For legions of self-described Custer buffs, the Battle of the Little Bighorn is much like an unsolvable crossword puzzle: a conundrum that can sustain a lifetime of scrutiny and debate. Instead of the personalities of the participants, the buffs tend to focus on military strategy and tactics, the topography of the battlefield, and the material culture of the two opposing forces. Some, like Steve Alexander, participate in reenactments of the battle; others research and write articles and attend annual gatherings of fellow battle enthusiasts. In the tradition of Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show, the battle is, for this group, a fascinating diversion.
For the Lakota and Cheyenne, the battle is something else altogether. Instead of providing a refuge from the troubling complexities of the here and now, the battle and especially its aftermath are an inescapable part of that present.
In the almost century and a half since the Little Bighorn, the Native population of the United States has been steadily increasing. The reservations continue to be plagued by a host of serious social issues, including unemployment, alcoholism, drug addiction, and a frighteningly high suicide rate. But there are also some positive signs. Traditional practices such as the sun dance and the use of the Lakota and Cheyenne languages are making a comeback. Some tribes have begun buying back land the government took from them in the nineteenth century. Instead of settling for a multimillion-dollar government buyout of the Black Hills at the end of the twentieth century, tribal leaders continue to hold out hope of one day reclaiming this vast territory as theirs. Contrary to the expectations of their nineteenth-century conquerors, the Lakota and Cheyenne have endured.
On July 8, 2009, at a restaurant in Deadwood, South Dakota, in the Black Hills, Ernie LaPointe spoke of his great-grandfather and the Battle of the Little Bighorn: “Historians are always saying that we are a defeated people, but slaughtering the buffalo, disarming and massacring old men, women, and children like they did at Wounded Knee doesn’t constitute victory. After all these years, after everything that’s happened, we still have the colors we won at the Little Bighorn, and that makes us strong.”
On the morning of June 28, 1876, Private Thomas Coleman was part of the burial detail assigned to Last Stand Hill. In his diary he composed a kind of prose poem entitled “Oh What a Slaughter”:How many homes are made desolate by
The sad disaster, every one of them were scalped
And otherwise mutilated, but the General he
Lay with a smile on his face.
Others said Custer looked much as he did when taking a nap in the midst of a march: quietly relaxed and content, as if all were right with the world. Lieutenant Godfrey described Custer’s smile as a “calm, almost triumphant expression.”
As with so many aspects of this story, no one will ever know with any certainty what Custer was thinking at the time of his death. Did he look around and realize that, like the Spartans at Thermopylae and the Texans at the Alamo, all 210 troopers and civilians under his immediate command were dead or about to be? Did he, like Brutus in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, take consolation in knowing that he would have “glory by this losing day,” and did he smile?
Or perhaps the smile was a simple attempt to reassure the officers and men who were still alive that even if he had fallen, they should carry on and prevail. Or was the smile directed to his brother Tom in grateful thanks for a mercy killing? Or did it signal a more private acknowledgment that Libbie’s father had been right all along, and he was about to die, as Judge Bacon had predicted, as “a soldier”?
Or perhaps Custer’s expression had nothing to do with the circumstances of his death. Perhaps the smile was applied to his lips postmortem as a sardonic commentary on the mutilations inflicted on his body by the Lakota and Cheyenne.
In the end, Custer’s smile remains a mystery, and people will make of it what they will.
In 1876 the American public used that smile to construct the myth that has become synonymous with Custer’s name, the myth of the Last Stand. The irony is that if the archaeological evidence and much of the Native oral testimony is to be believed, Custer’s thrust to the north barely gave him time for the kind of epic confrontation commonly associated with a Last Stand. In truth, the Battle of the Little Bighorn was the Last Stand not for Custer, who was on the attack almost to the very end, but for the nation he represented. With this battle and its sordid aftermath, climaxing so tragically in Wounded Knee, America, a nation that had spent the previous hundred years subduing its own interior, had nowhere left to go. With the frontier closed and the Indians on the reservations, America—the land of “Westward Ho!”—began to look overseas to Cuba, the Philippines, and beyond.
The Wild West of memory, however, continued to live on, and Custer remains an icon to this day. But the times have changed since Custer led the Seventh Cavalry to the Little Bighorn. Wars are no longer fought with arrows and single-shot carbines. There are weapons of mass destruction. Instead of several hundred dead and a guarantee of eternal fame, a Last Stand in the future might mean the devastation of a continent.
Sitting Bull is known today for stalwart resistance, for being the last of his tribe to surrender to the U.S. government. But at the Little Bighorn, he did not want to fight. He wanted to talk. This may be his most important legacy. As he recognized when he instructed his nephew to approach Reno’s skirmish line with a shield instead of a rifle, our children are best served not by a self-destructive blaze of glory, but by the hardest path of all: survival.
APPENDIX A
The Seventh Cavalry on the Afternoon of June 25, 1876
Prior to the battle, Custer organized the twelve companies of his regiment into three units, known as battalions. Custer commanded the largest battalion of five companies, and Major Marcus Reno and Captain Frederick Benteen commanded their own battalions of three companies each. There is evidence that Custer further divided his own battalion into Right and Left wings, consisting of Companies C, I, and L and Companies E and F, respectively. In addition, the 175-mule pack train, escorted by Captain Thomas McDougall’s B Company, operated as a largely independent entity, meaning that Custer’s approximately 670-man regiment was split into four separate components when the battle began.
Below is a listing of the officers and enlisted men mentioned in the text, as well as the guides, scouts, and interpreters who accompanied the Seventh Cavalry on that historic day in 1876.
CUSTER’S BATTALION
(five companies, approximately 215 men)1
Commanding: Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer
Staff: First Lieutenant William Cooke, Adjutant
Captain Thomas Custer, Aide-de-Camp
George Lord, Assistant Surgeon
Mitch Boyer, Interpreter
Boston Custer, Guide
Mark Kellogg, Attached Newspaper Correspondent
Autie Reed, Accompanying Civilian
Custer’s Right Wing
(three companies, approximately 115 men)
Commanding: Captain Myles Keogh
C Company
Commanding: Second Lieutenant Henry Harrington
First Sergeant L. Edwin Bobo; Sergeants George Finckle,
Jeremiah Finley, Richard Hanley, and Daniel Kanipe;
Corporal Henry French; Privates James Bennett, John Jordan,
John Mahoney, John McGuire Jr., Peter Thompson, James Watson,
and Alfred Whittaker
I Company
Commanding: Captain Myles Keogh
Second-in-Command: First Lieutenant James Porter
First Sergeant Frank Varden; Private Gustave Korn
L Company
Commanding: First Lieutenant James Calhoun
Second-in-Command: Second Lieutenant John Crittenden
First Sergeant James Butler; Private John Burkman
Custer’s Left Wing
(two companies, approximately 100 men)
Commanding: Captain George Yates
E Company
Commanding: First Lieuten
ant Algernon Smith
Second-in-Command: Second Lieutenant James Sturgis
First Sergeant Frederick Hohmeyer
F Company
Commanding: Captain George Yates
Second-in-Command: Second Lieutenant William Van Reily
First Sergeant Michael Kenney; Privates Edward Davern, Dennis Lynch,
and James Rooney
Crow Scouts: Curley, Goes Ahead, Hairy Moccasin, and White Man Runs Him
RENO’S BATTALION
(three companies, approximately 131 men)
Commanding: Major Marcus Reno
Staff: Lieutenant Benjamin Hodgson, Adjutant
Henry Porter, Acting Assistant Surgeon
James DeWolf, Acting Assistant Surgeon
A Company
Commanding: Captain Myles Moylan
Second-in-Command: First Lieutenant Charles DeRudio
First Sergeant William Heyn; Sergeants Ferdinand Culbertson, Henry
Fehler, and Stanislas Roy; Trumpeters William Hardy and David
McVeigh; Privates William Nugent and William Taylor
G Company
Commanding: First Lieutenant Donald McIntosh
Second-in-Command: Second Lieutenant George Wallace
Acting First Sergeant Edward Botzer; Privates Theodore Goldin,
Benjamin Johnson, Samuel McCormick, John McVay, Thomas O’Neill,
and Henry Petring
M Company
Commanding: Captain Thomas French
First Sergeant John Ryan; Sergeants Miles O’Hara and Charles White;
Privates John Donahue, Henry Gordon, George Lorentz, William Meyer,
William Morris, Daniel Newell, Edward Pigford, Roman Rutten, John
Sivertsen, William Slaper, James Tanner, and Henry Voight
Scouts/Guides/Interpreters with Reno’s Battalion
(approximately 35 men)
Commanding: Second Lieutenant Charles Varnum
Second-in-Command: Second Lieutenant Luther Hare
Interpreters: Isaiah Dorman and Frederic Gerard
Scout: George Herendeen
Guide: Charley Reynolds
Arikara Guides and Scouts: Bloody Knife, Bobtail Bull, Bull, Forked Horn, Goose, Left Hand, Little Brave, One Feather, Red Bear, Red Star, Soldier, Stabbed, and Young Hawk
Crow Scouts: Half Yellow Face and White Swan
Pikuni Scout: William Jackson
Two Kettle Lakota Scout: William Cross
BENTEEN’S BATTALION
(three companies, approximately 113 men)
Commanding: Captain Frederick Benteen
D Company
Commanding: Captain Thomas Weir
Second-in-Command: Second Lieutenant Winfield Edgerly
Sergeants James Flanagan and Thomas Harrison; Corporal George
Wylie; Farrier Vincent Charley; Private Patrick Golden
H Company
Commanding: Captain Frederick Benteen
Second-in-Command: First Lieutenant Francis Gibson
First Sergeant Joseph McCurry; Blacksmith Henry Mechling; Privates
Jacob Adams, William George, George Glenn, and Charles Windolph
K Company
Commanding: First Lieutenant Edward Godfrey
First Sergeant Dewitt Winney; Saddler Michael Madden; Privates Charles
Burkhardt and Jacob Horner
PACK TRAIN
(approximately 120 soldiers and 11 citizen packers)
Commanding: First Lieutenant Edward Mathey
Citizen Packers (mentioned in the text): Benjamin Churchill, John Frett, and
John Wagoner
Escorted by B Company
Commanding: Captain Thomas McDougall
First Sergeant James Hill
APPENDIX B
Sitting Bull’s Village on June 25, 1876
There were two major tribes represented at the Battle of the Little Bighorn: the Lakota (also known as the Teton Sioux) and the Cheyenne, along with a small number of Arapaho and Santee Sioux. Of the Lakota, there were seven bands: the Blackfeet, Brulé, Hunkpapa, Minneconjou, Oglala, Sans Arcs, and Two Kettles. Below is a listing of the participants mentioned in the text, grouped alphabetically by tribe and band.2
ARAPAHO
Left Hand: part of a five-man hunting party that joined the village shortly before the battle; mistakenly killed a Lakota warrior in the dusty confusion around Last Stand Hill
Waterman: companion of Left Hand’s who described the Oglala warrior Crazy Horse as “the bravest man I ever saw”
BLACKFEET LAKOTA
Kill Eagle: leader of a band detained against their will by Sitting Bull’s warriors
BRULÉ LAKOTA
Julia Face: married to Thunder Hawk; watched the battle from the hills to the west of the river
Standing Bear: not to be confused with the Minneconjou of the same name; told his son Luther of his experiences at the battle
CHEYENNE
Buffalo Calf Road Woman: rescued her fallen brother during the Battle of the Rosebud prior to the Little Bighorn
Comes in Sight: saved by his sister Buffalo Calf Road Woman at the Rosebud
Hanging Wolf: told the tribal historian John Stands in Timber of the soldiers’ northernmost approach to the river
Kate Bighead: told Thomas Marquis of how she watched the fighting from the periphery of the battlefield
Lame White Man: warrior killed by friendly fire during the charge near Battle Ridge
Little Hawk: discovered Crook’s Wyoming Column prior to the Battle of the Rosebud; also present at the Little Bighorn
Little Wolf: saw the Seventh approaching from the east but didn’t reach Sitting Bull’s village till after the fighting
Noisy Walking: cousin to Kate Bighead; mortally wounded by a Lakota during the battle
Two Moons: played a pivotal role during the battle with Custer; later spoke extensively about his experiences
White Shield: about twenty-six years old at the time of the battle; had a nine-year-old son named Porcupine and fought with a stuffed kingfisher tied to his head
Wolf’s Tooth: young warrior who later told John Stands in Timber about the battle
Wooden Leg: fought both Reno’s and Custer’s battalions and later told of his experiences to Thomas Marquis
Yellow Hair: brother to Wooden Leg
Yellow Nose: Ute captive raised as a Cheyenne who figured prominently in the Custer fight
Young Two Moons: twenty-one years old at the time of the battle; nephew to Chief Two Moons
HUNKPAPA LAKOTA
Black Moon: announced Sitting Bull’s vision at the 1876 sun dance; lost a son during the battle
Crawler: father of Deeds and Moving Robe Woman; closely aligned with Sitting Bull
Deeds: ten-year-old son of Crawler; one of the first killed
Four Blankets Woman: younger sister of Seen by the Nation and wife of Sitting Bull
Gall: lost two wives and three children at onset of the battle; subsequently led in capturing the troopers’ horses
Good Bear Boy: friend of One Bull injured during the attack on Reno’s skirmish line
Gray Eagle: brother of Sitting Bull’s two wives, Four Blankets Woman and Seen by the Nation
Gray Whirlwind: with Sitting Bull when Reno attacked the Hunkpapa circle
Her Holy Door: mother of Sitting Bull
Iron Hawk: only fourteen years old during the battle; fought near Last Stand Hill
Jumping Bull: adopted brother of Sitting Bull
Little Soldier: Sitting Bull’s fourteen-year-old stepson at the time of the battle
Moving Robe Woman: also known as Mary Crawler; joined the fighting after the death of her brother Deeds
Old Bull: close ally of Sitting Bull who later claimed, “Soldiers made mistake attacking Hunkpapas first”
One Bull: Sitting Bull’s nephew and a major source on the life of his uncle
Pretty White Buffalo Woman: also known as Mrs. Horn Bull; claimed Reno might have won the battle if he had charged the village
Rain in the Face: noted warrior who became famous for the apocryphal story that he cut out Tom Custer’s heart
Seen by the Nation: elder sister of Four Blankets Woman and wife of Sitting Bull
Shoots Walking: just sixteen years old, fought against the objections of his parents; claimed that the soldiers “did not know enough to shoot”
Sitting Bull: forty-five-year-old political leader and holy man whose sun dance vision presaged the victory at the Little Bighorn
MINNECONJOU LAKOTA
Red Horse: spoke of a single soldier who “alone saved his command a number of times by turning on his horse in the rear in the retreat”
Standing Bear: seventeen years old at the time of the battle; described the slaughter as Reno’s battalion retreated across the river
White Bull: brother of One Bull and nephew of Sitting Bull; counted seven coups during the battle
OGLALA LAKOTA
Black Bear: leader of a seven-person band seen at the divide by Custer’s scouts on the morning of June 25