I believe that
some time around 4:30 pm, Sunday, 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.”
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.
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 his horse's back.
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 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.
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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 ground. His name was Yellow Hair, for the blond highlights in his rich black hair. Seven years earlier Mona Setah had been taken captive at the battle of the Washita, and during the slow march north she raped by George Armstrong Custer. Tat 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. 
- 30 -
210 soldiers were killed with Custer.
- 268 killed
- 55 wounded (6 of whom later died of wounds)
Captain Myles Walter Keogh (above) leading Companies C, I and L, might have tried to organize a defense on the river bank, just to slow any attempt to follow the wounded Custer. But there was little time.
Captain George Yates (above) was in command of companies E and F, farthest behind the head of the column.
Working the lever on his Winchester rifle White Bull loaded another round and shot Boyar. Wounded, the Frenchman fell into the river. Later, he was able to pull himself into the shallows on the Indian side of the river, but was discovered there by warriors, who recognized him as a traitor to his Sioux family, murdered him and threw his body into the river.
George Herendon served as a scout for the Seventh Cavalry attached to Major Reno's command. After the battle, Herendon told his story to a reporter from the New York Herald Tribune (July, 1876)...We stayed in the bush about three hours, and I could hear heavy firing below in the river, apparently about two miles distant. I did not know who it was, but knew the Indians were fighting some of our men, and learned afterward it was Custer's command. Nearly all the Indians in the upper part of the valley drew off down the river, and the fight with Custer lasted about one hour, when the heavy firing ceased. When the shooting below began to die away I said to the boys 'come, now is the time to get out.' Most of them did not go, but waited for night. I told them the Indians would come back and we had better be off at once. Eleven of the thirteen said they would go, but two stayed behind.
I deployed the men as skirmishers and we moved forward on foot toward the river. When we had got nearly to the river we met five Indians on ponies, and they fired on us. I returned the fire and the Indians broke and we then forded the river, the water being heart deep. We finally got over, wounded men and all, and headed for Reno's command which I could see drawn up on the bluffs along the river about a mile off. We reached Reno in safety.
We had not been with Reno more than fifteen minutes when I saw the Indians coming up the valley from Custer's fight. Reno was then moving his whole command down the ridge toward Custer. The Indians crossed the river below Reno and swarmed up the bluff on all sides. After skirmishing with them Reno went back to his old position which was on one of the highest fronts along the bluffs. It was now about five o'clock, and the fight lasted until it was too dark to see to shoot.
As soon as it was dark Reno took the packs and saddles off the mules and horses and made breast works of them. He also dragged the dead horses and mules on the line and sheltered the men behind them. Some of the men dug rifle pits with their butcher knives and all slept on their arms.
At the peep of day the Indians opened a heavy fire and a desperate fight ensued, lasting until 10 o'clock. The Indians charged our position three or four times, coming up close enough to hit our men with stones, which they threw by hand. Captain Benteen saw a large mass of Indians gathered on his front to charge, and ordered his men to charge on foot and scatter them.
Benteen led the charge and was upon the Indians before they knew what they were about and killed a great many. They were evidently much surprised at this offensive movement, and I think in desperate fighting Benteen is one of the bravest men I ever saw in a fight. All the time he was going about through the bullets, encouraging the soldiers to stand up to their work and not let the Indians whip them; he went among the horses and pack mules and drove out the men who were skulking there, compelling them to go into the line and do their duty. He never sheltered his own person once during the battle, and I do not see how he escaped being killed. The desperate charging and fighting was over at about one o'clock, but firing was kept up on both sides until late in the afternoon.
Red Horse, interview,
The Sioux took the guns and cartridges off the dead soldiers and went to the hill on which the soldiers were, surrounded and fought them with the guns and cartridges of the dead soldiers. Had the soldiers not divided I think they would have killed many Sioux. The different soldiers that the Sioux killed made five brave stands. Once the Sioux charged right in the midst of the different soldiers and scattered them all, fighting among the soldiers hand to hand.
One band of soldiers was in rear of the Sioux. When this band of soldiers charged, the Sioux fell back, and the Sioux and the soldiers stood facing each other. Then all the Sioux became brave and charged the soldiers. The Sioux went but a short distance before they separated and surrounded the soldiers. I could see the officers riding in front of the soldiers and hear them shooting. Now the Sioux had many killed. The soldiers killed 136 and wounded 160 Sioux. The Sioux killed all these different soldiers in the ravine.
The soldiers charged the Sioux camp farthest up the river. A short time after the different soldiers charged the village below. While the different soldiers and Sioux were fighting together the Sioux chief said, "Sioux men, go watch soldiers on the hill and prevent their joining the different soldiers." The Sioux men took the clothing off the dead and dressed themselves in it. Among the soldiers were white men who were not soldiers. The Sioux dressed in the soldiers' and white men's clothing fought the soldiers on the hill.
The banks of the Little Bighorn river were high, and the Sioux killed many of the soldiers while crossing. The soldiers on the hill dug up the ground [i.e., made earthworks], and the soldiers and Sioux fought at long range, sometimes the Sioux charging close up. The fight continued at long range until a Sioux man saw the walking soldiers coming. When the walking soldiers came near the Sioux became afraid and ran away.
After sun-down that night I slipped through the Indian line and swung around towards the north, and the next morning at day-break I was down where the Little Horn flows into the Bighorn River. There were some soldiers there (General Terry's) and their leader was an officer whom the Indians called "Man Without Hip" or "Lame Hip" (General Terry) and another officer whom the Indians called "White Whiskers" (General Gibbon). I told them all I knew about the fight, and that my clothes were worn out. I had no moccasins, so I was going home. The officers said all right and I rode on. I went to Pryor where the Crows were camped. When I came into camp, some of the Crows thought I was a Sioux and commenced shooting at me.
I have heard many people say that Curley was the only survivor of this battle, but Curley was not in the battle. Just about the time Reno attacked the village, Curley with some Arikara scouts ran off a big band of Sioux ponies and rode away with them. Some of the Arikaras, whom I met afterwards, told me that Curley went with them as far as the Junction (where the Rosebud joins the Yellowstone River). I did not see Curley again until the next fall, when I met him up on the Yellowstone in the camp of the Mountain Crows, so Curley did not see much of the battle....
Most of the men under Custer's second in command, Major Marcus Reno, made it out alive, held together over three horrible days of combat and thirst. Yet, in the public's opinion, Reno was a coward.
The results for the U.S. Army were even worse in the Second Battle of the Little Big Horn, when, for fifty-seven years, they were mercilessly attacked by a five foot four inch Victorian widow with blue-gray eyes and chestnut hair. Her name was Elizabeth Bacon Custer (above). And in this engagement she wiped the U.S. Army out, leaving no survivors - least of all, Marcus Reno, whom she blamed for her husband's death.
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 fellow wives. 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.” http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/History.Whittaker (Sheldon and Company, New York, 1876).
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.
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