[63]. Trooper Towne is in error here; there was no night march, according to Captain Bourke. See his “On the Border with Crook.” See also “War Path and Bivouac,” by Finerty.—C. T. B.
[64]. This troop was commanded by Lieutenant Reynolds, and was in Henry’s battalion.—C. T. B.
[65]. Crook was right in the fighting; his horse was shot under him.—C. T. B.
[66]. The official records show that Marshall was killed and Towne wounded in the battle. If this account falls under the eye of any one in authority, I trust an investigation may be made, and that the medal may be awarded, if it has been earned.—C. T. B.
CHAPTER THREE
The Grievance of Rain-in-the-Face
I. The Yellowstone Expedition of 1873
Having thus disposed of the most formidable column, Crook’s, in so summary and so effective a manner, the Indians under their able leadership turned their attention to Custer and Gibbon.
Before the Little Big Horn campaign is discussed, however, in order the better to understand the most terribly dramatic episode in the most disastrous of our Indian battles, it will be necessary to go back a little and take up the thread of the discourse later.
The country watered by the Yellowstone and its affluents, traversed by the Black Hills and other ranges of mountains, and protected by the almost impassable Bad Lands in Dakota, had been up to 1873 practically a terra incognita. However, the Northern Pacific Railroad was even then surveying a route across it. Gold had been discovered, and miners and settlers were crowding in. The Indians, since the treaty of 1868, which had resulted in the abandonment of Fort Phil Kearney and the other posts, had been ugly in mood and troublesome in action. They welcomed neither railroad nor men.