Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors (46 page)

It was a colorful column. The enlisted men spoke a medley of tongues, representing as they did the vast wave of European immigration to the United States following the Civil War. Immigrants who could not find employment in the cities were a prime target for Army recruiters. So were American criminals, drunks, dead beats, and those who for one reason or another needed to stay a jump ahead of the law. Army recruiters asked no questions and Army examining physicians operated on the principle that if a man could stand up he was fit for active duty.

The officers were all Civil War veterans, primarily men who were afraid to try their luck in civilian life or who had tried and failed. They were divided into pro- and anti-Custer cliques, but that was not so much a reflection on Custer’s personality as it was a reflection of the conditions under which they lived. The officers at most frontier posts divided themselves into factions, one side favoring the regimental commander, the other side opposed to him.

Robert Utley has a good description of these men: “As officers aged without advancement, their initiative, energy, and impulse for self-improvement diminished. Their concerns narrowed. They fragmented into hostile factions—staff and line, infantry and cavalry, young and old, West Point and Volunteers, Civil War veteran and peacetime newcomer. They bickered incessantly over petty issues of precedence, real or imagined insults, and old wartime controversies. They preferred charges on the slightest provocation and
consequently had to spend a preposterous share of their time on court-martial duty.”
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Lieutenant Tom Custer headed the pro-Custer clique in the 7th Cavalry, naturally, along with Captain George Yates and the regimental adjutant, Lieutenant William Cooke. Captains Frederick Benteen and Robert West were the leading anti-Custer officers.
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But pro- or anti-Custer, they all had one thing in common: to a man they were as ignorant of Indians as Custer himself.

Accompanying the column were numerous scouts, the most colorful being William Comstock, or “Medicine Bill,” as the Indians called him. Comstock had lived on the Plains for twenty years. “He is quiet and unassuming in manner,” correspondent Davis said of Comstock, “small in size, and compact in proportion. He is one of the best riders on the plains, with which he is probably more familiar than any other white man who roams over them.”
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Custer cultivated Comstock as he had Hickok. “Comstock messes with me,” he wrote Libbie. “I like to have him with me, for many reasons. He is a worthy man, and I am constantly obtaining valuable information from him regarding the Indians, their habits, etc.”
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Custer had the same problem with Comstock that he had had with Hickok, however; these frontiersmen were terribly quiet and generally contemptuous of regular Army officers. They spoke only when asked a direct question, and Custer hardly knew what the right questions were to ask.

Besides the scouts there were other civilians along, mainly as mule skinners or wagon drivers. The newspaper correspondent Davis was also there. Davis was hoping for a scoop, but after listening to the enlisted men grumble he feared the whole regiment might mutiny or desert.

The commander of the grand expedition was, according to correspondent Stanley, “precisely the man for the job. A certain impetuosity and undoubted courage are his principal characteristics.” Custer, Stanley wrote, was “a first-rate cavalry officer, and will no doubt perform any task allotted to him to the entire satisfaction of the western people.”
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In fact, however, Custer had not yet been in an Indian fight, had seen Indians close up only once, at Pawnee Fork, and later had displayed astonishing misjudgment when he deserted his marching column in enemy territory to go off on a private hunt. Impetuosity and courage had stood him in good stead during the Civil War, but the first was precisely the wrong quality for Indian fighting, while courage was not of much use if he couldn’t catch any Indians. To make matters worse, his real job was to assist
the Indian agents in maintaining the peace, which required skill and patience, qualities he lacked altogether. As far as the government in Washington was concerned, he was supposed to be acting as a policeman, catching young warriors guilty of outrages but protecting the bulk of the tribe. But his immediate superiors, Sherman and Hancock, wanted him to crush any Indians he met, which is to say that they were egging him on rather than urging caution and common sense.

It was a confusing situation, and as Custer rode north looking for hostiles he had serious doubts as to his proper course of action. Ambivalence had set in. The Indian agents continued to insist that the tribes were peaceful and that the raids on the stagecoach lines were the work of a few young warriors who had been driven to their desperate acts by Hancock’s burning of the village at Pawnee Fork. Custer knew that there was some truth in that assessment. He also knew that the cavalry was going to have a hell of a time catching any Indians. If the war continued the 7th Cavalry might spend the entire summer marching aimlessly across the Plains. Such a fruitless effort would do no good for Custer’s reputation.

But what really worried him was that he would be without Libbie for months. More in love now than when he had married her, Custer could not abide that thought. He began to work on an idea—if he could induce the tribes to move to the vicinity of the forts, where they could be watched, he could bring about peace on the Plains, then get to see Libbie.

The expedition averaged twenty-five miles a day as it marched north from Fort Hays toward Fort McPherson. Custer frequently left the column to go hunting or to study life on the Plains. He was fascinated by an Oglala funeral scaffold that Comstock showed him, with a warrior’s favorite horse lying dead underneath and a lance by the dead man’s side.
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At one campsite the men had no sooner pitched their tents than they discovered they were over an area perforated with rattlesnake holes. The troopers cut off the snakes’ heads with their sabers and everyone enjoyed broiled or fried rattlesnake that night. Custer and other hunters killed antelope an occasion, thereby providing fresh meat, and Custer took some young captured antelope and made them into pets.
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Custer was hoping to find the Cheyennes who had deserted the village at Pawnee Fork. On June 7 his column crossed the Republican River in southwest Nebraska. When he rode to the top of the bluffs enclosing the valley, Custer saw in front of him one hundred mounted warriors. The Indians immediately turned and fled.
Custer sent a company to chase them; luckily for him, the Cheyennes were not pulling the decoy trick and the company eventually returned safely, although somewhat embarrassed by the fact that it had not gotten close to any red men.
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On June 10 Custer looked down on the Platte River Valley. Below him was Fort McPherson. He could see the Union Pacific tracks stretching westward, beside them the telegraph line (which was useless, as the Indians had cut it) and the overland stage road. The road was a shambles and railroad work had come to a halt Graves were scattered across the countryside. Most were simply mounds, but some were more pretentious; one was marked by a crude board on which had been inscribed
UNKNOWN MAN KILLED BY INDIANS.
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The commanding officer at Fort McPherson was Colonel Henry Carrington, who had been shifted to the Platte after the Fetterman disaster the previous winter. Carrington had a great deal to tell Custer about Crazy Horse and Oglala fighting tactics, but it is doubtful if Custer let him do so. Custer was contemptuous of the old colonel who had been disgraced by Crazy Horse and Red Cloud, and it seemed obvious that Carrington’s military career was over. Custer, despite his bad start as an Indian fighter, was still a rising star. Besides there was the difference in their ages and characters; where Carrington was taciturn, Custer was voluble; where Carrington was cautious, Custer was impetuous.

When the 7th Cavalry appeared at the gates of his fort, Carrington immediately invited Custer to dine with him that evening. Custer declined, muttering that he had to see to his men. It would be difficult to imagine a more cutting insult in the Army than refusing a commanding officer’s invitation to dinner. Carrington let it pass, although he did stiffly inform Custer that he had best report officially that his command was present at Fort McPherson, ready for duty. “I peremptorily refused to do it,” Custer wrote Libbie that night, on the grounds that his was an independent command responsible only to General Sherman. Again Carrington did nothing —perhaps he figured that the Sioux and Cheyennes would soon teach this insulting young whippersnapper a little humility.
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The next day Custer moved his camp ten miles west, officially because there was higher ground and more grass available for his horses at the new site, more likely to get away from Carrington and the possibility of having to take orders from the old colonel. No sooner had camp been made than Pawnee Killer, the southern Oglala who had just left Red Cloud and Crazy Horse, appeared for a talk.
Custer smoked his first peace pipe and did so manfully, even managing to avoid coughing. He gave Pawnee Killer a few trinkets and small amounts of coffee and sugar, then urged him to bring his village to the vicinity of the fort. Custer warned Pawnee Killer that all the territory between the Platte and the Arkansas was, in his view, the battlefield, and if he caught any Indians in the region he would shoot on sight. Pawnee Killer pretended to be impressed, promised to be good, said he would camp by the fort, begged for ammunition—which was refused—and spent most of his time petting Custer’s pet antelope. He departed in good humor.
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Custer was delighted. Although the Sioux had found him, not vice versa, he was satisfied that Pawnee Killer had no hostile intentions. “I encouraged peace propositions and have sturdy hopes of a successful and satisfactory settlement with the Sioux which will leave us only the Cheyennes to deal with,” he wrote Libbie. He hoped the result would be general peace, so “that I will see my little girl much sooner thereby.” He expected to meet Sherman, who was visiting the frontier posts to encourage his commanders to kill Indians, the next day.
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Sherman arrived at Fort McPherson by railroad on June 16. Custer proudly informed him of his diplomatic victory—Pawnee Killer was coming into the shadow of the fort to camp and Custer had brought it about without bloodshed. Expecting praise for his restraint, Custer was deeply hurt when Sherman exploded. The nervous, excitable, wrinkled, redheaded general was furious with his subordinate. What in hell did Custer mean by meddling in politics? Didn’t he know that you can never trust an Indian? How could he have been so stupid? Custer, who had never really had a chance to fight anyway, because Pawnee Killer and a small group had come unexpectedly under a flag of truce, wondered what he could have done. Sherman snapped that he should have held Pawnee Killer and the subchiefs as hostages until the tribe actually made the move to the fort. Sherman wanted Custer to start off immediately and bring back some hostages, but Comstock pointed out that they couldn’t possibly catch a few Indians on the open Plains. Sherman then ordered Custer to march to the southwest, toward the headwaters of the Republican River, where he could expect to encounter Pawnee Killer’s village and perhaps might run across the Cheyennes. When Custer asked Sherman what the limits of the search should be, Sherman replied that the 7th Cavalry could go to Denver if Custer wished, “or he could go to hell if he wanted to,” so long as he was in hot pursuit of Indians. The main point was to find some redskins and shoot
them. Sherman explicitly ordered Custer to kill as many Indians as he could, capturing and bringing in the women and children.
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Stung by Sherman’s rebuke, Custer started out on June 18, pushing his men hard. He rode west, then straight south, toward the Republican River, hoping to find Pawnee Killer or the Cheyennes somewhere in northwestern Kansas or eastern Colorado. Sherman had ordered him to scout the country thoroughly, then move north to Fort Sedgwick, in the northeastern tip of Colorado on the South Platte River, where he could take on supplies and receive further orders. But Custer had already written Libbie, telling her to meet him at Fort Wallace, in western Kansas, 150 miles south of Fort Sedgwick. His desire to be with her had become almost an obsession. By this time he could think of little else, especially since he had just learned that cholera had broken out at Fort Leavenworth and was spreading westward. Libbie might be sick, dying even—he was desperate to know. So when he reached the Republican River he decided to ignore his orders to proceed to Fort Sedgwick. Instead, he would stay where he was, about halfway between Forts Sedgwick and Wallace, and send a wagon train to Fort Wallace to pick up supplies. Libbie would be at Wallace and she could join the wagon train there, then come north with it to meet Custer in camp. Meanwhile, a small column could go to Fort Sedgwick and pick up any orders Sherman might have sent there.
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Custer’s mistakes were overwhelming, even if understandable. His desire to have Libbie join him had clouded his judgment. He was supposed to be scouting for enemies, not establishing a semipermanent camp on the Republican River while one third of his fighting men escorted his wife safely to his side and another group ran an errand to Fort Sedgwick for him. He was in the middle of the Great Plains, the territory swarming with hostile Indians, and he had divided his relatively small force into three separate parts. He had told Libbie to join him in the field, but he had issued standing orders that if she were about to be captured by red men, any soldier in the vicinity should shoot to kill her.