The Last Days of George Armstrong Custer (10 page)

Although Custer clearly had acted prudently at the November battle by withdrawing his command after making an attempt to locate the missing troopers, the tragic death of the popular Major Elliott provided his friend and former Civil War superior Captain Frederick Benteen with fuel to fan the flames of another controversy.

Benteen wrote a letter to a friend in St. Louis that made the accusation that Custer had “abandoned” Elliott, and included an evaluation of Custer's conduct at Washita that could only be called slanderous. This letter was published, anonymously and apparently without Benteen's permission, in the
St. Louis Democrat
newspaper and reprinted by
The New York Times
on February 14, 1869.

A copy of the newspaper found its way to Custer, who had officer's call sounded and allegedly threatened to horsewhip the author of the letter. When Benteen readily admitted that he had written the letter, Custer was surprised and somewhat befuddled. He reportedly dismissed his officers without another word.

Benteen related a different version of the incident in Custer's tent. The captain allegedly shifted his revolver to a ready position on his belt, and “at a pause in the talk I said, ‘Gen. Custer, while I cannot father all the blame you have asserted, I guess I am the man you are after, and I am ready for the whipping promised.' He stammered and said, ‘Col. Benteen, I'll see you again, sir!'”

Benteen claimed that he later returned to Custer's tent with newspaperman and author DeB. Randolph Keim as a witness and that Custer “wilted like a whipped cur.”

Whatever the circumstances, some scholars have reasoned that Custer backed off his threat for the good of the outfit; others have questioned Custer's fortitude, which was absurd.

There is a good possibility that Benteen's accusation of abandonment, if there even was any abandonment, was misdirected. No evidence exists, but there is a distinct possibility that Captain Edward Myers could have provided the information necessary to answer the question at the time of the battle about the disposition of Elliott and his men.

Myers was dispatched by Custer to search for Joel Elliott and the missing troopers. The report by Myers that he rode about two miles without observing any sign of them has been taken for granted. At that time, Elliott was possibly within two miles of the battlefield—pinned down or already dead and remaining the subject of Indian interest. It is suspect that Myers could have ridden two miles without noticing anything suspicious—no heavy firing, no assemblage of aroused Indians nearby or up ahead.

Captain Myers had been known to disobey orders in the past and had in fact been convicted a year earlier at a court-martial and sentenced to be dismissed from the service but was later restored to duty. Could Myers have, in the face of an overwhelming number of Indians advancing from that direction, failed to ride those two miles or adequately search for Elliott and simply reported that he had? The immediate area was teeming with warriors, and human nature may have played a part in Myers being overly cautious and less than zealous in carrying out his orders. His patrol would certainly have kept their mouths shut about any deviation from Custer's orders.

Consequently, was it actually Myers and not Custer who had abandoned Elliott? Benteen should have questioned Myers—and the troopers in his patrol—with respect to how far they had ventured downstream looking for Elliott and why they had not kept searching until they had found the major and his men.

If the possibility exists that Myers could have been derelict in his duty, why then would Benteen choose to bypass Myers to place the blame on Custer?

Perhaps Benteen chose his commander as his target for practical reasons. Myers was known to be a hot-tempered man who had once pulled his pistol on a fellow officer. To add to the intrigue, Myers had been the officer who rushed into Custer's tent on June 8, 1867, during the Hancock Expedition to report that Major Wickliffe Cooper had just taken his own life. That ruling of suicide was years later changed to “died by hand of person or persons unknown.” Myers was the last man known to be present with Cooper in that tent.

Could it be that Benteen wanted no part of the dangerous Captain Edward Myers and instead thought he had found an easier mark in Custer, whom he already hated and who it could be presumed—in the name of proper military order—would not publicly confront Benteen?

Regardless, Benteen's accusations that Custer had abandoned Elliott created dissension for years to come among the officers of the regiment who chose sides along loyalty lines.

And, strangely enough, the real blame in the matter has been completely overlooked as people chose sides—it was Elliott's own fault for riding off on his own, without orders from Custer. Elliott placed himself and his men in a dangerous situation, and when orders are disobeyed in combat soldiers often pay for it with their lives.

This controversy brewed within the Seventh Cavalry while Sheridan and Custer resumed their December march toward the remnants of the various Indian villages. Farther downstream from Black Kettle's village, Sheridan and Custer found a most disconcerting sight in an abandoned village reportedly belonging to Kiowa chief Satanta.

While preparing for this Winter Campaign of 1868–69 Phil Sheridan was nagged by the number of settlers, especially white women, who had fallen into the hands of the hostile Indians raiding across Kansas. One instance that particularly haunted Sheridan and later George Armstrong Custer was the fate of a young woman named Clara Blinn.

Richard and Clara Blinn and their infant son, Willie, had been traveling by wagon train to Franklin County, Kansas, when they were attacked on the Colorado plains by Arapaho or Cheyenne warriors. During the ensuing skirmish, Clara and Willie were somehow taken captive. The circumstances surrounding the abduction are unknown, although the wagon train was said to have been carrying eleven armed men, only one of whom was wounded, and no other members were killed or captured—including Blinn's husband. Clara soon managed to smuggle a heartrending letter out of an Indian camp beseeching someone, anyone, to help save her and her little boy.

Sheridan had been informed of Clara Blinn's captivity when he received a letter from her father, W. T. Harrington, who pleaded with Sheridan to rescue his daughter and grandson. The ultimate mission of Sheridan's Winter Campaign had now taken on a more personal chivalrous purpose—if not rescuing Clara Blinn, then protecting others from suffering the same fate.

Now Sheridan and Custer had returned to examine the battlefield. Downstream, at the site of a village determined to be Kiowa under Satanta, they encountered a grisly discovery—the bodies of Clara Blinn and her son, Willie. Mrs. Blinn had been shot twice in the forehead from point-blank range, her skull crushed, and her scalp taken. Willie, who had been reduced to skin and bones, had likely been picked up by the feet and bashed against a tree. It was speculated that the two captives had been killed at about the same time that Custer had charged into Black Kettle's village, perhaps because the Indians, as Custer reported, feared “she might be recaptured by us and her testimony used against them.”

Sheridan and his seven-hundred-man force continued to follow the Indian trail for another seventy-five miles until happening upon a large band of Indians. The chief of these Kiowa, none other than Satanta, rode out to display a message from Colonel Hazen—who had the unenviable task of determining the status of Indians—that indicated that he and the other chief present, Lone Wolf, were friendly and should not be disturbed. Sheridan challenged Satanta to demonstrate his tribe's friendliness by accompanying him to the reservation at Fort Cobb. When Satanta hesitated, Sheridan seized the two chiefs and threatened to hang them if the tribe did not submit to the reservation. Most of the Kiowa grudgingly complied to save the lives of their chiefs.

In January 1869, Custer swept through the Wichita Mountains with only a detail of forty sharpshooters and convinced an Arapaho village of sixty-five lodges under Chief Little Raven to surrender. Another tribe had been subdued, which it was hoped would make a difference with bringing peace and tranquility to the plains.

On March 15, 1869, while campaigning with elements of the Seventh Cavalry reinforced by the Nineteenth Kansas Volunteer Cavalry, Custer was notified by his scouts that they had located two Cheyenne villages consisting of a combined 260 lodges under Chiefs Medicine Arrow and Little Robe at Sweetwater Creek, Texas.

The Kansans were certain that these were the Indians who held two white women, Mrs. Anna Belle Morgan and Miss Sarah C. White, whose rescue was a major reason the unit had mobilized the previous fall. Mrs. Morgan, a bride of one month, had been taken from James Morgan's homestead on the Solomon River near Delphos. Her brother, Daniel Brewster, had accompanied the expedition to search for her. Eighteen-year-old Sarah White had been seized at her family homestead on Granny Creek near Concordia at the same time that her father was killed.

In advance of his weary command, Custer, in the company of only First Lieutenant William W. Cooke, brazenly entered the Cheyenne village unannounced and was escorted to the lodge of Chief Little Robe. Custer shared the pipe ritual with the chief and was the subject of incantations and ceremonies by a holy man that, unknown to Custer, were intended to signify that if he acted treacherously toward the Indians he and his command would be killed. In spite of this attempted intimidation, which ended with ashes from the pipe bowl being dropped on Custer's boot, he confirmed that the two white women in question were indeed captives in the village.

Custer returned to announce the news to his command. The Kansas cavalrymen were elated, and demanded that an immediate attack be launched. The fate of Clara Blinn and her son, however, was foremost on Custer's mind. He had agonized over those deaths and feared that these captives would also be killed if he initiated an attack.

Much to the outrage of the Kansans—many of whom branded Custer a coward and a traitor—he decided that they would attempt to parley for the release of Mrs. Morgan and Miss White before taking any military action. It was all Custer could do to restrain the irate volunteers from taking matters into their own hands.

Opportunity arose, however, when Chief Little Robe and a delegation visited the cavalry bivouac under a flag of truce. Custer ignored the flag, seized three minor chiefs as hostages, and threatened to hang them if the white women were not released.

Three days later, when intense negotiation failed to break the stalemate and a battle loomed, Custer looped three ropes over the limb of a large willow tree and paraded his hostages beneath. At that point, the Cheyenne relented and released their white captives.

Custer also demanded that the Indians report to Camp Supply, but the chiefs argued that their ponies were too weak and could not travel. Instead, the Indians would report when their ponies grew stronger. Custer reluctantly agreed and offered as an incentive for compliance the release of the women and children captured at Washita.

The incident serves as an example of Custer's growing maturity as an Indian fighter, that bloodshed was not always the correct course when dealing with the enemy.

The participation of the Seventh Cavalry in the Winter Campaign quietly concluded on March 28, 1869. At that point in time, however, not all Cheyenne had submitted to the reservation.

On July 11, the Fifth Cavalry under Major Eugene Carr—about 250 troopers and 50 Pawnee scouts—swept down on an unsuspecting encampment at Summit Springs. The surprised Cheyenne dashed from their lodges, many running to reach the cover of nearby ravines, while others were cut down in the initial charge. When the smoke of burning lodges had lifted, fifty-two Indians had been killed, among them Chief Tall Bull.

Seventeen women and children were taken prisoner, including Tall Bull's wife. A pony and mule herd estimated at four hundred was confiscated, and then the entire village—weapons, food, and clothing—had been destroyed. The village also revealed the presence of two white women who had been captured on May 30 on the Saline River—one of them was killed when Carr charged; the other was severely wounded but survived.

The Battle of Summit Springs broke the will of the Indians and finally accomplished General Sheridan's mission of clearing all hostiles from between the Platte and Arkansas rivers.

But the conflict that had gained the most publicity and criticism was the Battle of the Washita. This conflict was considered a great victory in the estimation of the military establishment. Eastern humanitarians, however, called the action a massacre.

Newspaper editorials and a deluge of letters criticized the army and condemned George Armstrong Custer—unfairly comparing him to militia colonel John M. Chivington, who had attacked a Cheyenne village on November 27, 1864.

The Sand Creek affair had been a deliberate and indiscriminate slaughter. The undisciplined militia, with the blessing of their commander, killed, mutilated, and scalped at least 150 Cheyenne—two-thirds of them women and children—who had been promised safety at that location. The triumphant militiamen were hailed as heroes in Denver when they later displayed Indian scalps and other trophies during a parade and to an appreciative audience between acts at a theatrical performance.

Sand Creek had been motivated by the political ambitions of John Chivington and Colorado governor John Evans and could not remotely be called a battle or anything but a massacre based on three separate government investigations, each of which condemned this rogue attack. There was simply no comparison between Sand Creek and Washita.

Interested parties decried in particular the death of Black Kettle, whom they called a fine example of a peace-loving Indian. Indian agent Edward W. Wynkoop resigned his post in protest over the killing of the Cheyenne chief. Peace commission member Major General W. S. Harney and member Samuel F. Tappan, along with Superintendent of Indian Affairs Thomas Murphy, attested to the fact that Black Kettle was truly friendly and his death was an outrage.