Whose was the right and the wrong?
Sing it, O funeral song,
With a voice that is full of tears,
And say that our broken faith
Wrought all this ruin and scathe,
In the Year of a Hundred Years.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
One survivor there was, and only one, Comanche, the horse ridden by Captain Miles Keogh. He was found several miles from the battlefield, and had been wounded seven times. By order of the Secretary of War, a soldier was detailed to take care of him as long as he lived, and no one was ever afterwards permitted to ride him.
MILES KEOGH'S HORSE
On the bluff of the Little Big-Horn,
At the close of a woful day,
Custer and his Three Hundred
In death and silence lay.
Three Hundred to Three Thousand!
They had bravely fought and bled;
For such is the will of Congress
When the White man meets the Red.
The White men are ten millions,
The thriftiest under the sun;
The Reds are fifty thousand,
And warriors every one.
So Custer and all his fighting men
Lay under the evening skies,
Staring up at the tranquil heaven
With wide, accusing eyes.
And of all that stood at noonday
In that fiery scorpion ring,
Miles Keogh's horse at evening
Was the only living thing.
Alone from that field of slaughter,
Where lay the three hundred slain,
The horse Comanche wandered,
With Keogh's blood on his mane.