Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors (59 page)

To Stanley, meanwhile, it was all just another job on those endless, monotonous Plains. “The winds have been terrible, and the whole prairie has become a swamp,” he wrote disgustedly. “I am well,” he confessed almost reluctantly, “and wonder that I am as I have been wet nearly every day for nine days.” Custer said he had never been in a healthier climate.
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When the column reached the Yellowstone in Montana, Custer was overwhelmed. “No artist,” he wrote Libbie, “could fairly represent the wonderful country we passed over, while each step of our progress was like each successive shifting of the kaleidoscope, presenting to our wondering gaze views which almost appalled us by their sublimity.”
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Stanley told his wife that while the river itself was beautiful, “the country adjoining is repulsive in its rugged, barren ugliness.”

Stanley was no dreamer of dreams. He had penetrated into country seldom seen by white men, a primeval place filled with the marvels of life on this earth, and all he could think to tell his wife was, “These 18 days have been days of as hard work as I ever put in as a soldier.”
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Custer caught the spirit of the West, the spirit of Cortes, of Lewis and Clark. He gushed about it, simply overflowed. He wrote Libbie one forty-page letter, then followed it with another of eighty pages, mostly devoted to telling her about the country. “What would you
think of passing through acres of petrified trees,” he asked Libbie, “some with trunks several feet in diameter, and branches perfect?” He described in detail the fossil fish they were finding, the flora and fauna and of course his hunting successes. He wore a brilliant red shirt to let everyone know how good he felt. He became a great booster of the West: “How I have wished that some of our home boys, who possess talent and education, but lack means and opportunity, would cast themselves loose from home and try their fortunes in this great enterprising western country, where the virtues of real manhood come quickly to the surface, and their possessor finds himself transformed from a mere boy to a full-fledged man almost before he realizes his quick advancement”
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Most of all, Custer responded to the hunting. The details need not detain us; suffice it to say that he hunted nearly every day and at the end of the expedition reported on the total bag:

“I killed with my rifle and brought into camp forty-one antelope, four buffalo, four elk, seven deer (four of them blacktails), two white wolves, and one red fox.

“Geese, ducks, prairie-chickens, and sage-hens without number completed my summer’s record.

“No one assisted me in killing the antelope, deer, or elk, except one of the latter.

“One porcupine and a wildcat I brought in alive. Both of these amiable creatures I intend to send to Central Park.”
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As the expedition pushed on, Stanley grew more and more irritated at everything, while Custer grew happier and more excited. “I have had no trouble with Custer,” Stanley wrote his wife on June 28, “and will try to avoid having any; but I have seen enough of him to convince me that he is a cold-blooded, untruthful and unprincipled man. He is universally despised by all the officers of his regiment excepting his relatives and one or two sycophants. He brought a trader into the field without permission, carries an old negro woman, and cast iron cooking stove, and delays the march often by his extensive packing up in the morning. As I said I will try, but am not sure I can avoid trouble with him.”
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Custer, meanwhile, accused Stanley of near-constant drunkenness.
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Trouble was inevitable. Stanley told the story to his wife: “I had a little flurry with Custer as I told you I probably would. We were separated 4 miles, and I intended him to assist in getting the train, his own train, over the Muddy River. Without consulting me he marched off 15 miles, coolly sending me a note to send him forage and rations. I sent after him, ordered him to halt where he was, to
unload his wagons, and send for his own rations and forage, and never to presume to make another movement without orders.

“I knew from the start it had to be done, and I am glad to have so good a chance, when there could be no doubt who was right. He was just gradually assuming command, and now he knows he has a commanding officer who will not tolerate his arrogance.”
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Stanley placed Custer under arrest and ordered the 7th Cavalry to march at the rear of the column, where it could eat the infantry’s dust Custer shrugged, returned to his tent, and took a nap. As he lay dozing, he heard a familiar voice outside say, “Orderly, which is General Custer’s tent?” Custer would have known that voice anywhere—it was Tom Rosser! A close friend at West Point, his most resourceful enemy in the Civil War. Rosser was chief engineer on the Northern Pacific survey team now and would be accompanying the column. “We talk over our West Point times and discuss the battles of the war,” Custer told Libbie. “I stretch the buffalo-robe under the fly of the tent, and there in the moonlight he and I, lying at full length, listen to each other’s accounts of battles in which both had bourne a part. It seemed like the time when we were cadets together, huddled on one blanket and discussing dreams of the future.”
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When Rosser heard of Custer’s difficulties, he went to Stanley and asked to have Custer returned to active duty and his regiment put at the front of the column, where the cavalry belonged in Indian country. Rosser intimated that the Northern Pacific backers would be unhappy otherwise.

Stanley thereupon reinstated Custer, who apparently learned his lesson. He
had
been taking over command of the column, in effect, because the infantry officers were drawn to his mess, which was always so cheerful. There was a permanent poker game going on among the 7th Cavalry officers, which was an additional attraction. Further, the cavalry officers had whiskey aplenty. Colonel Frederick Dent Grant, the President’s son, was along as an observer for Sheridan, and rumor had it that he was always drunk. Finally, the infantry officers were drawn to Custer’s campfire because his cook made such good meals on her cast-iron cooking stove and there was always fresh meat from the day’s hunting. Stanley
did
need to assert himself and re-establish his authority, and he did it effectively. Custer “has behaved very well,” Stanley told his wife six weeks later.
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Custer’s letters to his wife during this expedition provide revealing glimpses of his personality. First, he was more in love than ever. “Good morning, my Sunbeam,” he would write when starting a segment
of his epic missives (Tom Custer called the 120-page outpouring “Autie’s book”), or he would begin, “My Darling Bunkey.” He said, over and over, that he could give up anything except her. “Writing to others seems difficult,” he continued, “but to you not so. When other themes fail we still have the old story which in ten years has not lost its freshness … indeed is newer than when, at the outset we wondered if it would endure in its first intensity.”
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Next, Custer was generous. “General Stanley,” he wrote Libbie, “when not possessed by the fiend of intemperance, is one of the kindest, most agreeable and considerate officers I ever served under.” Libbie had heard about her Autie’s arrest and was all a-twitter over it, but Custer told her everything was fine. “I suppose you think I am of a very forgiving disposition,” he wrote. “Well, perhaps I am. I often think of the beautiful expression uttered by President Lincoln —‘With malice toward none; with charity toward all …’—and I hope this may ever be mine to say.”
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Perhaps Custer, like General George Patton of World War II fame, needed a strong hand over him to bring out his best.

The letters also reveal that Custer, for all his fame, was still a man on the make. Fred Grant was called home for his grandfather’s funeral. Custer, who could not keep himself from fawning on anyone who could help his career and who was always and forever telling Libbie what to do, gave her careful instructions: “If he—Col. Grant— goes to Long Branch from Chicago by way of Monroe to see you, you will, of course, do all in your power to make his stay agreeable. If you know of his arrival in advance you should meet him at the depot with a carriage. Have his father’s picture hung in the parlor …”
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Back in Monroe, Libbie was bored stiff. “I find it hard to rise above depressing surroundings without your help,” she wrote Autie. “There are not many joyous people here. The women are so fagged with domestic cares, kitchen drudgery, leading a monotonous life, the men without bright women to cheer them up …” She was awfully glad that she had not married a local businessman and spent her life washing, cleaning, and cooking—she much preferred the Army and couldn’t wait to get back to the frontier, to excitement and adventure. She said she was trying to “improve to keep up with you, be worthy of you.”

Libbie went to visit a childhood friend, Mary Dansard. “Poor Mary,” she said, “lingering along with childbirth illness.” Mary, with a hint of envy in her voice, remarked, “Just think, Libbie, in ten years I have had seven children—and you not one.”
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At about the same time, Custer was writing Libbie about his huge dog Tuck, who would go to sleep only on Custer’s lap. “She resembles a well-cared for and half-spoiled child,” Custer told Libbie after a page of description of Tuck’s sleeping habits, “who can never be induced to retire until it has been fondled to sleep in its mother’s arms.” When he put the sleeping dog down from his lap, Custer added, she was “like a little baby carefully deposited in its crib.”
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The Custers were childless, a fact they seem never to have discussed in public and never wrote about. Why they had no children is a mystery. To a man of Custer’s exuberance and a woman with Libbie’s energy, coupled with their mutual love of life and of each other, that fact must have been important, but all one can do is speculate.

On July 31, 1873, the Stanley expedition camped north of the Yellowstone River and the mouth of the Powder River. It was well inside Sioux territory now and Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse were aware of its progress. They, along with other Indian leaders, began to band together and look for a place to set an ambush. Custer proceeded southwestward along the Yellowstone, the surveyors and infantry following. By August 4, Custer was opposite the mouth of the Tongue River (site of present-day Miles City). It was a hot, dusty day, and Custer halted his cavalry to wait for the others to catch up. Pulling off his boots, setting up his saddle for a pillow, his red shirt cushioning the hard leather, Custer took a nap.
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He was sleeping, then, when Crazy Horse first saw him. Along with other warriors, Crazy Horse had crawled to the crest of a nearby bluff, from which spot they could look down on Custer’s position. The Indians could not have been very hopeful, as there were eighty-five well-armed cavalrymen with Custer and their own force numbered, at most, 350 men, mainly without firearms—bad odds for the red men. Still, there were possibilities. Upstream from the spot where Custer was camping there was a big stand of timber, an ideal place for the bulk of the warriors to hide. Custer’s horses had been turned out to graze; perhaps they could be stampeded. Custer would have to follow to get his horses back; perhaps in the process he could be led into the timber, where the soldiers’ guns wouldn’t count for so much. The Indians decided to give it a try.

Whether or not Crazy Horse was a member of the decoy party is impossible to determine, but it is probable that he was. He had more experience in this sort of thing than anyone else and the details of what he had accomplished against Fetterman in 1866 were known
to every Indian in the camp. Further, the actions of the decoy party seem to show the fine hand of Crazy Horse at work.

In any event, after all the preparations were complete, six decoys dashed down into Custer’s herd of horses, attempting to stampede it in the direction of the heavy timber and the waiting warriors. But Custer had his guards posted and the men immediately started firing and yelling. Custer jumped to his feet, grabbed his rifle, and ran toward the excitement, wearing only his socks and underwear. The decoys had retreated to a safe distance, from which spot they taunted Custer, shouting insults and occasionally firing at him. The six Indians rode back and forth, making little and big circles, nervous as antelope but showing no disposition to run. Custer ordered his troopers to mount up, pulled on his shirt, pants, and boots, called for a detail of twenty men, put them under the command of his brother Tom, and set off at the head of the small detachment to give chase.
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Custer described the ensuing action in his official battle report: “Following the Indians at a brisk gait, my suspicions became excited by the confident bearing exhibited by the six Sioux in our front, whose course seemed to lead us near a heavy growth of timber which stood along the river bank above us. When almost within rifle range of this timber, I directed the squadron to halt, while I with two orderlies, all being well mounted, continued after the Sioux in order to develop their intentions. Proceeding a few hundred yards in advance of the squadron, and keeping a watchful eye on the timber to my left, I halted. The six Indians in my front also halted, as if to tempt further pursuit”
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For a brief instant the two parties stared at each other, there beside the Yellowstone. Did Crazy Horse and Custer see each other? There is no direct evidence, but certainly Custer stood out; even without his red shirt he would have caught Crazy Horse’s eye, as he was obviously the leader of the whites, a big man among them. Crazy Horse would have been less likely to catch Custer’s eye—with his single feather in his hair and his unpainted body, he paled beside his resplendent fellow warriors. Still, Custer had heard of Crazy Horse, knew of his skills as a decoy, and had Fetterman very much on his mind. “Among the Indians who fought us on this occasion were some of the identical warriors who committed the massacre at Fort Phil Kearny,” he wrote in his report, “and they no doubt intended a similar programme when they sent the six warriors to dash up and attempt to decoy us.”
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