Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors (70 page)

Custer marched twelve miles up the Rosebud, then made camp. That night, June 22, he called his own council of war for the officers of the 7th. After they settled down, Custer made a speech. “We are now starting on a scout which we all hope will be successful,” he began. “I intend to do everything I can to make it both successful and pleasant for everybody. I am certain that if any regiment in the Service can do what is required of us, we can.” Success would depend on surprise, and Custer ordered the officers to make certain that no man strayed from the column, that there was no shooting at game, no unnecessary noise, and especially no trumpet calls. He asked for their full co-operation and support.

Lieutenant Edward S. Godfrey, who was present at the meeting and who later became
the
authority on the battle of the Little Bighorn, recorded the aftermath. “This ‘talk’ of his [Custer’s] was considered at the time as something extraordinary for General Custer, for it was not his habit to unbosom himself to his officers. In it he showed concessions and a reliance on others; there was an indefinable something that was
not
Custer. His manner and tone, usually brusque and aggressive, or somewhat curt, was on this occasion conciliating and subdued. There was something akin to an appeal, as if depressed, that made a deep impression on all present. … Lieutenant Wallace and myself walked to our bivouac, for some distance in silence, when Wallace remarked: ‘Godfrey, I believe General Custer is going to be killed.’ ‘Why?’ I replied, ‘what makes you think so?’ ‘Because,’ said he, ‘I have never heard Custer talk in that way before.’ “
³⁷

On June 23 and 24 the column marched up the Rosebud, making nearly sixty miles on the two days. Indian signs were everywhere—the grass was close-cropped for miles around, indicating a huge pony herd; there were burned-out campfires here and there; trails leading west, toward the Little Bighorn; the frame of the deserted Sun Dance lodge. The Sioux had left drawings in the sand that told the story of Sitting Bull’s vision, which greatly excited the Indian scouts, but when they fearfully told Custer what it meant, he shrugged.
³⁸

Late on June 24 the column reached the point on the Rosebud at which the Indians had crossed the stream a few days earlier, headed toward the Little Bighorn. The trail was a mile wide, the whole valley so scratched up by thousands of travois poles that it gave the appearance of a freshly plowed field. Even the dullest trooper knew now that there were “heaps and heaps of Injins” ahead.
At 8
P.M.
Custer made camp; he was about eighteen miles north of the site of Crook’s battle on the Rosebud a week earlier—and he had made thirty miles that day. Here Custer could have rested his men and horses, then moved farther south the next day, in accordance with Terry’s suggestion (or was it an order?).

But the enemy was to the west, not the south, and Custer was hardly the soldier to march away from the enemy’s known position. He decided to cross over the divide between the Rosebud and the Little Bighorn. He called his officers to him and ordered a night march. This was another inexplicable decision; it further weakened the striking power of an already exhausted 7th Cavalry. Why all the haste? Perhaps the opening date of the Democratic Convention, only three days away, had something to do with it. Kellogg would need time to write his dispatch, take it to the
Far West,
and get the news on the telegraph to St. Louis. It was already the night of June 24–25; Custer needed to fight his battle soon if he wanted to stampede the Democratic Convention. Whatever his reasons, Custer was pushing hard now, the smell of battle in his nostrils.

A night march is, by its very nature, much more difficult and exhausting than the same one made by daylight, but Custer got ten miles out of his men before stopping. At 2
A.M.,
June 25, he sent Lieutenant Charles A. Varnum and the Crow scouts on ahead to locate the enemy while the men boiled coffee and rested (the scouts were very angry at Custer for allowing the men to make fires). Custer told his officers he would rest the command through the day (June 25), then attack at dawn on June 26, the day Gibbon was expected to arrive on the Little Bighorn.

At first light on June 25 Varnum, Mitch Bouyer (a famous scout lent to Custer by Gibbon), and the Indian scouts were up on Crow’s Nest, looking down on the Little Bighorn, fifteen miles distant. As the light strengthened, they saw a sight that made them gasp with astonishment. Intervening bluffs cut off a full view, but the valley was white with lodges, and to the northwest the smoke from the hostile campfires made a murky haze. On the flats beyond the west bank of the river, they could see the greatest pony herd that any of them had ever seen—the pintos covered the earth like a carpet.

When Bloody Knife reported back to Custer, he begged Custer to use extreme caution, declaring that there were more Sioux ahead than the soldiers had bullets, enough Indians to keep the 7th Cavalry busy fighting for two or three days. Custer brushed the warning aside, saying with a smile that he guessed they could do the job in a day. Mitch Bouyer told him that it was the largest encampment
ever collected on the northwest Plains and reminded Custer that he, Bouyer, had been in these parts for thirty years. Custer shrugged.

Without finishing his breakfast, Custer, mounted bareback, rode around the camp snapping out orders to his officers. He was wearing a blue-gray flannel shirt, buckskin trousers, long boots, and a regular Army hat over his recently cut hair. He got the column in motion, then rode on ahead to Crow’s Nest to see for himself. By the time he arrived, however, a haze had settled over the Little Bighorn and he could see nothing. Custer rode back to the main column. Shortly thereafter, Varnum came in to report that the Indians seemed to be packing up and moving. That was what Custer feared most—that the enemy would get away—and to make matters worse Sioux scouts had been seen riding toward the river. Custer reasoned that they would give the alarm and the Indians would flee. He decided to abandon his plan to rest the men somewhere near the divide, then attack the next morning—instead, he would attack at once.

There was no point to further concealment. He had his bugler sound Officer’s Call, the first time a bugle had been blown for two days. Custer informed his officers that “the largest Indian camp on the North American continent is ahead and I am going to attack it.” He cautioned them to make certain that each of their men had a full one hundred rounds of ammunition and then he split up the column. Captain Frederick Benteen would take command of three troops, Major Reno another three. One troop would remain with the ammunition train. Custer himself kept five troops.

And away Custer and the 611 men of the 7th Cavalry marched toward the Little Bighorn, where Crazy Horse and 3,000 warriors were waiting. With the difference in weaponry and discipline, the odds were even. This battle would be decided by generalship, not numbers.

* The presence of buffalo in large numbers in the Powder River country was shown by an experience Crook’s column had later that year. By early June Crook was moving north again, looking for the hostiles. When entering the valley of the Rosebud, the troops saw one of the last great North American herds. The following account was written by a newspaperman accompanying the expedition: “All at once we ascended to the crest of a grassy slope, and then a sight burst upon us calculated to thrill the coldest heart in the command. Far as the eye could reach on both sides of our route the somber, superb buffaloes were grazing in thousands! The earth was brown with them. ‘Steady men, keep your ranks,’ was the command of the officers from front to rear as many of the younger soldiers, rendered frantic by the sight of the noble game, made a movement as if to break from the column in wild pursuit.” The Crows and Shoshonis went wild, shooting buffalo throughout the day, bringing them down by the hundreds. “Contrary to their general custom the savages killed the animals in sheer wantonness, and when reproached by the officers said, ‘better kill buffalo than have him feed the Sioux!’” The slaughter continued until total darkness. John F. Finerty,
War-Path and Bivouac: The Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition
(Chicago, 1955), 119-21.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The Battle of the Little Bighorn

“I could whip all the Indians on the Continent with the Seventh Cavalry.”  George Armstrong Custer, June 25, 1876

“Ho-ka hey! It is a good day to fight! It is a good day to die! Strong hearts, brave hearts, to the front! Weak hearts and cowards to the rear.”  Crazy Horse, June 25, 1876

The Little Bighorn is a sparklingly delightful stream. Its water is clear, nicely cool in late June, a pleasure to drink. Anywhere from ten to forty yards wide, it has a strong current. Numerous rocks break the flow of the river and cause it to gurgle constantly. The rocks are smooth, the bottom mostly gravel, and the depth seldom over five feet, making it altogether a perfect river for swimming. On the morning of June 25, 1876, hundreds of Sioux and Cheyenne children were bobbing up and down in the Little Bighorn, letting the current carry them along, laughing and splashing, choking when they swallowed too much water. Occasionally a teen-aged girl would cry out to the little ones to be careful, but they paid no attention. Here and there a fisherman tried his luck with a grasshopper for bait. Swallows darted through the surrounding cottonwoods and over the creek—the valley was filled with the birds.

Up on the west bank—and it was a high bank—the children’s mothers and fathers went about their business. There was still sufficient grass on the tableland above their camp to feed the ponies for a couple of days, and there was plenty of food in the camp, so the women didn’t have any pressing work. Many of them toiled together on hides, chatting about recent events, wondering when the soldiers would come. Some were arguing with their ten-year-olds, telling them they were too young to fight. Most boys of around that age, however, were up on the tableland, keeping watch on the gigantic pony herd. Other women were helping their men prepare for battle. A few just lazed under the abundant cottonwoods, escaping the already hot
rays of the morning sun. Black Elk, a brave Sioux warrior, was out with some women gathering wild turnips.

“It seemed that peace and happiness were prevailing all over the world,” a Cheyenne warrior later recalled, “and nowhere was any man planning to lift his hand against his fellow man.”
¹
*
Few of the Indians knew much about Custer’s approach.

But their leaders knew. The lodges of men like Crazy Horse, Gall and Sitting Bull of the Hunkpapas, Two Moons of the Cheyennes and others became small command posts, with scouts riding in every few minutes to report. The scouts were hanging around Custer’s flanks, knew where he was and where he was headed. The only things they didn’t know were exactly where, how, and when he would attack the village. But the leaders absolutely expected an attack and even wanted it to come, to fulfill Sitting Bull’s vision of soldiers falling into camp. Indeed, on at least two occasions small groups of scouts tried the old decoy trick, hoping to draw Custer into a pell-mell charge into the village. Custer didn’t take the bait, although the evidence indicates that the action of the decoys reinforced his
idée fixe
that the Sioux were attempting to escape.

It may be that the single most important fact about the battle of the Little Bighorn was that Custer was doing exactly what the Indians expected and wanted him to do. In any event, as Custer moved to the attack (knowing almost nothing about his enemy’s force or position), Crazy Horse stuck to his command post, refusing to commit his men until he knew exactly where, when, and how Custer would make his charge.

Of the four parts of Custer’s divided command, Benteen was on the left, Reno in the center, Custer on the right, with the ammunition train following. “You could tell that the plan was to strike the Indian camp at three places,” a sergeant in the 7th Cavalry later wrote.
²
About noon, Custer came to the site of a recently abandoned village. One lodge—immortalized today as the Lone Tipi—was still standing, a warrior’s body inside—he had just died from wounds received
a week earlier on the Rosebud. Custer ordered the tipi burned and evidently decided that the main body of Indians were on the run. The abandoned village had been the site of the full Sitting Bull-Crazy Horse encampment a couple of days earlier, so from the plentiful tracks it was natural for Custer to assume that they had just fled in panic. Bluffs and trees cut off his view of the new campsite.