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

Chapter 29

16-18 August 1876

Graphic Account of Custer’s Fight From the Hostile Band.

CHICAGO, August 1—Capt. Holland, of the Sixth Infantry, commanding the station at Standing Rock Agency, writes to General Ruggles that seven Sioux Indians who were in the battle of June 25th have arrived at Standing Rock and give the following account of the battle: The hostiles were celebrating the sun dance when runners brought news of the approach of the cavalry. The dance was suspended, and a general rush followed for the horses, equipments and arms. Major Reno first attacked the village at the south end, across the Little Big Horn.

Their narrative of Reno’s operations coincides with the published account, how he was quickly confronted and surrounded, how he dismounted, ran in the timber, remounted and cut his way back over the ford and up the bluffs with considerable loss, and the continuation of the fight for a little time when runners arrived from the north end of the village or camp with the news that the cavalry had attacked the north end, some three or four miles distant. A force large enough to prevent Reno from assuming the offensive was left, and the surplus available force followed to the other end of the camp, where, finding the Indians successfully driving Custer before them, instead of uniting with them, they separated into two parties and moved around the flanks of his cavalry. They report that a small body of cavalry broke through the line of Indians in their rear and escaped, but were overtaken within a distance of five or six miles and all killed.

After the battle the squaws entered the field to plunder and mutilate the dead bodies. General rejoicing was indulged in, and a distribution of arms and ammunition was hurriedly made….

Sitting Bull was neither killed nor personally engaged in the fight. He remained in the council tent, directing operations. Crazy Horse, Large Band, and Black Moon were the principal leaders … The fight continued till the third day, when runners, kept purposely on the lookout, hurried into camp and reported a great body of troops, General Terry’s command, advancing up the river. The lodges having been previously prepared for a move, a retreat in a southerly direction followed, towards and along the Rosebud mountains. They marched about fifty miles, went into camp, and held a consultation, when it was determined to send into all the agencies reports of their success, and call on them to come out and share the glories that they were expected to reap in the future.

… They report for the especial benefit of their relatives here that in the three fights they had with the whites, they have captured over one hundred stand of arms, carbines and rifles (revolvers not counted), ammunition without end, and some sugar, coffee, bacon and hard bread. They claim to have captured from the whites this summer over 900 horses and mules. I suppose this includes their operations against the soldiers, Crow Indians, and Black Hills miners.

… I have since writing the above heard from the returned hostiles, which they communicated as a secret to their friends here, information that a large party of Sioux and Cheyennes were to leave Rosebud mountain, the site of the hostile camp, for this agency, to intimidate and compel the Indians here to join Sitting Bull. If these refuse, they are ordered to beat them and steal their ponies.

By that Wednesday morning of the sixteenth, finding and catching the fleeing hostiles had become secondary. For Terry’s men as much as for Crook’s command, with the Sioux plainly two weeks ahead of them, it had now become a matter of survival. Simply to find food and blankets, someplace where they could recoup and sort out what to do next.

General Alfred Terry convinced a dejected George Crook that their combined columns should limp on downstream the twenty-four miles it would take them to reach the mouth of the Powder River at the Yellowstone. While the Montana and Dakota columns set up their tents and cots, Brussels carpets, and rocking chairs on the west bank of the Powder, the Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition made their miserable camp in the mud on the east bank with nothing more than what they had with them the day they marched away from Camp Cloud Peak. While Terry’s men eagerly cut open tins of meats, vegetables, and canned peaches, Crook’s impoverished soldiers had to relish the same old fare of salt pork, hard bread, and coffee. Why, Terry’s men even shaved at marble-topped washstands with mirrors!

With no tents to shelter them, the Wyoming column could only build bonfires around which they dried their stinking blankets and campaign coats like bands of ragged, wretched thieves. For the horses of the Second, Third, and Fifth cavalries, however, their lot had improved. Not only did the animals now feed on some sixty thousand pounds of grain, but in addition the horses and mules reveled in the abundant and luxurious buffalo grass found at the mouth of the Powder. The hostiles hadn’t been there to torch their backtrail.

Several hours after they had reached the Yellowstone, Bill Cody and Seamus Donegan watched a rescue party of Crow scouts return from upstream. Alfred Terry had been late in learning that Private Eshleman, an officer’s cook with the Ninth Infantry, had thrown in the towel and given himself up for dead.

“I may be forced to abandon or shoot some horses,” Terry grumbled. “But I won’t allow myself to lose one more man if I can help it.”

As soon as he became aware of Eshleman’s plight, the general had dispatched a half dozen of Gibbon’s Crow to backtrack up the Powder and find the lost soldier. Eshleman was nearly crazed when the Indians brought him in, trussed up hand and foot like a Christmas turkey and lashed atop one of the barebacked ponies.

“As mad as a March hare,” was how Seamus Donegan put it when together they watched the surgeon’s stewards pull the raving soldier down from that pony, screaming and snapping at his handlers.

“He might well be one of the fortunate ones,” Cody groaned, seeing how they lashed the soldier down to a hospital cot to keep him from injuring himself in all his thrashing.

“I’ll never understand the workings of humankind,” Donegan said quietly. “Either him or you: for saying a madman may well be more fortunate than those of us who made it here whole.”

Bill turned to the Irishman. “Are we really whole, Seamus? Oh, we may appear to be, despite our ordeal. But are we really whole?”

In addition to the deranged cook, a few of the officers and more than a handful of soldiers had been so incapacitated by the grueling march, their constitutions weakened beyond repair by diarrhea, acute dysentery, and inflammatory rheumatism, that the surgeons ordered those cases put aboard the Far West as soon as it arrived, to be transported on the steamer’s next scheduled run downriver to Fort Buford at the mouth of the Yellowstone. In addition, there were others who were going to leave of their own volition—some of the newspapermen who had decided days back that there simply wasn’t going to be a Sioux campaign that year, and to trudge overland with Terry or Crook in a fruitless and exhaustive search for the hostiles would be nothing short of sheer lunacy.

The noisy appearance of the Far West at five o’clock that afternoon of the seventeenth brought out every one of Washakie’s warriors. Wide-eyed, some with their hands clamped over their mouths, they stared and gaped as the stern-wheeler heaved around the far bend in the river and chugged toward the mouth of the Powder, putting in against the north bank of the Yellowstone. This had to be the most wondrous sight to the Shoshone, who had never before seen a river steamer in their part of the west. That day and for many days to come, the mighty “smoking house that walked on water” would be the sole topic of discussion in the Snake’s camp, and upon their return to the Wind River Reservation.

The Shoshone were not the only warriors excited to see the steamer. Nearly four thousand soldiers crowded the banks to view this singular reminder of civilization brought here to the wilderness. Captain Grant Marsh’s cabin girl, a Negress named Dinah, had modestly covered her eyes or diverted them as the steamer drew in sight of the camp, what with so many naked soldiers frolicking in the sunlit river after all those days of rain and gloom.

Even Lieutenant Adolphus H. Von Luettwitz, E Troop, Third Cavalry, was caught unawares of the power of the stern-wheeler as he was laundering some of his clothing at the edge of the water. The steamer’s powerful wakes tumbled one right after the other against the bank and caused the lieutenant to topple into the river, shouting his untranslatable German oaths as he sputtered up from the choppy Yellowstone, having lost half his uniform to the mighty river’s current.

That following morning, Friday, the eighteenth of August, the sky dawned clear and mercifully blue as Crook’s men went aboard the Far West to unload two days of forage and very little rations for two large armies. It wasn’t long before the men began to spread the rumor that they might well be resuming their chase of the hostiles at any moment—rumors seemingly given official credence in dispatches brought up from Fort Buford. General Sheridan was instructing his two field commanders to construct stockades in the heart of the hostiles’ hunting ground.

Sheridan wrote:

The [congressional] bill for increasing the company strength of [regiments of] cavalry in the field passed Congress …

I will give orders to General Terry today to establish a cantonment for the winter at Tongue River and will send supplies there for 1500 men, cavalry and infantry. I think also of establishing a cantonment for the winter at Goose Creek, or some other point on your line, for a force of 1000 men. I will send you 100 of the best Pawnee scouts under Major [Frank] North, regularly enlisted, as Congress has increased the number to one thousand.

We must hold the country you and Terry have been operating in this winter, or else every Indian at the agencies will go out as soon as we commence dismounting and disarming them …

“At first light Terry’s Rees come back from scouting those trails scattering to the east of the Rosebud and found the grass burned off,” Donegan told Bill that Friday afternoon. “Only thing that means is the hostiles moved through this country at least a week ago.”

Nodding, Cody replied, “Right. Shows the Sioux crossed over that ground before these heavy rains started.”

“So tell me what Crook and Terry hope to learn by sending you down the Yellowstone on that riverboat.”

“Crook doesn’t want any part of this,” Cody stated, blowing on his tin of coffee. “He only wants that boat to go up to the Rosebud and get his supplies.”

“But Terry has the rank,” Seamus said. “And even more important: it’s Terry’s boat, and Terry’s supplies—so Crook’s got to go along with everything Terry wants.”

“Including Terry’s idea to send me and Louie Reshaw down to the mouth of Glendive Creek to see if we can figure out what the hostiles are planning to do.”

“Mr. Cody!”

They both turned to find one of Terry’s staff hailing them, hurrying their way. Bill flung the lukewarm dregs of his coffee at the fire. “Looks like they’re ready to give me a ride on that goddamned boat.”

“Watch out, Bill. See for yourself all the bullet scars in that iron they riveted up around the pilothouse.”

Cody held out his hand and shook the Irishman’s. “I didn’t come back out here to scout for the army just to be killed while taking a lark of a ride on some goddamned riverboat. I intend to make it back home to Lulu and the children.”

“Sounds like you’ve made up your mind to cash in your chips and go back east.”

Pulling on his fringed gloves, Cody said, “Just as soon as this ride on the river is damned well over.”

Sioux Attacking Steamboats—Terry Falling Back

ST. PAUL, August 7—A Bismarck special to-day to the Pioneer Press and Tribune, says the steamer Carroll arrived this morning from General Terry’s camp, having on board General Forsythe and twenty sick and wounded soldiers. The Carroll on her way up, when near the mouth of the Powder river, found the Indians on both sides of the river, and for two and a half hours they kept up a running fire upon the boat, only wounding one soldier slightly. The steamer Far West, after leaving Fort Buford for Terry’s camp found her load too heavy and discharged part of her cargo, principally grain. At this same point the Indians attacked the Far West … The Indians stood on both banks of the river and with oaths dared Col. Moore with his troops to leave the boat and land. A few shells were fired from a twelve-pounder which scattered the Indians and they disappeared from the south bank.

Dave Campbell, pilot of the Far West with two Ree scouts, then landed and went out to reconnoiter, but finding the Indians were endeavoring to cut them off, they turned and started as fast as was possible for the boat. Seven Sioux had circled as to intercept them, and it became a race for life. The horse of one of the scouts began to fall behind and was soon shot, when the rider started on foot, but it was no use. The same Sioux who had killed the horse soon reached him and put a bullet through his lungs. Dave Campbell heard the shot. Looking behind and seeing the wounded scout laying on the ground, he said to the other scout, “We must go back and get that man.”

Although it was as much as their lives were worth, they turned, and as they did so they saw the Sioux dismounted from his pony, fired, and the Indian fell with his scalping knife in his hand. Dave and the Ree then scalped the Sioux and started with the wounded man for the steamer. During this time Col. Moore, although with three companies, sent no one to the relief of these three men. Finally Grant Marsh, captain of the Far West called for one hundred volunteers, and fifteen soldiers immediately offered their services, but Col. Moore ordered them not to leave the boat. However, eight of them, contrary to orders, went with Capt. Marsh and brought in Campbell and the two scouts. Colonel Moore threatened to courtmartial these eight men then and there, and the steamboat men don’t hesitate to pronounce Col. Moore’s conduct cowardly in the extreme.

Terry has fallen back eighty miles from his camp on the Big Horn, and is now camped near the mouth of Rosebud. A scout from Gen. Crook reached Gen. Terry July 22, barefooted and almost destitute of clothing. Crook was but seventy-five miles from General Terry’s command and trying to reach him. The Indians, however, kept picking off his men, driving in his scouts, and stealing his stock, so that his advance was very much retarded, only being about six miles a day. The men in both commands are reported very much disheartened.

On the afternoon of the eighteenth Seamus sat on the south bank of the Yellowstone and watched as a Bozeman City trader floated downriver in his Mackinaw boat, hailing the soldiers.

“Homemade ale and dry goods!” the peddler bellowed as he rose to his knees in his rickety craft. “Come and get what’s left of my homemade ale!”

As he came in sight of the army’s encampment, the civilian proclaimed that he had sold half his wares to the soldiers left to garrison the depot at the mouth of the Rosebud and wished to sell the rest of his heady beer and dry goods before pushing back upriver for home.

Like a flock of goslings swarming around a farmwife’s ankles as she scatters corn, officers and enlisted alike nearly swamped the poor man’s little boat as they rushed into the water to be the first to have call on his ale, as well as his other goods.

“Yeah, I’ve got a frying pan,” he answered one officer’s request.

“How about a coffeepot?”

“Yes, one of them too.”

“You have any canned fruit?”

“A little. Got more of tinned vegetables.”

“Shirts? You got any?”

“A few hickory shirts left. And some canvas britches too.”

“Give me one of each!”

“Save a pair of them pants for me!”

The bearded, sunburned men huddled round that trader’s boat, exchanging what little money they had for what the Bozeman merchant sold at exorbitant prices, men forced to buy with their own funds clothing that the army hadn’t seen fit to provide its ragged, nearly naked soldiers.

While they waited for Cody and the Far West to return from his scout downriver to the mouth of Glendive Creek, Crook and Terry held a curious correspondence, discussing just how ready Crook really was to resume his chase, since he steadfastly repeated that he still required a full fifteen days of rations and forage. The latter was proving to be the most crucial—plainly there wasn’t enough grain to recruit Crook’s broken-down horses.

Early on the evening of the eighteenth, Terry wrote to Crook, saying:

Since I saw you, I have found that our supplies of subsistence are larger than I supposed … your commissary still needs 200 boxes of hard bread. Of these, I can furnish 100 boxes … The difference between this amount and the 15 days’ rations, of which you spoke, is so slight that I think it ought not to detain us. But perhaps your animals are in such a state that a further supply of forage and a longer rest would be desireable for them. If such be your wish, I am certainly willing to wait until the forage can be obtained.

P.S. Col. Chambers mentioned to me today that his men need shoes badly. If the steamer goes to the Rosebud, I can give him the shoes which he needs.

This correspondence presented a most unusual circumstance—to find the cautious Terry suddenly impatient to be at the chase once more; and to discover that the tenacious Crook had begun to find excuses to delay.

But as far as Seamus Donegan was concerned, the wily George Crook was merely maneuvering so that once he had what he considered enough supplies, he was going to break free of his superior, Alfred Terry.

Exactly as the survivors of the Seventh Cavalry said Custer had talked of doing before they left Gibbon and Terry behind at the mouth of the Rosebud and marched south for their rendezvous with destiny.

That was enough to give a brave man pause.

Donegan prayed Crook was not about to march his Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition into the very same maw of hell that had devoured Custer and five companies of cavalry beside the Little Bighorn.