He often ignored his fellow tribe members. But in battle he was an electrifying presence, his trademark war paint of a lightening bolt and hail stones made him stand out.
Meanwhile Reno was now trying to lead his men back to the river ford they had crossed an hour earlier, But, "As we dashed through them, my men were so close...they could discharge their pistols right into the breasts of the savages...Our horses were on a dead run with...two or three men on one animal". When his gun was empty Reno tossed it aside.
During the ride Lieutenant Donald "Tosh" McIntosh (above), the 38 year old Canadian born commander of "G" company, emptied his pistol, whereupon a warrior - possibly Crazy Horse, closed in and at a full gallop and with a swing of his war club, knocked McIntosh from his horse. Other warriors stopped to finish him off and mutilate his body. Said Flying Hawk, an Oglala Sioux, "Crazy Horse...killed a lot of them with his war club."
As they galloped southward across the flats an Indian warrior pulled up next to 32 year old Private Edward Davern, in "F" troop, and the two swung weapons at each other, until Davern's horse was killed. The Irishman was thrown to ground, and the unknown Indian warrior dismounted to finish him off. But Davern had a round left in his pistol and shot his attacker dead, Davern then immediately grabbed the Indian pony around the neck, swung up and galloped after the command.
Most of the Sioux and Cheyenne warriors were on the open right flank of the retreating soldiers, and gradually they forced the battalion closer to the river, until, when presented with a break in the tree line Reno led the men over a five foot high bank and into the river. The horse rode by his adjutant, 38 year old Second Lieutenant Benjamin Hurbert Hodgson (above) made the jump but was shot and landed in the water dead.
Hodgson was wounded in the leg, but managed to yell, "For God's sake, don't abandon me!" As M troop trumpeter, 31 year old German born Charles Henry Fisher came splashing past him in the river, he held his stirrup strap out for Hodson to grab. Desperately holding on, the lieutenant was dragged across the Little Big Horn, before dropping off on the eastern bank. As he lay in the grass recovering he was shot a second time in the back, and died.
Private Charles Windolph estimated that half of the warriors were armed with bows and arrows, one in four carried single shot rifles and muskets, and perhaps only one fourth carried Winchester, Henry or other repeating rifles. Still, with a battle moving at the speed of a terrified horse, combat intimacy favored the Cheyenne and Sioux warriors.
Clambering ashore on the lower, eastern bank of the Little Big Horn, 33 year old Doctor James Madison De Wolf (above) was guarded by his sharpshooter orderly, 34 year old Hoosier, Elihu Clear. However, the private from the heavily Quaker Randolph County, Indiana, was shot and killed just after regaining solid ground. So the doctor started up the coulee on his own, and for some unknown reason chose to follow a side path which branched to the north of the main channel.
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Those members of Reno's command who first reached the top of the coulee, saw that, 300 yards to their north, De Wolf was climbing straight toward three warriors. They shouted a warning. but De Wolf did not hear them until he had reached a plateau. Only then did the doctor pull up his horse, and pause to listen. And while he was stopped he and his horse were both shot. The horse went down, and De Wolf, hit in the belly, also fell. Despite a desperate barrage of gunfire, one Indian clambered down the slope and, in full view of the exhausted command, scalped and then murdered Doctor De Wolf.
As the last of the soldiers struggled up the coulee, Sioux warrior, White Eagle, closed with a soldier and was shot and killed. White Eagle fell from his horse, and the soldier returned and took the time to exact vengeance by scalping the warrior, before escaping to the relative safety of Reno's position with is bloody trophy. Neither he nor any of the white soldiers knew they had just mutilated the son the Oglala Sioux leader Horned Horse. Whether the warrior was dead before he was scalped would never be clear.
Reno gathered his men in a depression atop the bluff, and quickly discovered he had 3 officers and 29 enlisted men missing, presumed killed, and had 7 enlisted wounded. The Major immediately set his men into another skirmish line, but it was pretty thin - out of his original 140 men, he could only put 88 guns in his defense. Even after having his men share their remaining ammunition. it did not look as if his winded battalion would be able to hold out for long.
But 10 minutes later, at about 4:20pm, Captain Benteen appeared with his 125 fresh troopers. He observed that Reno "...was about as cool as he is now," adding, "He had lost his hat in the run..." However Benteen did say he saw, "...about 900 Indians...circling around in the bottom".
After reorganizing his force, Reno sent for 25 year old Second Lieutenant Luther Rector Hare (above). When the young Hoosier reported, Reno named him as his new adjutant, and then ordered him to find the pack train. Hare borrowed a horse and rode up the slope and back along Custer's trail. A mile later he ran into Captain McDougal, and the pack train. Appraised of the situation, McDougal ordered two mules with ammunition to hurry toward Reno's men, while the rest of the 170 mules stumbled into the defensive position about 5:15pm.
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Immediately after the battle the military judgments were fairly unanimous. President Grant, who had been elevated to the White House based on his record as a military commander, told a reporter, “I regard Custer’s massacre as a sacrifice of troops brought on by Custer himself,…(which) was wholly unnecessary – wholly unnecessary.” General Philip Sheridan, the man who had lobbied for Custer’s inclusion on the expedition considered the disaster primarily Custer’s fault. “Had the Seventh Cavalry been held together, it would have been able to handle the Indians on the Little Big Horn."
Having dismissed Custer, the army also dismissed his 34 year old widow. Barely a month after her husband had died amid the Montana scrub brush, “Libby” Custer was forced to leave Fort Abraham Lincoln. As a widow Libby had no right to quarters on the post, and so lost the social support of her Army life and friends. Her income was immediately reduced to the widow’s pension of $30 a month; her total assets were worth barely $8,000, while the claims against Custer’s estate exceeded $13,000. And then, in her hour of need, Libby received support from an unexpected source.
His name was Frederick Whittaker, and he scratched out a living as a writer of pulp fiction and non-fiction for magazines of the day, “…about the best of its kind”. He had met Custer during the Civil War, and the General’s death inspired him to write a dramatic eulogy praising the fallen hero in Galaxy Magazine. Whittaker also mentioned Custer’s “natural recklessness and vanity”, but Libby immediately contacted him. Libby provided Whittaker with the couple’s personal letters, access to family and friends, war department correspondence and permission to use large sections from Custer’s own book, “My Life on the Plains.”
This time there was no hint of faults in Custer. Instead the blame was laid elsewhere. Of Custer, Whittaker wrote; “He could have run like Reno had he wished...It is clear, in the light of Custer’s previous character, that he held on to the last, expecting to be supported, as he had a right to expect. It was only when he clearly saw he had been betrayed, that he resolved to die game, as it was too late to retreat.” 
All but a few professional soldiers admitted that Whittaker had gotten it wrong. In fact one of the most serious charges laid against Custer while he had been alive was that at the Washita he had, in fact, deserted a junior commander and his men. But those same officers now withheld their criticism of Whittaker to avoid being forced to also criticize Custer's widow. Reno (above) eventually was forced to ask for and received a Court of Inquiry (not a Court Martial) on his conduct at Little Big Horn, which cleared his name and revealed the character of the people Whittaker had relied on for his version of the battle. But it made little difference to the general public, which declared the Inquiry a whitewash.
Elizabeth Custer went on to support herself comfortably by writing three books; “Tenting on the Plains”,"Following the Guidon” and “Boots and Saddles”. In each her husband was idolized and lionized. In 1901 she managed to squeeze out one more, a children’s book, “The Boy General. Story of the Life of Major-General George A. Custer”: “The true soldier asks no questions; he obeys, and Custer was a true soldier. He gave his life in carrying out the orders of his commanding general… He had trained and exhorted his men and officers to loyalty, and with one exception they stood true to their trust, as was shown by the order in which they fell.” By the time Libby died, in 1933, at the age of ninety-one, her vision of Little Big Horn was set in the concrete of the printed page.
The first who endorsed Libby's view was Edward S. Godfrey, who had been a junior officer at the Little Big Horn and a Custer “fan” from before the battle. His 1892 “Custer’s Last Battle” was unequivocal. “...had Reno made his charge as ordered,…the Hostiles would have been so engaged… that Custer’s approach…would have broken the moral of the warriors….(Reno’s) faltering ...his halting, his falling back to the defensive position in the woods...; his conduct up to and during the siege…was not such as to inspire confidence or even respect,…” .” These attacks on Reno continued for most of the 20th century. The 1941 movie staring Errol Flynn as Custer displays Libby's view of Reno as well as any tome, echoed even by respected historians such as Robert Utley who in the 1980’s described Reno as "… a besotted, socially inept mediocrity, (who) commanded little respect in the regiment and was the antithesis of the electric Custer in almost every way.”
So for over a century Marcus Reno was reviled and despised as the coward who did not charge as ordered, instead pleading weasel-like that Custer had not supported him as promised. It would not be until Ronald Nichols biography of Reno, “In Custer’s Shadow” (U. of Oklahoma Press, 1999) that Reno received a fair hearing.
About the same time the Indian accounts of the fight began to finally be given a serious consideration by white historians, including the story told to photographer Edward Curtis in 1907 by three of Custer’s Indian scouts. The three men said they watched amazed as Custer stood on the bluffs overlooking Reno’s fight in the valley, a story supported by some soldiers in the valley fight who reported seeing Custer on the bluffs. (Most historians had always assumed they were imagining things.)
And it did. But sure was a long time coming.
