It is plain that Custer laid his plans to win the fight, and at once. From the position in which the dead were found it is also clear that, having found themselves entirely outnumbered and beyond the reach of help, they took position as best they could in a sort of triangle on the rough, hot hill side, and there died in battle. Custer’s brother, Colonel Tom Custer, held one corner of the triangle, and down nearest the river his brother-in-law, Calhoun, another, while the general held the higher ground, so as to see and direct the battle to the end. The men fell almost in line. The officers, Calhoun and Crittenden, fell in their places, as if on parade.
Two years afterwards Robert E. Strahorne, a particular friend of mine, who was all through the campaign with General Crook, sent me the following statement in regard to this Indian war:
“I was, during the trying days of 1876–77, the representative of an Eastern journal and attached to the expeditions which Brigadier General George Crook led against the hostile Sioux and Cheyennes, then commanded by Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Dull Knife and Little Wolf.
“In this campaign we were obliged to go without clothing or bedding, save such as we carried on our backs, and without food, except the scantiest allowance possible of bacon and coffee. In this one point, Crook is without a rival in the regular army; he subjects himself to just the same discomfort and hardships as his men have to endure and cuts loose from his wagon train for weeks and months at a time. His wagons are never allowed to become receptacles of luxuries and toothsome delicacies for himself and officers; they carry only grain, ammunition and the necessary articles of daily food.
“At the engagement on the Rosebud, Montana, June 17, 1876, Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull ‘bounced’ Crook with a force of painted and feathered red devils numbering well up in the thousands. Poor Custer met his fate at the hands of these same warriors only a week later. Crook’s forces were not much, if any, superior to Custer’s whole command, but he was fortunate in keeping them undivided. He withstood the attack with great skill and courage, although for a while things certainly looked very blue. On this day, a little company of Montana miners, who had been out in the Black Hills prospecting and had joined Crook while on their way back to Montana, did splendid work with their Sharp’s sporting rifles. Crook and Terry, those grand soldiers, after poor Custer’s command had been wiped out, united their forces on the Yellowstone. How Terry then took for his share the task of cleaning out any hostiles to be found north of the Yellowstone, while Crook, like a bull-dog, hung to the trail which led to the south; how he followed it without bedding, without shelter, without food other than horse meat and berries found in captured villages, and in spite of the pitiless rain which beat down upon us (for I was one of those who camped on the trail), day after day, during the entire march from the mouth of Powder river to the Black Hills.
“I could write a book about our trials and tribulations on those marches, and sometime in the future the half-formed fancy of the present moment may take shape. One thing I wish to impress upon the minds of present and future Montanians, and that is the fact that the campaigns of General Crook and brother officers and men in 1876 and 1877 had the positive result of opening to their permanent occupation and use those vast and beautiful regions drained by the Yellowstone, Big Horn, Rosebud, Tongue, Powder, Musselshell and Judith rivers—regions which up that time had swarmed with the most powerful, vindictive and treacherous tribes of savages America has produced. I went into those campaigns knowing little of the regular army, and indeed somewhat prejudiced against it; I came out satisfied that the mass of its officers and men, the ‘youngsters’ especially, were brave, intelligent, patriotic, ambitious and courteous—men of whom any country should be proud.
“Closing this reminiscence of an arduous season of toil and danger, I am glad to say that among the lieutenants with whom I faced the red foe, and for whom I formed a great attachment, was the witty, bright and brave Schwatka, whose successes as an Arctic explorer have since made him world famous; Bourke, who besides being an officer of exceptional gallantry and good judgment, has devoted himself, with great patience, to the collection of memoranda upon the manners and customs of the aborigines; Carpenter, noted as an entomologist, and dozens of other officers—Eagan, Charles King, Schuyler, Allison, Chase, Lemley, McKinney (since killed), Delaney, Randall, Sibley, Nickerson, Henry, as brave and intelligent as any men can be—in the army or out of it.
“As Sherman’s army had an important element following and surrounding it—‘the bummers’—so this hard-worked force that Crook commanded had attached to it a force of correspondents whom I compare, and in all kindness, to the ‘bummers’ whom Sherman led to the sea. They were an exceptionally fine lot of men. There was Jack Finerty of the Chicago Times. I have always had a notion that he stepped out from some place in Lever’s novels; he was brave to rashness, and devoted to the interests of his great journal. Joe Wason, of the Alta California and the New York Tribune, always on the skirmish line after ‘pints.’ His red head shone like the danger signal of a freight train, but in spite of his red head he was one of the best fellows I ever knew. T. C. MacMillan of the Chicago Inter Ocean, and J. J. Roche of the New York Herald, both physically weak, but intellectually strong, and so on through the list. Readers of the Boston Advertiser, New York Herald and Tribune, Alta California, Philadelphia Press, Washington Star, Denver News, Omaha Republican and Herald, Cheyenne Sun, and other papers represented at various times during that campaign of seventeen months’ duration, never imagined while they were reading our letters at their comfortable breakfast table, and growling at the dashed correspondents because they ‘didn’t make ’em more full,’ that the ‘dashed correspondent,’ dressed in rags, soaked through with rain, and almost crazed with want of food and rest, was writing his letters on a cottonwood chip or a piece of flat stone, and often at the risk of his life from a stray bullet.”
COL. WILLIAM F. CODY (BUFFALO BILL).