Indian Fights and Fighters: The Soldier and the Sioux

by Cyrus Townsend Brady

Yet the troopers suffered great loss as the afternoon wore on. Their ammunition began to run low, and the contracting, whirling circle of Indians drove them closer and closer together. The remaining horses of the other three troops were at last stampeded, and with them went all of the reserve ammunition. The situation had evidently become so serious that Custer, in the vain hope that Reno would understand his peril at last, fired the two volleys which have been referred to. It appears at this time that he must have endeavored to send a message to Reno, for the body of a solitary soldier, Sergeant Butler, was found after the battle at a point half way between Custer’s and Reno’s commands. A little heap of cartridges lay near his body, evidencing that he had sold his life dearly. The Indians were acute enough—so they say, and probably with truth—to pick out the officers with Custer, and the mortality among them was fearful. It was evident to all on the hill, as the afternoon drew toward its close, that they were doomed. It was hardly possible that a counterattack by Reno would save them now, and there were no evidences whatever that he was anywhere in the vicinity.

“Where, in God’s name,” they must have asked themselves in their despair, “can Reno be?”

One of the Crow scouts has said—although his account is generally disbelieved—that he went at last to Custer, as yet unharmed, and told him that he thought he could get him away, and that Custer, of course, refused to leave the field. The Crow altered his appearance by draping a blanket about him so as to look as much like a Sioux as possible, and in the confusion of the fight got away safely.[^[86]] He was the only human survivor of the field.[^[87]] What occurred after is a matter of conjecture, based upon the contradictory and inadequate testimony of the Indians themselves.

Gall and Crazy Horse now determined to end the affair. Massing their warriors in the ravine, they fell on both flanks at the same time that Crow King and Rain-in-the-Face led a direct charge against the front of the thinned and weakened line. They swept over the little band of men, probably now out of ammunition, in a red wave of destruction. There was a fierce hand-to-hand struggle with clubbed guns, war-clubs, and tomahawks, and all was over. Some twenty or thirty men, without their officers, who had probably all been killed where they stood, for their bodies were found grouped around that of Custer on the highest hill, endeavored to break through on the right. They were slaughtered to a man before they reached the river. A few scattered bodies, here and there in different parts of the field, indicated that separate men had made futile dashes for freedom. But the bulk of the command was found just where it had fought, with the troopers in line, their officers in position! They had been beaten and killed. Not an officer or man lived to tell the story, but they had not been disgraced.

There, the second day afterward, Terry, with Gibbon, having relieved Reno’s men, found them on the hills which they had immortalized by their desperate valor. They had been stripped and most of them mutilated. Custer’s body was shot in two places, in the side and in the temple. It was not scalped or mutilated. Colonel Dodge, an authority on Indian customs, declares that if Custer’s body was neither scalped nor mutilated, he is convinced that the general committed suicide. None of the officers with whom I have communicated who inspected the body is willing to indorse this statement; on the contrary. Therefore, I am sure Colonel Dodge must be in error. The Indians give no particular information as to Custer’s death. All that is known is that his body was there with those of his brave men.

With Custer in that fight perished many gallant souls. His brother, Captain Tom Custer, was the only man in the United States Army who held two medals for capturing two flags with his own hands in the Civil War. Rain-in-the-Face had accomplished his terrible revenge, for after the battle he had cut open the breast of the brave young soldier and had eaten his heart. Calhoun, of L Troop, was Custer’s brother-in-law. With him was young Crittenden, a lieutenant of infantry, who had sought an assignment with Custer for this campaign. Smith was the captain of E, the Gray Horse Troop. At the storming of Fort Fisher, after two color-bearers had been killed, he had led his regiment to the attack, colors in hand. His shoulder had been smashed by a musket ball in that attack. He could never afterward put on his coat without assistance. With him was young Sturgis. Yates, a veteran of the Civil War, was captain of F, the Bandbox Troop; and with him was Riley, the youngest lieutenant there. Keogh, of I Troop, the oldest soldier of them all, and not the least brave, had been an officer of the Papal Zouaves in early life. He had a gallant record in the Civil War, too. With him was Porter, and with the others who had done their parts were Cook, the adjutant, and Lord, the doctor.

Others worthy of note fell on that fatal field: Mark Kellogg, a newspaper correspondent; Charlie Reynolds, the famous scout; Boston Custer, the General’s brother, who was civilian forage-master of the regiment, and Autie Reed, the General’s nephew—a mere boy, who wanted to see something of life in the West and who had welcomed with joy his opportunity to make the campaign. Well, he saw it, poor fellow! Indeed, the Custer family was almost wiped out on that fatal Sunday.

Premonitions of disaster, such as loving women may feel, were in the air that afternoon. Back at Fort Abraham Lincoln, the devoted wife tells how the women of the garrison assembled in her quarters in an agony of apprehension. There were words of prayer. Some one at the piano started “Nearer My God to Thee,” and the women tried to sing it, but they could not finish it. It was not until the 5th of July that they received the news that at that very hour their loved ones were dying on the hill.

Courtesy of The Century Co.