Trumpet on the Land: The Aftermath of Custer's Massacre, 1876

Chapter 18

13-17 July 1876

Crook Heard From at Last—Still In

Camp at Cloud Peak—Terry Wants

Him Up North

CHEYENNE, July 15—The following is from Crook’s Camp Cloud Peak, July 12, via Fetterman tonight: Three soldiers from General Terry’s command, at the mouth of the Big Horn, have just arrived. General Terry’s dispatch to Crook confirms Custer’s fate, and implies very plainly that had Custer waited one day longer Gibbon would have joined him. Terry is anxious for Crook to join forces, make plans and execute them, regardless of rank. The Indians are still hovering about the Little Big Horn, one day’s march from here. They have fired into camp every night of late, and tried to burn us out by setting the grass on fire all around.

On the 6th, Lieutenant Sibley, of the Second cavalry, with twenty-five men and Frank Gruard and Babtiste Pouerier as scouts, went on a reconnaissance. They were discovered and surrounded and followed into the timber of the Big Horn mountains, where, by hitching their horses to trees and abandoning them, the men were enabled to escape on foot by way of a ravine in the rear. They all got back alive, and probably this diversion saved the company from a grand attempt of stampede or capture.

The Snake Indians, two hundred strong, joined us here yesterday, but unless you come soon no offensive operations will be likely to take place until your arrival.

The Fifth cavalry, from Cheyenne Crossing, and a wagon train and additional infantry are due from Fetterman to-day. The health of the command is good. Gen. Gibbon’s reserve forces were met by the victorious Sioux, dressed in Custer’s men’s clothes and mounted on their horses, firing into the soldiers. The Indian village passed gave evidence of white men’s presence, kegs of whiskey, etc., being found. Signal fires supposed to be in reference to the incoming wagon train, are visible to the east of Crook’s camp on the extreme south waters of Tongue river.

When none of his civilian scouts would volunteer—no matter how much money was offered—those three hardy privates had stepped forward to carry General Terry’s messages away from that camp along the Yellowstone on the morning of the ninth. With separate copies of the dispatches sewn into each man’s clothing, the trio left the mouth of the Rosebud at sundown. It had taken them three nights of travel, lying in cover throughout each day, as they threaded their way through a wilderness overrun by the hostiles they knew had already devoured half of Custer’s gallant Seventh.

From the Little Bighorn battlefield, the trio simply wandered south in the wake of the fleeing village. When the trail divided for the first time at Lodge Grass Creek, the soldiers chose the left-hand trail, which led them over to the upper Rosebud where the Indian trail again divided. Many travois headed east, toward the Tongue. But a pony trail continued south, up the Rosebud toward the country in which, they’d been told, they might locate Crook’s camp.

Although ragged and exhausted, Bell, Evans, and Stewart sat for hours before huge assemblies of Crook’s troops relating horrific stories about the battle scene and the carnage Terry’s men had discovered beside the Little Bighorn. There wasn’t anyone more astonished that the trio had managed to poke their way through enemy country than George Crook himself. Off hunting eighteen miles from camp in the Bighorn Mountains that morning of the eleventh, he eagerly read Terry’s letter in silence as soon as Mills brought it directly to him. Crook immediately called in his hunters and escort and hurried back to Goose Creek.

“Gentlemen,” the general addressed his subalterns after a bugler summoned them for officers’ call, “I think we can all agree that there are too many in this army who have underrated the valor and the numbers of our enemy, along with their willingness to fight.”

“All we want is another crack at them, General,” Mills said.

Apparently he spoke for most of them, officers eagerly nodding their heads in agreement.

“But I want you all to listen to General Terry’s letter— before we go galloping off into God only knows what,” Crook instructed.

“The great and to me wholly unexpected strength which the Indians have developed seems to me to make it important and indeed necessary that we should unite, or at least act in close cooperation. In my ignorance of your present position, and of the position of the Indians, I am unable to propose a plan for this, but if you will devise one and communicate it to me, I will follow it … I hope that it is unnecessary for me to say that should our forces unite, even in my Department, I shall assume nothing by reason of my seniority, but shall be prepared to cooperate with you in the most cordial and hearty manner, leaving you entirely free to pursue your own course …”

Asked Lieutenant Colonel William B. Royall, “Have you decided upon a course of action, General?”

“Only what it has been all along,” Crook replied, disappointing many of the most eager to get on with the campaign. “To await the arrival of the Fifth Cavalry before resuming the campaign.”

All that night there raged heated debates over what should be Crook’s course of action, as well as many murmured complaints about the man more and more of them referred to sneeringly as “Rosebud George.” To many of the enlisted and some in the officer corps as well, it was beginning to appear irresponsible, if not downright criminal, to allow the enemy to withdraw from their front without doing a thing to find out when they’d left, and where they were headed.

Yet what was hardest to take was that after three defeats at the Powder, the Rosebud, and on the Little Bighorn in that many months, it appeared the army had lost its will to win the Sioux campaign, if not lost its nerve altogether.

The following day, a Thursday the thirteenth, Major Alexander Chambers returned from Fetterman, bringing a train of supply wagons stuffed to the sidewalk with food, ammunition, and news from home, escorted north to Camp Cloud Peak by seven companies of the Fourth Infantry. Official dispatches from Omaha told the general to expect a detachment of Ute coming up from Colorado Territory, hungry for a chance to get in some blows against their old enemies. Chambers personally handed over private letters to Crook from Sheridan, which informed him that Merritt’s Fifth Cavalry was on its way back to Fort Laramie, from there to Fetterman, with orders to hurry with all dispatch to reinforce Crook’s impatient Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition.

“Seamus!”

Donegan turned at the sound of John Bourke’s voice, finding the young lieutenant trotting his way.

Bourke huffed to a halt and held an envelope out at the end of his arm. “Mail call!”

“Truly? For me?”

Slowly the lieutenant dragged the envelope sensuously under his nose, inhaling deeply. “This just came up with Chambers’s train from Fetterman. I think this one for you came from someone you know at Laramie.”

My dearest Seamus—

How frightened I am for you. I’m frightened for me too. We’ve just received news of a terrible massacre to some soldiers gone to fight the same Indians you are searching for.

I don’t think I’ve slept much since. When I have, it’s only to awaken myself screaming with horrid dreams. I don’t know what toll this is taking on the baby, this, my grave worry for you.

I walk twice every day now, of each afternoon and evening. It’s so beautiful down by the river, I know you love this sort of quiet. Usually so quiet you can hear the breeze in the cottonwoods. A cool, shady place I go with my blanket. There’s a spot I’ll show you when you come back to me. A place I go to spread my blanket, sit and read all your letters again and again, mostly so our child can hear the sound of his father’s words, if not the sound of your voice.

For those long, hot hours each afternoon, it is a wonderful place to hide, reminding me of a place back in the hardwoods where Rebecca and I used to hide from Mummy when we were girls back home.

I don’t know how to tell you this, but I don’t feel like I have a home now, Seamus. I used to have one, but that was where I used to live when I was growing up. And then in Texas I vowed to cleave unto you. Ever since, you have been my home. But you are not here. So this is not my home. My home must be far, far away, so heavy is my heart.

Home is where you are, right now, holding this letter, reading my words. I wish I could tell you that everything is fine here, but it is not. Oh, the baby is doing well. And you would not imagine how big I am getting! But, ever since the news about Custer’s men, Laramie has become a somber place. Even gloomy. Such sad faces on all the men and especially the women.

Oh, how I wish you were here! You made me laugh so! You could chase away any dark, threatening clouds just by smiling at me with your gray eyes. How I need to see you smile with those eyes once again.

The more I think on it—and I have nothing but time to think—Crook was miraculously lucky to escape from the Sioux like he did on Rosebud Creek. Must have been more than luck, though, for I was praying that God watched over you. He did. And the rest were watched over with you.

What joy you brought me with that little telegram. And a week later came your letter, telling me all about that fight. Dear Lord—how horrible it must have been for that group of Royall’s soldiers to find themselves surrounded and cut off from all chance of escape! How brave were that man and the Shoshone scout you spoke of— the two who stood over the bodies of others who had fallen to the enemy’s bullets. How selfless and brave!

I’m just so thankful to God that nothing like that happened to you during that fight.

I am sure you have heard all the news of the disaster on the Little Horn. It’s all that anyone talks about. It’s all I can think about when the baby isn’t kicking and I’m not thinking about you. The only other news to tell you is that the Fifth Cavalry came through here recently. General Sheridan has ordered them north to the Black Hills where they will prevent warriors from going to join Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. Their arrival, then their departure, was the biggest stir we’ve had here in a long time.

And you’ll never guess who I met. I could not really believe it, but it was him. Buffalo Bill Cody. Your old friend. Such a gentleman. We had a lovely talk about all that you have told me again and again, and how you showed me the Elephant Corral in Denver. He has been back east on the stage for a few years now, but told me he had to return west when the Indian war began. He asked all about you, and I told him what I knew—at least all I knew of you since Texas. Oh, you should see him, Seamus. He couldn’t be more proud to be scouting again for his old friends in the Fifth Cavalry.

As I looked at him, his long hair and mustaches and that finely tanned buckskin coat of his, I think of you. And in his smile I see you smile, happy to be doing what you love to do. Like Buffalo Bill Cody himself, riding out in front of some great army marching after the bloodthirsty savages who butchered General Custer and all his men. Yes, I studied him as we talked, thinking how alike you both were, the freedom and the wilderness, how in love you both are with your work.

For a short time this place really seemed like a fort, cavalry soldiers everywhere, going about their business with great urgency. Then it was quiet again, and every woman here had time on her hands again. So much time to think about a husband up there in Indian country with Crook.

When you return home to me, I will take you to this place where I write you my letters and read the letters you have sent me. It’s here I talk to the baby for hours on end, every afternoon and evening. It’s here I think on you.

Dear, I think on you when I wake each morning and when I lie in that bed alone at night. Remembering your touch. Remembering your kiss.

But here in the cool shade of this place, with the river gurgling past my hiding place, with the breeze in the branches overhead, it’s here I think most of you and never fail to ask God to keep you in the palm of his hand.

My prayer is to bring you home to us, Seamus. Come home as soon as you can. Come home to us.

Samantha

Magnitude of the Sioux War

CHICAGO, July 15—The Times’ Bismarck special says the impression prevails that the military authorities do not realize the work they have to do. The Indians’ hostile camps are believed to number at least ten thousand, and while there are many women and children, nearly all of these are effective in a campaign. There are certainly five thousand to seven thousand Indians who can and will fight until subdued; and the fate of Custer should be a warning that they intend to make thorough work, and have confidence in their ability to do it …

There are less than three thousand troops all told operating against the Indians, and nearly half of these are used in guarding wagon trains or supply depots, while there seems to be a disposition on the part of each command to win glory for itself without the aid of co-operating forces. Until more effective measures are taken you may look for continued disaster or an abortive campaign.

“You’ll see that I’m awakened at three-thirty—so I can awaken the colonel?” asked Lieutenant William C. Forbush, Wesley Merritt’s regimental adjutant.

Charles King answered, “Yes. You can count on me.”

King watched the young officer turn away, then stood for a moment more with Captain Mason. The pair of weary officers had just unfurled their blankets, preparing to catch a few hours’ sleep. But at that very moment up walked Forbush, stumbling in the dark over a fallen tree and creating quite a commotion as he scrambled back to his feet and dusted himself off, coming to deliver Merritt’s orders. Mason’s Company K was ordered to establish a forward picket post to the southeast, closest to the trail crossing.

“Why did Merritt choose K, Captain?” King whispered when the adjutant was out of earshot.

Mason wagged his head wearily. “I don’t know, Mr. King. We pulled picket duty last night, and you were up all night with Captain Hayes. Merritt must think we’re the best, even when we’re operating without much sleep—or he wouldn’t have chosen us.”

King wagged his head. “There is some small compensation, Captain.”

“What would that be?” Mason asked with a yawn.

“At least I’ll be the one to first see the enemy,” the lieutenant said. “Permission to select the men for the forward observation post?”

Julius Mason nodded. “Agreed. K will remain on duty to your rear once you have selected your spot.”

Choosing Sergeant Edmund Schreiber and Corporal Thomas W. Wilkinson, King left that reassuring circle of troops and horses behind where they had gone into bivouac beneath some bluffs that rose above the sluggish Warbonnet. Penetrating the inky, starlit darkness on foot, the trio groped their way forward as Mason went about posting his outflung pickets in the hollows and depressions they came across in the rolling landscape. By keeping to the low places those camp guards would be better able to discern objects against the night sky. What there was left of night, anyhow.

“You must exercise the utmost vigilance,” Mason told his troopers before scattering them to their posts. “Since this is not the sort of picket duty where you can keep yourself awake by walking, you’ll just have to stay alert the best you can. Keep your bunkie awake, whatever you do.”

After finding a knoll where he could leave Schreiber and Wilkinson, King rejoined Mason to walk the rounds.

Upon reaching the Warbonnet, Bill Cody had gone alone to the southeast, returning a half hour later at slap-dark to report that the hostiles must still be to the southeast. No fresh sign. It was so quiet out there that Charles figured there couldn’t be an Indian inside of a hundred miles of their bivouac. But then the hills and ridges surrounding their camp slowly came alive as coyotes set up a disharmonious chorus that rose and fell, rose and fell again. At least, King rebuked himself for hating the noise, these coyotes might well warn us of the enemy’s approach.

The first hour passed, then the second, and finally at one o’clock Mason and King set out again on their hourly prowl along the outer perimeter of their defenses. They were challenged at every sentry post, and the pair responded with the countersign. But upon nearing a post established down in the willows by the stream, there came no challenge to halt and identify. Creeping closer, they found the young soldier dozing in the shelter of the eroded bank.

King sneaked in behind the picket and wrenched his carbine out of his hands. Instantly the surprised soldier leaped to his feet, Mason scolding him.

“Soldier—don’t you realize the enemy might have forward scouts, feeling their way north?” the captain explained.

“Y-yes, sir.”

“You’re aware sleeping on duty is a court-martial offense?”

The soldier swallowed with an audible gulp. “S-sir, am I—”

King interrupted, handing the soldier his carbine. “We’ve got to be ready, all of us. This is your post. It’s up to you.”

Contrite, he took his rifle, clutching it across his chest. “I promise, sirs. Promise I won’t let you down.”