[IV.]
THE CUSTER MASSACRE.
The arrival at Fort Lincoln, on the Missouri River, of a party of Indians in 1874, who offered gold dust for sale, was the beginning of the cause that led to the great Sioux war in 1876, in which General Custer and his devoted soldiers were massacred on the Little Big Horn River on the 25th day of June of that year.
The gold which the Indians brought to Fort Lincoln, they said came from the Black Hills, where the gulches abounded with the yellow dust. The consequent rush of white men into that region was, in fact, a violation of the treaty of 1867, when Congress sent out four civilians and three army officers as peace commissioners, who gave to the old Dakota tribes, as the Sioux were then called, the vast area of land bounded on the south by Nebraska, on the east by the Missouri River, on the west by the 104th Meridian, and on the north by the 46th Parallel. They had the absolute pledge of the United States that they should be protected in the peaceable possession of the country set aside for them. This territory was as large as the state of Michigan, and of its interior little or nothing was known except to a few hardy traders and trappers prior to 1874.
With the advent of the gold seekers in 1875 the Indians saw that the greedy encroachments of the white man were but faintly resisted by the United States government, and that sooner or later it meant the total occupation of their country, and their own annihilation, and so with the traditional wrongs of their forefathers ever in mind, they determined to make a stand for their rights.
The scene of General Terry’s campaign against these Indians lay between the Big Horn and Powder Rivers, and extended from the Big Horn Mountains northerly to beyond the Yellowstone River. A region barren and desolate, volcanic, broken and ofttimes almost impassable, jagged and precipitous cliffs, narrow and deep arroyas filled with massive boulders, alkali water for miles, vegetation of cactus and sagebrush—all these represent feebly the country where Custer was to contend against the most powerful, warlike and best armed body of savages on the American continent.
An army in this trackless waste was at that time at the mercy of guides and scouts. The sun rose in the east and shone all day upon a vast expanse of sagebrush and grass and as it set in the west cast its dull rays into a thousand ravines that neither man nor beast could cross; to go north or south could only be decided by personal effort. An insignificant turn to the wrong side of a little knoll or buffalo wallow would ofttimes lead the scout into ravine after ravine, or over bluff after bluff, until at last he would stand on the edge of a yawning canon, hundreds of feet in depth and with perpendicular walls. Nothing was left for him to do but to retrace his steps and find an accessible route.
Custer had been ordered by General Terry to proceed with his command, numbering 28 officers and 747 soldiers, up the Rosebud River, and if the trail of the Indians was not found at a given point, to then follow the course of the Little Big Horn. These instructions were followed, and on the 24th of June he turned westerly toward the Little Big Horn, where a large Indian village was discovered some fifteen miles distant. The trail they were on led down the stream at a point south of the villages. Major Reno with three companies was ordered to follow the trail, cross the stream and charge down its north bank, while Captain F. W. Benteen was sent with three companies to make a detour south of Reno.
The point where the little armies separated, many of their men never to meet again, the river wound its silvery course for miles in the narrow valley as far as the eye could reach; its banks were fringed with the elm and cottonwood, whose foliage hid from view a thousand Indian tepees beyond the river. Sharp eyes had noted the advancing columns, and quick brains had already begun to plan their destruction.