_From the collection of J. Robert Coster_

]

GEN. JOHN GIBBON GEN. NELSON A. MILES

GEN. WESLEY MERRITT GEN. ALFRED H. TERRY

SOME FAMOUS INDIAN FIGHTERS

The next morning, the weather being bitterly cold, the men moved out to

attack the Indian camp. Crazy Horse’s warriors numbered between eight

and nine hundred. He had posted his men on the cliffs surmounting a

valley in the Wolf Mountains, a spur of the Big Horn Range, not far from

Crook’s battle-ground on the Rosebud. The troops entered the valley in

full view of the Indians occupying the heights. The position was well

chosen; for in order to make the attack, the soldiers would have to

climb straight up the walls to get at the Indians, who were enabled, by

the configuration of the ground and by their numbers, almost to surround

the soldiers. One reason why Crazy Horse was willing to fight was

because of his great desire to get possession of the Indians recently

captured.

Seeing that Crazy Horse was willing to accept battle, Miles made his

preparations deliberately. The troops, out of range of the Indians,

calmly had breakfast and made their camp secure. Having done everything

at his leisure, Miles moved out to the attack.

The Sioux were plainly visible on the cliffs. They could be seen shaking

their fists and brandishing their rifles as the soldiers slowly advanced

through the deep snow which covered the ground. The Indians seemed

absolutely confident that Miles was marching into a trap, that when he

got into the cañon he would be unable to scale the slopes, and they

would have him at their mercy. There was no ambush about it. The whole

thing was open and plain. They had chosen their position and had invited

the soldiers to make at them. There was, indeed, no other way for Miles

to get to them, so cunningly had they taken advantage of the ground,

except the way which lay open before them. As the troops drew nearer,

the gestures of defiance and contempt were accompanied by yells and

jeers. Among the things they shouted in their confident assurance of

success were these significant words:

“You have had your last breakfast!”

Indeed, the grim prophecy did not seem unlikely of fulfilment.

It might have been supposed that men, encumbered as were the soldiers

with their heavy, winter clothing, could never have scaled those

heights, especially in the face of such opposition as the redoubtable

warriors of Crazy Horse would offer. If they did not succeed in clearing

the cliffs of the Indians, they would probably be shot down in scores in

the valley. They would then be forced to retreat to their train, if any

of them were left alive to do so, and stand a siege; and as they were

three or four hundred miles from any possible relieving force, and in

the depth of a Dakota winter, that would mean a speedy annihilation. It

was a serious risk to take, but no battle was ever won without taking

risks, and the nice art of the soldier consists in knowing what risks to

take and when to take them. Not the least of Miles’ claims to admiration

as a commander was his determination, under all circumstances, to fight

then and there.

Undaunted by the threatening prospect and unmoved by the savage shouts

and jeers, although some of the scouts who knew the Sioux language

retorted in kind, the troops deployed, and at as rapid a pace as they

could manage, started for the hills. The artillery was exposed and

unlimbered, and the shells thrown into the Indian position caused great

surprise and consternation. The key to the position was a high elevation

upon the left. The Indians who held it were led by Big Crow, the chief

medicine man. As the battle began he exposed himself freely between the

lines, dressed in a magnificent Indian war shirt and bonnet, running up

and down and yelling like a fiend.

Miles massed a little column against Big Crow and the warriors defending

the eminence. At the same time he ordered a general escalade of the

cliff along the whole line. Under a heavy fire, which, however, like

most plunging fires down the sides of mountains or slopes, did but

little damage, the troops slowly toiled up the icy, snow-covered

bluffs.[105] Led by Major Casey and Captains McDonald and Baldwin, the

charge was delivered with the utmost resolution. It was not a dash. No

men, encumbered as were those soldiers, could move rapidly up icy

cliffs, covered, wherever the sharpness of the acclivity permitted, with

from one to three feet of snow. It was rather a slow, dogged, determined

crawl, with a stop every few moments to fire at some Indian silhouetted

above them on the gray sky-line of that winter morning.

The fighting for the high cliff on the left of the line was spirited and

desperate. Finally, the men came to a hand-to-hand struggle. The Indians

clung tenaciously to the post until Big Crow was shot, when the soldiers

succeeded in dislodging them. This bluff commanded the lines. It was

occupied by the troops, who poured an enfilading fire upon the army of

Crazy Horse. The Indian position, therefore, became untenable, and

fighting sullenly and stubbornly, they withdrew in good order, though

closely pursued by the troops. In the latter part of the advance snow

began to fall, and before the battle was closed the combatants were

fighting in the midst of a blinding storm. Miles says that the moment at

which the Indians turned their backs and began the retreat was one in

which he felt relief scarcely to be expressed, so desperate had been the

fighting, so difficult the ascent, and so doubtful the result.

The Indians were pursued for some distance, and a large portion of their

camp equipage, with supplies, was captured. On the whole, they had

suffered a most disheartening and disorganizing defeat. Their ammunition

was about gone, their confederates in other tribes had been captured,

the main body of the redoubtable Cheyennes had been crushed and were

starving, the Unkpapas, the Miniconjous, the Sans Arcs, and the Brulés

had surrendered. The game was up. There was nothing for Crazy Horse and

the exhausted remnant which remained faithful to him to do but to

surrender, which they accordingly did in the early spring.

III. The Capture of Lame Deer’s Village

There remained, then, in the field practically but one band of sixty

lodges,[106] under Lame Deer and Iron Star, who refused positively to

surrender. The indefatigable and brilliantly successful Miles pursued

this band, overtook it, surprised it one morning in May, captured the

village, dispersed the greater portion of the Indians, and succeeded in

isolating and surrounding Lame Deer and Iron Star, with half a dozen

principal warriors. Miles was very desirous of taking them alive. He

advanced with some of his officers toward the desperate little body of

Indians who had been cut off from the fleeing mass of savages, making

peace signs and crying peace words.

The Indians were tremendously excited and remained on guard, but

committed no act of hostility. Miles rode up, and leaning over the

saddle, extended his hand to Lame Deer. The intrepid chieftain, who was

quivering with emotion under his Indian stoicism, grasped the general’s

hand and clung to it tightly. Iron Star took Baldwin’s hand. The other

Indians came forward, reluctantly, with hands extended, and all was

going well.

At this juncture one of the white scouts, not knowing what was going on,

dashed up to the group, and possibly under a misapprehension that the

life of the commanding officer was threatened, covered Lame Deer with

his rifle. The Indian, probably thinking that he was to be killed in any

event, resolved to die fighting. Miles strove to hold him and to

reassure him, but by a powerful wrench he freed himself, lifting his

rifle as he did so, and pointing it straight at the general.

Miles had been in many battles, but he was never nearer death than at

that moment. His quickness and resource did not desert him. Just as the

Indian’s finger pressed the trigger he dug his spurs into his horse and

swung the animal aside in a powerful swerve. Lame Deer’s bullet, which

missed him by a hair’s breadth, struck one of the escort and instantly

killed him. Iron Star also drew away from Baldwin and raised his rifle,

as the other Indian had done. None of them were so quick, however, as

Lame Deer had been. The soldiers closing in had seen Lame Deer’s motion,

and before any further damage was done by the Indians they were

overwhelmed by a rapid fire, which stretched them all dead upon the

ground. The fighting had been short, but exceedingly sharp. The troops

lost four killed and seven wounded, the Sioux fourteen killed and a

large number wounded. The band was completely broken up, and most of the

Indians surrendered soon after.[107]

Of all the Indians who had borne prominent parts in this greatest of our

Indian wars with the savage tribes, there remained at large only the

indomitable Sitting Bull, and he had escaped capture because, with a

wretched band of starving but resolute followers, he succeeded in

crossing the British Columbia boundary line.

Crook’s persistence, Mills’ bold stroke, Mackenzie’s desperate dash up

Willow Creek Cañon, Miles’ splendid campaigning, his hard fighting at

Cedar Creek and Wolf Mountain, his pursuit of Lame Deer, his policy and

skill in dealing with the critical situations which had arisen, at last

brought peace to the blood-drenched land. The most important work ever

done by the United States Army outside of the greater wars of the nation

had been successfully and brilliantly accomplished.

IV. Farewell to a Great Chief and His Hopes

A note of the fate of the two chief antagonists of the United States may

fittingly close this chapter. Sitting Bull returned to the United

States, and surrendered to the army a few years later. Ever a

malcontent, he was one of the moving spirits in the Ghost Dance

uprising, which culminated in the battle of Wounded Knee in 1890, and he

was killed by the Indian police while resisting arrest.[108]

The end of Crazy Horse came sooner, in a mêlée in a guard-house on the

7th of September, 1877. He was stabbed in the abdomen, and died from the

effects of the wound. He was dissatisfied always, in spite of his

surrender, and had been conspiring to take the war-path again. Believing

that his intentions had become known and that he would be rigorously

dealt with on account of the discovery, he started to run amuck, with a

knife of which he had become possessed by some means, in the

guard-house. When the fracas was over, he was found on the ground, with

a desperate wound in the abdomen. Whether the wound was given by the

bayonet of the sentry at the door, whether the blow was delivered by

some of the Indians who threw themselves upon him, and with whom he

struggled, is a matter which cannot be determined. However it was come

by, it was enough, for from the effects he died in a short time.

So that was the melancholy end of Crazy Horse, the protagonist of these

tales, and one of the most famous Indians that ever lived. Captain

Bourke[109] thus describes him:

“I saw before me a man who looked quite young, not over thirty years

old, five feet eight inches high, lithe and sinewy, with a scar in the

face. The expression of his countenance was one of quiet dignity, but

morose, dogged, tenacious, and melancholy. He behaved with stolidity,

like a man who realized that he had to give in to Fate, but would do so

as sullenly as possible.... All Indians gave him a high reputation for

courage and generosity. In advancing upon an enemy, none of his warriors

were allowed to pass him. He had made himself hundreds of friends by his

charity toward the poor, as it was a point of honor with him never to

keep anything for himself, excepting weapons of war. I never heard an

Indian mention his name save in terms of respect. In the Custer

Massacre, the attack by Reno had first caused a panic among the women

and children and some of the warriors, who started to flee; but Crazy

Horse, throwing away his rifle, brained one of the incoming soldiers

with his stone war-club, and jumped upon his horse.”

Crazy Horse was a born soldier, whose talents for warfare and leadership

were of the highest order. He had repulsed Reynolds on the Powder River,

wresting a victory from apparent defeat. He had thrown himself in

succession upon the columns of Crook on the Rosebud and of Custer on the

Little Big Horn; and it must be admitted that he had not only checked,

but had driven back, Crook by a crushing attack upon him, while he had

annihilated half of Custer’s command. He had fought a desperate, and,

from a military point of view, highly creditable, action with Crook’s

vastly superior forces at Slim Buttes. The only man who had fairly and

squarely defeated him was Miles at Wolf Mountain, and even there Crazy

Horse managed to keep his force well in hand as he withdrew from the

field.

He would probably never have surrendered, had it not been for the

defections around him, and for the disastrous defeat of the Cheyennes by

Mackenzie, and the destruction of so much of his camp equipage at Wolf

Mountain. As it was, he might have continued the fighting, had not his

warriors been freezing and starving, and almost entirely out of

ammunition. There was nothing left for the Indians but surrender. As one

of them said to Miles:

“We are poor compared with you and your force. We cannot make a rifle, a

round of ammunition, or a knife. In fact, we are at the mercy of those

who are taking possession of our country. Your terms are harsh and

cruel, but we are going to accept them, and place ourselves at your

mercy.”

That summed up the situation, although the terms granted the Indians

were very far from being harsh or cruel.

So passed out of history the great war chief of the Sioux, one of the

bravest of the brave, and one of the most capable and sagacious of

captains in spite of his absurd name. He had many of the vices, perhaps

all the vices, of his race; but he had all their rude virtues, too, and

great abilities, which most of them lacked. Sitting Bull, wise, crafty,

indomitable as he was, was not to be compared with him for a moment.

It was a tragedy any way you look at it. You cannot but feel much

admiration for those Sioux and Cheyennes—cruel, ruthless though they

were. I bid good-by to them with a certain regret.

Some one has said, as the Rosebud and the Little Big Horn marked the

high-water of Indian supremacy in the Northwest, so the forgotten grave

of Crazy Horse marks an ebb from which no tide has ever risen.

As he passes to the happy hunting-ground in the land of the Great

Spirit, I stand and salute him with a feeling of respect which I have

gathered not only from a study of his career, but from the statements

and writings of men who could best judge of his qualities—for they were

the soldiers who fought him.

NOTES ON THE LAME DEER FIGHT

By Colonel D. L. Brainard, U. S. A.[110]

The command, consisting of four troops of the Second Cavalry, “F,”

“G,” “H,” and “L,” two companies of the Fifth Infantry, two of the

Twenty-second Infantry, and a company of mounted scouts, all under

command of Colonel Nelson A. Miles, left the cantonment on Tongue

River May 1, 1877, and marched up Tongue River, with a view of

intercepting a band of hostile Indians, under Lame Deer, known to be

at or near the head-waters of the Rosebud River. The transportation

consisted of bull teams, mule teams, and a few pack animals. The

command marched up Tongue River four days, when the train was left

in charge of a small guard, the main command pushing on with pack

trains, the cavalry leading and the infantry following more slowly,

striking across country toward the Rosebud River, marching day and

night, stopping only long enough to make coffee for the men, and to

rest and graze the animals.

We bivouacked on the evening of the 6th in a deep valley near Little

Muddy Creek, and about two o’clock the following morning were again

in the saddle, moving silently and swiftly down the valley toward

the Indian camp, which had been located the previous evening by

White Bull, Brave Wolf, Bob Jackson, and the other scouts. The

scouts had reported that the camp was only about six miles distant,

but it was soon discovered that it was much farther than this, and

at early dawn we were still some distance away. The command had been

moving at a trot, but the gallop was immediately taken up, and just

as the sun appeared above the horizon, we rounded a bend in the

valley and came in sight of the Indian camp, which was located on

the right side, close to the hills.

At first we saw no Indians except a few boys guarding the ponies,

which were grazing a little distance beyond the camp, but they came

out immediately, and dropping in the grass, began to fire in our

direction, though without effect. As we charged down on the camp,

these Indians, together with squaws and children, ran for the hills,

driving with them the few horses that were near the tepees. “H”

Company, under command of Lieutenant Lovell H. Jerome, charged

through the camp and beyond, capturing the pony herd. The other

companies, all under command of Captain Ball, charged to the

village, formed line to the right, deployed as skirmishers, and

pursued the Indians up the hill.

The hills were so steep at this point that it was necessary to

dismount the command and advance on foot, the horses being sent

around by an easier route to join us later near the summit of the

hill. The line as formed was “F” troop (Tyler) on the right, “L”

troop (Norwood) center, and “G” troop (Wheelan) on the left. The

Indians were driven up over the hills, where they scattered like

quail. Our horses were brought up, and mounting, we charged across

the country for two or three miles, and later returned to the

village.

As my recollections serve me, four soldiers and fourteen Indians

were killed, ten soldiers being wounded, myself being one of the

number. About four hundred ponies were captured, which were

afterward used for mounting a battalion of Infantry, which later

performed much effective work in the field. There were over sixty

tepees, in which we found tons of dried buffalo meat, a few arms,

some ammunition, and a great many buffalo robes, saddles, and an

assortment of camp property, all of which were burned that

afternoon, thus so effectually crippling the band that the remnant

came in and surrendered a few weeks later.

We camped on the battle-ground that night, the following day moving

back in the direction of our wagon train.

One of the most interesting incidents of the fight occurred just as

the troop to which I belonged (“L”) charged on the village. I saw

General Miles riding toward the first tepee, near which were two

Indians, followed by his orderly. He called out something to these

Indians which I did not understand, but I later understood he had

called on them to surrender. One of these was evidently the Chief,

Lame Deer, for he wore a long head-dress of eagle feathers, the

head-dress reaching to the ground. As Miles approached on horseback,

the Chief walked rapidly toward him, with his hand extended, as

though to shake hands, but when within ten or twelve feet of him,

the Indian in the rear, who was said to be Iron Star, a son of Lame

Deer, and also a medicine man of the tribe, called sharply to Lame

Deer, presumably warning him of the approaching troops, and urging

him to follow the other Indians to the hills.

Lame Deer stopped, turned, hesitated, then ran back a few steps, and

picking up a loaded carbine from the ground, fired point blank at

General Miles, who, seeing the movement, wheeled his horse sharply

and bent forward. The bullet passed over him, striking his orderly

in the breast, killing him instantly. The Chief then ran up the

steep hill, accompanied by the other Indian. The head-dress made a

very conspicuous mark, and many shots were immediately fired in that

direction. From his tottering steps we saw that the Chief was badly

wounded, and at this point his companion, instead of escaping as he

could have done, placed his arm around the Chief’s waist, and

supported him up the hill. About this time the Chief drew a

revolver, and without turning about, held it in rear of him and

fired in our direction, the bullets striking the ground only a few

feet in his rear. This act, we assumed, was one of defiance of a man

who knew he could not escape, but who was game to the last. Iron

Star supported the Chief until the latter fell, when he escaped over

the hill, only to be killed by “G” troop, which had been pushing up

on that side. After the devotion and bravery he had displayed in

supporting Lame Deer up the hill, we were almost sorry he had not

escaped alive.

A few days later Bob Jackson told me that, on examining Lame Deer’s

body after the fight, he had found that he had been hit seventeen

times.

Another incident which illustrates the valor of the United States

soldier was that of Private Leonard, Troop “L,” Second Cavalry, who

had dropped behind to readjust his saddle, a couple of miles from

the Indian camp. The command was moving rapidly, and the Indians

slipped in between the rear of the column and this lone soldier.

However, when he saw them he rode to the top of a hill, and lying

down behind some rocks, held these Indians at bay for several hours

until relief came to him. It was fortunate that relief came as it

did, for he had nearly exhausted his ammunition in firing at these

Indians, who had several times charged his position.

-----

Footnote 103:

Personal Recollections of General Nelson A. Miles, U. S. A.

Footnote 104:

As an instance of Miles’ capacity in handling men, this is what

Baldwin says in a private letter, afterward made public, of the orders

he received: “When I was given command of this battalion opposite the

mouth of Squaw Creek, and the General took command of a less number of

men, it was a question as to which would find the hostile Indians, and

with the only order or suggestion given by him in that earnest manner

characteristic of him, he said, ‘Now, Baldwin, do the best you can. I

am responsible for disaster, success will be to your credit; you know

what my plans are, and what we are here for.’” There is a dashing,

manly ring about such words which I rejoice to recognize. It is a

great soldier who can first choose and then trust his subordinates.

Footnote 105:

At the battle of King’s Mountain, in the American Revolution, the

small loss of life among the Americans was due to the fact that the

English, trained marksmen though they were, firing down the slopes of

the mountain, overshot their opponents, although they had them in full

view all the way up the slope; and it is the tendency of troops always

to do the same thing. Troops on a level usually fire too low, and the

ground between the advancing lines of soldiers is often plowed up by

bullets from the depressed muzzles, which should have gone into the

breasts of the approaching enemy.

Footnote 106:

Each lodge accounted for from five to ten persons.

Footnote 107:

See close of this chapter for another account of the Lame Deer Fight.

Footnote 108:

These affairs are to be discussed at length in a forthcoming volume.

Footnote 109:

“On the Border With Crook,” Captain John G. Bourke, U. S. A.

Footnote 110:

Colonel Brainard won his commission by his heroic conduct in the

Greely Arctic Expedition, 1881–4.—C. T. B.

CHAPTER TWELVE

What They Are There For A Sketch of General Guy V. Henry, a Typical

American Soldier

I. Savage Warfare

The most thankless task that can be undertaken by a nation is warfare

against savage or semi-civilized peoples. In it there is usually little

glory; nor is there any reward, save the consciousness of disagreeable

duty well performed. The risk to the soldier is greater than in ordinary

war, since the savages usually torture the wounded and the captured.

Success can only be achieved by an arduous, persistent, wearing down

process, which affords little opportunity for scientific fighting, yet

which demands military talents of the highest order.

Almost anybody can understand the strategy or the tactics of a pitched

battle where the number engaged is large, the casualties heavy, and the

results decisive; but very few non-professional critics appreciate a

campaign of relentless pursuit by a small army of a smaller body of

mobile hostiles, here and there capturing a little band, now and then

killing or disabling a few, until in the final round-up the enemy,

reduced to perhaps less than a score, surrenders. There is nothing

spectacular about the performance, and everybody wonders why it took so

long.

And as injustice and wrong have not been infrequent in the preliminary

dealings between the government and the savages, the soldier, who has

only to obey his orders, comes in for much unmerited censure from those

who think darkly though they speak bitterly. Especially is he criticized

if, when maddened by the suffering, the torture, of some comrade, the

soldier sinks to the savage level in his treatment of his ruthless

foeman. No one justifies such a lapse, of course, but few there be who

even try to understand it. The incessant campaigning in the Philippines,

with its resulting scandals, is an instance in point.

Long before the Spanish-American War and its Philippine corollary,

however, our little army had shown itself capable of the hardest and

most desperate campaigning against the Indians of the West—as difficult

and dangerous a work as any army ever undertook. There was so much of

it, and it abounded with so many thrilling incidents, that volumes could

be written upon it without exhausting its tragedy, its romance. There

were few soldiers who served beyond the Mississippi from 1865 to 1890

who did not participate in a score of engagements, whose lives were not

in peril more than once in many a hard, but now forgotten, campaign.

[Illustration:

_From the collection of J. Robert Coster_

]

COL. RANALD S. MACKENZIE GEN. GUY V. HENRY

CAPT. ANSON MILLS W. F. CODY (BUFFALO BILL)

GROUP OF DISTINGUISHED INDIAN FIGHTERS

_All except General Henry from contemporary photographs_

One of the bravest of our Indian fighters was Guy V. Henry. Personally,

he was a typical representative of the knightly American soldier.

Officially, it was his fortune to perform conspicuous services in at

least three expeditions subsequent to the Civil War. He was a West

Pointer, and the son of another, born in the service at Fort Smith in

the Indian Territory. Graduating in 1861, a mere boy, he participated in

four years of the hardest fighting in the Civil War, from Bull Run to

Cold Harbor. At the age of twenty-three, his merit won him the

appointment of Colonel of the Fortieth Massachusetts Volunteers, “a

regiment that was never whipped.” The tall, brawny Yankees fairly

laughed at the beardless stripling who was appointed to command them.

“They laugh best who laugh last,” and Henry had the last laugh. He

mastered them, and to this day they love his memory.

He was thrice mentioned in despatches, and brevetted five times for

conspicuous gallantry in action during the war, out of which he came

with the rank of brigadier-general. For heroic and successful fighting

at Old Cold Harbor, he received the highest distinction that can come to

a soldier, the medal of honor. Having two horses shot from under him in

the attack upon the Confederate lines, he seized a third from a trooper,

mounted him under a withering fire, and led his soldiers forward in a

final assault, which captured the enemy’s intrenchments; this third

horse was shot under him just as he leaped the breastworks.

“Thin as a shoestring and as brave as a lion,” he was a past-master of

military tactics and a severe disciplinarian. “I tell you he is a

martinet,” cried one young officer angrily, smarting under a

well-deserved reproof. “You are wrong,” replied a wiser officer, who

knew Henry better; “he is trying to make your own record better than you

could ever make it yourself.” Sudden as a thunderbolt and swift as a

hawk when he struck the red Sioux, in his family and social relations he

was a kindly, considerate, Christian gentleman. He could kill

Indians—but never cruelly, mercilessly, only in open warfare—and teach a

class in Sunday-school. I’ve seen him do the latter, and no man did it

better; the boys of his class simply idolized him. And his men in the

army did the same. Cool and tactful, a statesman, for all his fiery

energy, he was perhaps the best of our colonial governors. When he died

the people of Porto Rico mourned him as a friend, where the little

children had loved him as a father.

II. A March in a Blizzard

At the close of the Civil War he was transferred to the Third Cavalry, a

regiment with which he was destined to win lasting renown. It must have

been hard for men who had exercised high command, and who had proved

their fitness for it, to come down from general officers to subalterns;

but Henry accepted the situation cheerfully. He was as proud of his

troop of cavalry as he had been of his regiment and brigade of

volunteers. His new detail took him to Arizona, where for two years he

commanded a battalion engaged in hard scouting among the Apaches. The

winter of 1874 found him at Fort Robinson in the Black Hills. While

there he was ordered to go into the Bad Lands to remove certain miners

who were supposed to be there in defiance of treaty stipulations.

The day after Christmas, with his own troop and fifteen men of the Ninth

Infantry under Lieutenant Carpenter, with wagons, rations, and forage

for thirty days, the men set forth. The expedition involved a march of

three hundred miles, over the worst marching country on the face of the

globe, and in weather of unimaginable severity, the cold continually

ranging from twenty to forty degrees below zero. The miners were not

found, and on the return journey the command, which had suffered

terrible hardships, was overtaken by a blizzard.

When, in an Eastern city, the thermometer gets down to the zero mark,

and it blows hard, with a heavy snow for twenty-four hours, people who

are not familiar with the real article call such insignificant weather

manifestations a blizzard. Imagine a fierce gale sweeping down from the

north, filled with icy needles which draw blood ere they freeze the

naked skin, the thermometer forty degrees below zero, a rolling,

treeless country without shelter of any sort from the blinding snow and

the biting wind, and you have the situation in which that expedition

found itself. The storm came up an hour after breaking camp on what was

hoped to be the last day on the return journey. To return to the place

of the camp was impossible. To keep moving was the only thing to be

done. The cold was so intense that it was at first deemed safer to walk

than ride. The troops dismounted and struggled on. Many of the men gave

out and sank exhausted, but were lifted to their saddles and strapped

there, Henry himself doing this with his own hands. Finally, the whole

party got so weak that it was impossible for them to proceed. In

desperation, they mounted the exhausted horses and urged them forward.

Henry had no knowledge of direction, but trusted to the instincts of his

horse. He led the way. Many of the men had to be beaten to keep them

awake and alive—to sleep was death.

Finally, when hope and everything else was abandoned, they came to a

solitary ranch under the curve of a hill, occupied by a white man and

his Indian wife. They were saved; that is, they had escaped with their

lives. The horses were put in shelter in the corral, the men crowded

into the house, and the painful process of thawing out was begun. The

ranch was fifteen miles from Fort Robinson, and when the blizzard abated

the next day wagons and ambulances were sent out, and the helpless

soldiers were carried back to the post.

Most of them were in a terrible condition, and few had escaped. They

were broken from the hardships they had undergone, especially from the

freezing, which those who have suffered from declare causes a

prostration from which it is difficult to recover. When Henry entered

his quarters his wife did not recognize him. His face was black and

swollen. His men cut the bridle reins to free his hands, and then slit

his gloves into strips, each strip bringing a piece of flesh as it was

pulled off. All his fingers were frozen to the second joint; the flesh

sloughed off, exposing the bones. One finger had to be amputated, and to

the day of his death his left hand was so stiff that he was unable to

close his fingers again. As he was a thin, spare man, with no

superfluous flesh, he had suffered more than the rest. Yet he made no

complaint, and it was only due to his indomitable persistence that the

men were not frozen to death that awful day. Henry’s winter march is

still remembered, by those in the old service, as one of the heroic

achievements of the period.

III. A Ghastly Experience

The heroism and sufferings of the young soldier were nothing, however,

to what he manifested and underwent two years later. Just before the

Custer Massacre, General Crook, with some eleven hundred men, moved out

from Fort Fetterman, Wyoming, on the expedition that culminated in the

battle of the Rosebud. Colonel W. B. Royall had command of the cavalry

of Crook’s little army. One morning in June the Sioux and the Cheyennes,

under Crazy Horse, who as a fighter and general was probably second to

few Indians that ever lived, attacked Crook’s men. The left wing, under

Royall, was isolated in a ravine and practically surrounded by a foe who

outnumbered them five to one. The rest of the army, heavily engaged,

could give them no succor. The Indians made charge after charge upon the

troops, who had all dismounted except the field officers. Henry had

command of the left battalion of Royall’s force. Cool as an iceberg, he

rode up and down the thin line, steadying and holding his men. At one

time, by a daring charge, he rescued an imperiled company under a

brother officer.

At last, in one of the furious attacks of the Sioux, he was shot in the

face. A rifle bullet struck him under the left eye, passed through the

upper part of his mouth under the nose, and came out below the right

eye. The shock was terrific. His face was instantly covered with blood,

his mouth filled with it. He remained in the saddle, however, and strove

to urge the troops on. In the very act of spurring his horse forward to

lead a charge, he lost consciousness, and fell to the ground.

At that instant the war-bonneted Indians, superbly mounted, delivered an

overwhelming onslaught on the left flank of the line. The men, deprived

of their leader, for a time gave back. The Indians actually galloped

over the prostrate figure of the brave soldier. Fortunately, he was not

struck by the hoofs of any of the horses. A determined stand by Chief

Washakie, of the friendly Shoshones, our Indian allies in that battle,

who with two or three of his braves fought desperately over Henry’s

body, prevented him from being scalped and killed.

The officers of the Third speedily rallied their men, drove back the

Indians, and reoccupied the ground where Henry lay. He was assisted to

his horse and taken to the rear where the surgeons were. Such was the

nature of his wound that he could not speak above a whisper; he could

not see at all, he could scarcely hear, and he had great difficulty in

breathing. As the doctor bent over him he heard the wounded man mumble

out, “Fix me up so that I can go back!”

There was no going back for him that day. Through the long day he lay on

the ground while the battle raged about him. There was little water and

no shelter; there wasn’t a tent in the army. Although it was bitter cold

during the nights in that country at that season, at midday it was

fearfully hot. He was consumed with thirst. His orderly managed to give

him a little shade by holding his horse so that the shadow of the

animal’s body fell upon the wounded man. His wound was dressed

temporarily as well as possible, and then he was practically left to

die.

One of the colonel’s comrades came back to him during a lull in the

fight. There he lay helpless on the bare ground, in the shadow of the

restive horse, which the orderly had all he could do to manage. No one

else could be spared from the battle line to attend to Henry’s wants,

although, as a matter of fact, he expressed no wants. The flies had

settled thickly upon his bandaged face. The officer bent over him with

an expression of commiseration.

“It’s all right, Jack,” gurgled out from the bleeding lips; “it’s what

we’re here for.”[111]

Royall’s forces were finally able to effect a junction with the main

body by withdrawing fighting, and Henry was carried along any way in the

hurried movement. The Indians at last withdrew from the field (the

battle must be considered a drawn one), and then there was time to

consider what was to be done with the wounded. The facilities for

treatment were the slenderest. The column had been stripped of its

baggage, in order to increase its mobility, to enable it to cope with

the Indians. All they had they carried on their persons, and that

included little but the barest necessities.

Nobody expected Henry to survive the night. He didn’t expect to live

himself, as he lay there through the long hours, listening to the men

digging graves for those who had fallen, and wondering whether or not he

was to be one of the occupants thereof. The next day they sent him to

the rear. He was transported in what is called a travois. Two saplings

were cut from the river bank; two army mules, one at each end, were

placed between the saplings, which were slung over the backs of the

animals. An army blanket, or piece of canvas, was then lashed to the

poles, and on them the sufferer was placed. There were a number of

wounded—none of them, however, so seriously as Henry. It was some two

hundred miles to Fort Fetterman, and they carried him all that distance

that way.

The weather at night was bitterly cold. In the daytime it was burning

hot. The travois was so short—they had to take what poles they could

get, of course—that several times the head of the rear mule hit the

wounded officer’s head, so that finally they turned him about, putting

his head behind the heels of the foremost animal, where he was liable to

be kicked to death at any moment.

On one occasion one of the mules stumbled and fell and pitched Henry out

upon his head. The officers of the little escort stood aghast as they

saw him fall out; but it is a matter of record, solemnly attested, that

such was Henry’s iron self-control that he made no sound, although the

agony was excruciating. In fact, on the whole journey he made no

complaint of any sort. His only food was broth, which was made from

birds shot by the soldiers as they came upon them, and he got this very

infrequently.

Finally, the little cortège reached Fort Fetterman. The last mishap

awaited them there. The river was crossed by a ferryboat, which was

pulled from shore to shore by ropes and tackles. The river was very high

and the current running swiftly, and as they prepared to take the

wounded officer across, the ropes broke, and the whole thing went to

pieces, leaving him within sight, but not within reach, of clean beds,

comforts, and medical attention he hoped to secure. Some of the escort,

rough soldiers though they were, broke into tears as they saw the

predicament of their beloved officer. He himself, however, true to his

colors, said nothing. Finally, they offered to take him across the

raging torrent in a small skiff—the only boat available—if he were

willing to take the risk. Of course, if the skiff were overturned, he

would have been drowned. He took the risk, and with two men to paddle

and an officer to hold him in his arms, the passage was made.

IV. An Army Wife

Three hundred miles away, at Fort D. A. Russell, his wife was waiting

for him. Long before he reached Fort Fetterman, she heard through

couriers the news of his wound, which was reported to her as fatal,

although he had taken care to cause a reassuring message to be sent her

with the first messenger. With the heroism of the army wife, although

she was in delicate health at the time, she immediately made

preparations to join him. The railroad at that time ran as far as

Medicine Bow. Beyond that there was a hundred-mile ride to Fort

Fetterman. All the troops were in the field; none could be spared from

the nominal garrisons for an escort. Again and again Mrs. Henry made

preparations to go forward, several times actually starting, and again

and again she was forbidden to do so by the officers in command at the

various posts. It was not safe to send a woman across the country with a

few soldiers; the Indians were up and out in all directions. There was

no safety anywhere outside the forts or larger towns; she had to stay at

home and wait. Sometimes the devoted wife got word from her husband,

sometimes she did not. The savages were constantly cutting the wires.

Her suspense was agonizing.

Finally, the arrival of troops at Fort Fetterman enabled a stronger

escort to be made up, and Henry was sent down to Fort D. A. Russell. The

troops arrived at Medicine Bow on the third of July. The train did not

leave until the next day. They were forced to go into camp. The cowboys

and citizens celebrated the Fourth in the usual manner. That night the

pain-racked man narrowly escaped being killed by the reckless shooting

of the celebrators. Two bullets passed through the tent in which he lay,

just above his head. The next morning found him on the train. His heart

action had been so weakened by chloral and other medicines which they

had given him, that at Sherman, the highest point on the journey, he

came within an inch of dying.

His thoughts all along had been of his wife. When he got to the station

he refused to get in an ambulance, in order to spare her the sight of

his being brought home in that way. A carriage was procured, and

supported in the arms of the physician and his comrades, he was driven

back to the fort. With superhuman resolution, in order to convince his

wife that he was not seriously hurt, he determined to walk from the

carriage to the door. Mrs. Henry had received instructions from the

doctor to control herself, and stood waiting quietly in the entrance.

“Well,” whispered the shattered man, as she took him tenderly by the

hand, alluding to the fact that it was the Fourth of July, “this is a

fine way to celebrate, isn’t it?”

After the quietest of greetings—think of that woman, what her feelings

must have been!—he was taken into the house and laid on the sofa. The

doctor had said that he might have one look at his wife. The bandages

were lifted carefully from his face, so that he might have that single

glance; then they were replaced, and the wife, unable to bear it longer,

fled from the room. The chaplain’s wife was waiting for her outside the

door, and when she got into the shelter of that good woman’s arms she

gave way and broke down completely.

“You know,” said the chaplain’s wife, alluding to many conversations

which they had had, “that you asked of God only that He should bring him

back to you, and God has heard that prayer.”

Everybody expected that Henry would die, but die he did not; perhaps it

would be better to say die he would not. And he had no physique to back

his efforts, only an indomitable will. He never completely recovered

from that experience. He lost the sight of one eye permanently, and to

the day of his death was liable to a hemorrhage at any moment, in which

there was grave danger of his bleeding to death.

He took a year’s leave of absence, and then came back to duty. In 1877,

when his troop was ordered to the front in another campaign under Crook

against the redoubtable Sioux, he insisted upon accompanying them. He

had been out an hour or so when he fell fainting from the saddle. Did

they bring him back? Oh, no! He bade them lay him under a tree, leave

two or three men with him to look after him, and go ahead. He would

rejoin them that night, when it became cooler and he could travel with

more ease! What he said he would do he did. A trooper rode back to the

post on his own account and told of his condition. An order was sent him

by the post commander to return. Henry quietly said he would obey the

first order and go on. He remained with the troop for six weeks, until

finally he was picked up bodily and carried home, vainly protesting, the

doctor refusing to answer either for his eyesight or for his life if he

stayed in the field any longer.

V. The Buffalos and Their Famous Ride

Thirteen years after that Henry was commanding the Ninth Cavalry, with

headquarters at Fort McKinney. The Ninth Cavalry was a regiment of

negroes. From the overcoats which they wore in Wyoming in the winter

they were called the “Buffalos,” and sometimes they were facetiously

referred to as “Henry’s Brunettes.” Whatever they were called, they were

a regiment of which to be proud.

In 1890 occurred the last outbreak of the Sioux under the inspiration of

the Ghost Dancers, which culminated in the battle of Wounded Knee.

Troops from all over the United States were hurried to the Pine Ridge

Agency as the trouble began. On the 24th of December Henry and the

“Brunettes” were ordered out to the former’s old stamping ground in the

Black Hills on a scouting expedition. It was bitter cold that Christmas

Eve, but, thank God! there was no blizzard. Fifty miles on the back of a

trotting horse was the dose before them. They rested at four A.M. on the

morning of Christmas Day. Some of the garments the men wore were frozen

stiff. They had broken through the ice of the White River in crossing

it. How the men felt inside the frozen clothing may be imagined. Eight

miles farther they made their camp. They did not have much of a

Christmas celebration, for as soon as possible after establishing their

base at Harney Springs they went on the scout. They hunted assiduously

for several days, but found no Indians. These had gone south to join

their brethren concentrated about the agency. One day they rode

forty-two miles in a vain search. They got back to camp about seven

o’clock. At nine a courier from the agency fifty miles away informed

them of the battle of Wounded Knee, and that five thousand Oglala Sioux

were mustering to attack the agency.

“Boots and Saddles!” instantly rang out, and the tired troopers mounted

their jaded horses again. This time the camp was broken for keeps, and

tents were struck, wagons packed to abandon it. It was a bitter cold

night. There was a fierce gale sweeping through the valley, blowing a

light snow in the faces of the men wrapped to the eyes in their buffalo

coats and fur caps. They pushed steadily on in spite of it, for it was

Henry’s intention to reach the agency in the dark in order to avoid

attack by the Indians.

It was thought advisable, therefore, to leave the wagon train under an

escort of one company and press forward with the rest. The men arrived

at the agency at daybreak, completing a ride of over ninety miles in

less than twenty hours. Fires were kindled, horses picketed, and the

exhausted men literally threw themselves on the ground for rest. They

had been there but a short time when one of the men from the escort came

galloping madly in with the news that the wagon-train was heavily

attacked, and that succor must be sent at once. Without waiting for

orders, without even stopping to saddle the horses, Henry and his men

galloped back over the road two miles away, where the escort was

gallantly covering the train. A short, sharp skirmish, in which one man

was killed and several wounded, drove back the Indians, and the regiment

brought in the train.

It was ten o’clock now, and as the negro troops came into the agency,

word was brought that the Drexel Mission, seven miles up the valley, was

being attacked, and help must be sent immediately. There were two

regiments of cavalry available, the Seventh and the Ninth. For some

unexplained reason, the Ninth was ordered out. In behalf of his men,

Henry made protest. They must have a little rest, and so the Seventh was

despatched, and was soon hotly engaged. Two hours later a messenger

reported that the Seventh, in the valley where the mission was situated,

was heavily attacked by the Indians, who had secured commanding

positions on the surrounding ridges. Unless they could be relieved, they

would probably be overwhelmed. Again the trumpet call rang out, and the

tired black troopers once more climbed into their saddles and struck

spurs into their more tired horses, galloping away to the rescue of

their hard-pushed white comrades. The ridges were carried in most

gallant style, and after some sharp fighting the Indians were driven

back. The Seventh was extricated and the day was saved.

In thirty-four hours of elapsed time, the Ninth Cavalry had ridden one

hundred and eight miles—the actual time in the saddle being twenty-two

hours. They had fought two engagements and had rested only two hours.

Marvelous to relate, there wasn’t a sore-backed horse in the whole

regiment. One horse died under the pressure, but aside from that and

their fatigue, horses and men were in excellent condition.

That was probably the most famous ride ever performed by troops in the

United States. For it Henry was recommended for a further brevet, as

major-general—the sixth he had received.

The Spanish-American War was too short to afford Henry an opportunity to

distinguish himself in the field, but in Porto Rico he showed that his

talents were not merely of the military order. In the brief period his

health permitted him to remain there, he accomplished wonders, and did

it all in such a way as to gain the respect—nay, the affection—of the

people over whom, with single-hearted devotion and signal capacity, he

ruled. He stayed there until he broke down. I, sick with typhoid fever

on a transport at Ponce, saw him just before he collapsed. We were old

friends, and he came off to the ship to visit me. I was not too ill then

to realize that his own time was coming. He would not ask to be

relieved.

“Here I was sent”, he said; “here I will stay until my duty is done.”

He was the knightliest soldier I ever met, and I have met many. He was

one of the humblest Christians I ever knew, and I have known not a few.

It was his experience at Porto Rico which finally brought about his

death; for it is literally true that he died, as a soldier should, in

his harness. In those trying times at Ponce, when life and health were

at a low ebb, he wrote, in the sacred confidence of his last letter to

his faithful wife, words which it was not his custom to speak, but which

those of us who knew him felt expressed his constant thought:

“I am here alone. One by one my staff officers have fallen ill and gone

home. Home!—let us not speak of it. Jesus is here with me, and makes

even this desolation home until a brighter one is possible.”

So, his memory enshrined in the hearts that loved him, his heroic deeds

the inspiration of his fellow-soldiers, passed to his brighter home Guy

V. Henry, a Captain of the Strong.

-----

Footnote 111:

John F. Finerty, who was present as the correspondent of the Chicago

_Times_, and who relates the incident, says that Henry, immediately

after this remark, advised Finerty to join the army. Encouraging

circumstances to back up such a recommendation!

APPENDICES

APPENDIX A.

Being a Further Discussion of General Custer’s Course in the Little Big

Horn Campaign.[112]

I.

Whether General Custer did, or did not, obey General Terry’s orders;

whether these orders were, or were not, well considered, and such as

could be carried out; whether, if General Custer did disobey General

Terry’s orders he was warranted in so doing by the circumstances in

which he found himself, are questions of the deepest interest to the

student of military matters and the historian thereof. I presume the

problem they present will never be authoritatively settled, and that men

will continue to differ upon these questions until the end of time.

The matter has been discussed, pro and con, at great length on many

occasions. A number of books and magazine articles have been written

upon different phases of the situation. I have come to the conclusion

indicated in my own article, as I said, against my wish. In view of his

heroic death in the high places of the field, I would fain hold General

Custer, for whom I have long cherished an admiration which I still

retain, entirely innocent. I have only come to this conclusion after a

rigid investigation including the careful weighing of such evidence as I

could secure upon every point in question.

This evidence consists, first, of a great variety of printed matter;

second, of personal conversations with soldiers and military critics,

which, as any record of it would necessarily be hearsay and secondhand,

I have not set down hereafter save in one instance; third, of letters

which have been written me by officers who, from their participation in

the campaign, or from unusual opportunities to acquire knowledge

concerning it which they have enjoyed, have become possessed of

information which they were willing to give to me.

The object of this appendix is to set down, so that it may be here

preserved in permanent and available form for future reference, such

evidence in these letters as may be pertinent and useful; also to refer

the student, who desires to go deeper into the subject, to some of the

more valuable printed accounts which are easily accessible.

I am glad that some of the communications I have received, notably those

from Colonel Godfrey, make a stout defense of General Custer. Perhaps

upon consideration of Colonel Godfrey’s points and arguments, which are

not only strong and well taken, but also admirably put, the critic may

be inclined to differ from my conclusion. For the sake of General

Custer’s fame, I sincerely hope so. I should be glad to be proved to be

mistaken.

Without specifically noting the various descriptions of the campaign and

battle, which are interesting, but irrelevant to my purpose,[113]

Custer’s conduct has been critically considered at some length—by

persons whose standing requires that their opinions should be

respectfully received—in several publications which I note in such order

as best serves the purpose of this discussion without regard to the

order in which they appeared.

Colonel Edward S. Godfrey,[114] U. S. A., now commanding the Ninth

Cavalry, who, as a lieutenant, commanded K Troop, in Benteen’s

battalion, which joined that of Reno in the battle of the 26th of June,

1876, wrote a most interesting account of the battle, containing some

valuable reflections upon some disputed points, which was published in

the _Century Magazine_, Vol. XLIII., No. 3, January, 1892. To this

article, in the same number, were appended certain comments by

Major-General James B. Fry, U. S. A., since deceased.

This article and these comments came to the notice of Major-General

Robert P. Hughes, U. S. A. (retired), then Colonel and

Inspector-General. General Hughes was General Terry’s aide-de-camp

during the Little Big Horn Campaign. He wrote an exhaustive criticism on

Fry’s comments to Godfrey’s article, which was in effect a discussion of

the main proposition that Custer disobeyed his orders and thereby

precipitated the disaster, for which he was therefore responsible. This

campaign was also considered in an article by Dr. E. Benjamin Andrews,

president of the University of Nebraska, who was then president of Brown

University, Providence, Rhode Island, which appeared in _Scribner’s

Magazine_ for June, 1895. A fuller reference to Dr. Andrews’ position

will be made later.

General Hughes’ article was offered to the _Century_, but was not

accepted, and was finally published in the _Journal of the Military

Service Institution_, Vol. XVIII., No. 79, January, 1896.

Among the many books in which the matter has been discussed, three only

call for attention.

In “THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER,” by Brigadier-General George A. Forsyth,

U. S. A. (retired), the following comment appears:

“Under the peculiar condition of affairs, bearing in mind the only

information he could possibly have had concerning Sitting Bull’s

forces, was Custer justified, in a military sense and within the

scope of his orders, in making the attack?

“In the opinion of the writer he was within his orders, and fully

justified from a military standpoint in so doing.”

General Forsyth gives no reason for his decision, but it is to be

presumed that he did not arrive at that decision hastily and carelessly,

and as he is a very able and distinguished officer and military critic,

due weight should be accorded his views.

In “THE UNITED STATES IN OUR OWN TIME,” by Dr. E. Benjamin Andrews,

published by Chas. Scribner’s Sons, edition of 1903, pages 190–1–2–3,

there is a concise discussion of the question, based on the article in

_Scribner’s Magazine_, referred to above, with some additional

reflections on General Hughes’ paper.

In “PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF GENERAL NELSON A. MILES, U. S. A.,”

chapter xv., pages 198–210, there is a further discussion by the

Lieutenant-General, lately in command of the United States Army.

In order clearly to understand what follows the student should refer to

each of the sources mentioned and examine carefully into what is therein

set forth. It is not practicable to quote all these authors at length. I

have corresponded with every one of the authors mentioned except General

Fry. I print their letters to me, having made no change except once in a

while breaking a page into paragraphs and supplying a missing word here

and there which had no especial bearing upon the point at issue. Some of

the letters were written in pencil amid press of duties. Most of these

documents I print without comment. It is necessary, however, that I

should call attention to some features brought out by the

correspondence.

President Andrews says, in the book referred to:

“Much turns on the force of Custer’s written orders, which, judged

by usual military documents of the kind, certainly gave Custer a

much larger liberty than Colonel Hughes supposed. There is an

affidavit of a witness who heard Terry’s and Custer’s last

conversation together at the mouth of the Rosebud, just before

Custer began his fatal ride. Terry said: ‘Use your own judgment and

do what you think best if you strike the trail; and whatever you do,

Custer, hold on to your wounded.’”

General Miles says, in his book:

“But we have positive evidence in the form of an affidavit of the

last witness who heard the two officers in conversation together on

the night before their commands separated, and it is conclusive on

the point at issue. This evidence is that General Terry returned to

General Custer’s tent,[115] after giving him the final order, to say

to him that on coming up to the Indians he would have to use his own

discretion and do what he thought best. This conversation occurred

at the mouth of the Rosebud, and the exact words of General Terry,

as quoted by the witness, are:

“’Custer, I do not know what to say for the last.’

“Custer replied: ‘Say what you want to say.’

“Terry then said: ‘Use your own judgment, and do what you think best

if you strike the trail; and, whatever you do, Custer, hold on to

your wounded.’

“This was a most reasonable conversation for the two officers under

the circumstances. One had won great distinction as a general in the

Civil War; was an able lawyer and department commander, yet entirely

without experience in Indian campaigns. The other had won great

distinction as one of the most gallant and skilful division

commanders of cavalry during the war, commanding one of the most

successful divisions of mounted troops; he had years of experience

on the plains and in handling troops in that remote country, and he

had fought several sharp engagements with hostile Indians.”

If General Terry spoke such words to General Custer the last thing

before Custer’s departure, those remarks have a very important, almost a

decisive, bearing on the matter at issue. The only question then

existing would be, how far the verbal order ought to be considered as

superseding the written one. _It is my opinion that the charge that

Custer disobeyed orders would fall to the ground if the truth of the

alleged remarks could be established._ By giving him this verbal order,

Terry would make Custer an absolutely free agent. The vital importance

of establishing this affidavit is therefore obvious.

I call attention to the fact that Terry nowhere refers to this

conversation, which it would be incumbent upon a gentleman to declare

immediately Custer was charged with disobeying Terry’s written order,

and that Terry, in that portion of his report which is quoted by me on

page 225, virtually not only fails to exculpate but actually charges

that Custer did disobey his order, by saying he did the very thing that

he was not expected to do.

To establish this affidavit, I wrote to President Andrews, asking his

authority for stating that such an affidavit existed and requesting a

copy of it. Here is his reply. I insert it without comment.

The University of Nebraska, Chancellor’s Office,

Lincoln, November 22d, ’03.

My Dear Sir:

Replying to your esteemed favor of the eleventh inst. I regret to

say that I have no means of recalling with certainty the source of

my information touching the Custer affidavit. My impression is,

however, that my informant was Gen. Miles, with whom I communicated

on the subject while I was writing my account. I also conversed

personally with Hughes and with a very intimate friend, now

deceased, of Gen. Terry’s.

I shall be extremely pleased to read your views upon this subject.

Very truly yours,

E. BENJ. ANDREWS.

I also wrote to General Miles and received the following reply from him:

1736 N Street, N. W.,

Washington, D. C., November 20, 1903.

My Dear Sir:

In reply to your two letters, you will find in my book, “Personal

Recollections, or from New England to the Golden Gate,” published by

Werner & Co., Akron, Ohio, perhaps all the information you will

require. I can not give the time now to going over the campaign in

detail. I presume you will find the book in most libraries.[116] You

will notice in it a chapter on the Custer campaign. General Custer

did not disobey orders. When General Terry divided his command,

taking one portion of it with him up the Yellowstone, and sending

General Custer with the other portion far out in the Indian country,

it necessarily put from seventy-five to one hundred miles between

the two commands, and therefore placed upon General Custer the

responsibility of acting on the offensive or defensive, for he could

have been attacked by the whole body of the combined tribes, and, on

the other hand, if he allowed them to escape without attacking them,

he would have been severely censured. It would be silly to suppose

that Indian chiefs like Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse would permit

two columns to march around over the country with infantry, cavalry,

wagon trains, etc.,[117] and wait for them to come up on both sides

simultaneously, and one must believe the American people very

gullible if they thought such a proposition had military merit.

Yours very truly,

NELSON A. MILES.

I immediately wrote General Miles a second letter asking him for the

name of the affiant and any statement he might be willing to make about

the affidavit. I pointed out to him what he very well knew—the

prominence given to the story in his own book indicates that—the

importance of the affidavit in establishing General Custer’s position

and defending him against the charge of disobedience. I received no

answer to this letter.

Meanwhile the question of the affidavit was taken up by General Hughes

in his several communications to me which appear below.

In order not to break the thread of the discourse I will anticipate

events and here insert a third letter which I wrote to General Miles,

after carefully considering General Hughes’ remarks. The letter was sent

to General Miles by registered mail. I hold the registry receipt showing

that he received it. To this inquiry I have as yet received no reply.

455 East 17th Street, Flatbush,

Brooklyn, N. Y., March 30th, 1904.

Lieutenant-General NELSON A. MILES, U. S. A.,

1736 N Street, N. W., Washington, D. C.

My Dear General Miles:

A few months since I addressed to you a letter asking you for the

name of the person, alluded to in your book, who made the affidavit

as to the last remark of General Terry to General Custer. This

letter has probably never reached you since I have never received

any answer to it.

The statement is questioned by a number of officers, and in the

interest of historical accuracy and for the sake of bringing forward

every particle of evidence tending to clear General Custer of the

charges which are made against him in that campaign, I most

respectfully ask you to give me the name of the affiant together

with such other statements concerning the affidavit as may be

conclusive. How did you become possessed of the affidavit, for

instance? Did you see it? Did you know the affiant? Was he a person

whose testimony was to be implicitly relied upon? Is he alive now?

In short, any information concerning it will be most acceptable as

well as most useful.

Very sincerely yours,

CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY.

I do not desire to comment on General Miles’ refusal further than to say

that if he has in his possession the affidavit he should either submit

it to the inspection of impartial observers, give it to historians,

state who made it, where it was made, furnish a certified copy of it to

the public, or otherwise establish it. If he is not willing to do this

he should at least say why he is not willing. I submit that no man,

whatever his rank or station, ought to make statements which affect the

fame and reputation of another man _without giving the fullest publicity

to his sources of information, or stating why the public must be content

with a simple reference thereto_.

While I am on the subject of the affidavit, I call the student’s

attention to a possible suggestion in Colonel Godfrey’s second

communication below.

It is twenty-eight years since the Battle of the Little Big Horn. If the

alleged affiant is now alive, what reason can exist to prevent him

coming out and acknowledging his affidavit? If he is dead, why should

secrecy about it longer exist? Why does not General Miles break his

silence? _The whole matter turns on the production of this affidavit,

with satisfactory evidence as to the character of the affiant._

The other position taken in General Miles’ letter above, which of course

is a summary of his views as set forth in his book, is discussed later

on by General Woodruff.

II.

I now refer the student to the following letter in answer to one from me

asking information and calling General Hughes’ attention to President

Andrews’ book, which has just been reissued in a new and amplified

edition:

New Haven, Conn.,

18th Nov., 1903.

Dear Sir:

Your letter of the 13th was duly received. I had not heard of Dr. E.

Benjamin Andrews’ book prior to receipt of your letter, but have

looked it up since.

After a careful examination of what he says about the Sioux campaign

of 1876, I cannot find any good and sufficient reason for changing

aught that was stated in the article published in the _Journal of

the Military Service Institution_, in January, 1896. I do find,

however, that something could be added to the statement of the case

in reply to new matter which he has injected into it in his book.

These items are three in number, to wit:

1st. General Miles does not agree with the views therein expressed.

2d. New evidence in the form of an affidavit made by some

individual, name not given.

3rd. The writer of the book dissents from my view of the case.

We will take these items up severally:

First: “General Miles is strongly of the opinion that Custer was not

guilty of disobeying any orders.”

It is not a new experience to learn that the views of General Miles

and myself are at variance. Indeed, it seems that they are seldom in

accord. But, in this instance, my views are supported by the late

General P. H. Sheridan, who states as follows:

“General Terry, now pretty well informed of the locality of the

Indians, directed Lieutenant-Colonel George A. Custer to move with

the Seventh Cavalry up the Rosebud, until he struck the trail

discovered by Major Reno, with instructions _that he should not

follow it directly to the Little Big Horn, but that he should send

scouts over it and keep his main force farther south_.”[118]

General Gibbon, in a letter to General Terry, written after having

reached his post, Fort Shaw, Montana, and bearing date November 5th,

1876, writes as follows, speaking of the “Conference”:

“We both impressed upon him (Custer) that he should keep

constantly feeling to his left, and even should the trail turn

toward the Little Big Horn that he should continue his march

southward along the headwaters of the Tongue, and strike west

toward the Little Big Horn. So strong was the impression upon my

mind and great my fear that Custer’s zeal would carry him

forward too rapidly, that the last thing I said to him when

bidding him good-by, after his regiment had filed past you when

starting on the march, was, ‘Now, Custer, don’t be greedy, but

wait for us.’ Poor fellow! Knowing what we do now, and what an

effect a fresh Indian trail seemed to have on him, perhaps we

were expecting too much to anticipate a forbearance on his part

which would have rendered coöperation between the two columns

practicable.”

The foregoing clearly shows that no doubt existed in the minds of

the Division Commanders and the third party present at the

conference as to what the instructions required and that those

instructions were not complied with.

Second: Dr. Andrews states that there was a listener at the last

conversation between Terry and Custer at the mouth of the Rosebud,

just before Custer began his fatal ride, and that his affidavit sets

up that:

“Terry said: ‘Use your own judgment and do what you think best if

you strike the trail and, whatever you do, Custer, hold on to your

wounded.’”

It is quite evident that this is the same affidavit which General

Miles refers to in his book. My attention was called to that

reference in the winter of 1896, and in behalf of the family and

friends of General Terry I asked to see the affidavit, saying that I

might wish to make a copy of it. My request was refused by General

Miles, with the further information that it had been in his

possession for nineteen years, which carried the date back to a time

when Colonel Miles was commanding a post in General Terry’s

Department. The value of the document could have been very readily

determined at that time by General Terry himself, and I am thankful

to say its worthlessness is still capable of proof.

The quotations given by Dr. Andrews would alone be sufficient to

condemn the paper with any one familiar with General Terry and the

situation.

It will be noticed that he is represented as saying, “If you strike

the trail.” Terry was sending, with Custer, Reno and six troops of

cavalry, who had followed the trail for many weary miles only three

days before, and there was no “if” in the case.

The other quotation is equally incredible. General Terry had an

enviable reputation throughout the army for his exceptional courtesy

on all occasions and under all circumstances, to all those serving

in his command. To have made the remarks quoted, “Whatever you do,

hold on to your wounded,” would have been tantamount to saying to

one of his Lieutenant-Colonels, to whom he was confiding the finest

command in his department, that he considered it necessary to

caution him on the elementary principle of the position assigned

him. To an officer of General Custer’s experience and gallantry such

a caution would have been far from agreeable, and such action would

have been entirely foreign to the life-long conduct of General

Terry.

But, fortunately, we are not dependent upon deductive evidence in

this instance. There are still living a good many people who were

witnesses of that “march past” and parting of Generals Terry and

Custer. By personal observation I positively know that any one,

General Gibbon excepted, who makes affidavit to the effect that, at

the said parting at the Rosebud, there was a conversation between

Terry and Custer to which he was the only listener, is guilty of

perjury.

When the notice came that the command was ready to take up its march

I was sitting with Terry and Gibbon. General Terry invited General

Gibbon to go with him and see it. They walked off a few yards from

the bank of the stream and stood together when Custer joined them.

The three remained together until the command had filed past and the

final good-by was said. Custer mounted his horse and rode off, and

Terry and Gibbon came back to where I had remained. The last remark

made to Custer was by Gibbon. If any change was made at that time in

Custer’s orders it was perforce known to Gibbon, who was alongside

of Terry, and the only one who was with him and Custer. Now let us

see what Gibbon said in a letter written to General Terry

twenty-seven years ago, when he could not foresee for what purpose

his words would be quoted:

“Except so far as to draw profit from past experience it is,

perhaps, useless to speculate as to what would have been the

result had _your plan_ been carried out. But I cannot help

reflecting that, in that case, my column, supposing the Indian

camp to have remained where it was when Custer struck it, would

have been the first to reach it; that with our infantry and

Gatling guns we should have been able to take care of ourselves,

even though numbering only two-thirds of Custer’s force.”

The only person actually in the presence of Terry and Custer at that

final parting, happened to be the third member of the conference,

who knew the “plan,” and on the fifth of the November following he

writes as above, of what would have been the result had “your plan”

(Terry’s conference plan) been carried out.

It so happened that I went over this whole subject with General

Gibbon personally only a short time before his death. He certainly

knew nothing of any change in the “conference plan” at that time.

Any historian who makes use of the affidavit General Miles had some

years ago, would do well to look carefully into the facts.

Third: Andrews states: “He (Hughes) adduced many interesting

considerations, but seemed to the writer not at all to justify his

views.”

I am, by no means, sure that this dissent would have disturbed me if

I had depended on my own judgment alone in submitting the

article[119] for publication, but it so happened that I did not do

so. The tragedy discussed being of an exceedingly grave character,

and both the responsible heads having passed away, rendered it

unusually important that every possible precaution should be taken

against mistakes. For this reason, after the “many interesting

considerations” were prepared for publication, I submitted the

article to different _competent military men_ with the simple

question, “Is it conclusive?”

The final review was made by General Henry L. Abbott, U. S. Army,

who enjoys a world-wide reputation for military ability and

scholarly attainments. The gentlemen who revised the article were

unanimously of the opinion that the statement was _absolutely

conclusive_, and with the support of such men I have felt little

anxiety about the criticisms that have been made.

Very truly yours,

R. P. HUGHES.

Thereafter I wrote again to General Hughes about some matters repeated

to me in conversation by General Carrington, who told me that Custer

actually got down on his knees to Terry and begged him, for the sake of

Custer’s honor and fame as a soldier, to get the orders detaining him at

Fort Lincoln revoked, so that he might be spared the disgrace of seeing

his regiment march to the front leaving him behind. Carrington’s

recollection was that the scene took place in Terry’s bedroom.

Here is General Hughes’ letter on that point:

New Haven, Conn.,

27th Nov., 1903.

My Dear Sir:

Yours of the 27th at hand. Carrington is all right except as to

location—the incident occurred in General Terry’s office in St.

Paul, corner Fourth and Wabashaw Streets. It drew from Terry a

request to the President to permit Custer to go with him, the answer

being through Sherman, “If Terry wishes Custer let him take him

along.” Just after notifying Custer of the reply and telling him he

would take him along, Custer met Ludlow on the street and made the

“swing clear” remark which is spoken of in Andrews’ history and is

referred to in my article in the journal. I shall have to apply for

a copy of the Secretary of War’s report for 1876, which has the

reports of Sheridan, Crook, Terry, Gibbon, Reno, etc., pages

439–487.[120]

Yours very truly,

R. P. HUGHES.

III.

Meanwhile I had communicated with Colonel Godfrey, who had already

furnished me with much data in addition to that contained in his

valuable and interesting paper, calling particular attention to some of

the statements made by General Hughes in his article in the _Journal_

_of the Military Service Institution_. From Colonel Godfrey I received

the following paper:

MEMORANDA FOR REV. C. T. BRADY

A semi-official account entitled “Record of Engagements with Hostile

Indians in the Division of the Missouri, from 1868 to 1882,” was

published by the Division of the Missouri. This paper is now being

reprinted in the _United States Cavalry Journal_, Fort Leavenworth,

Kansas. The part relating to the Little Big Horn, is in the October,

1903, number. This account reads:

“About two o’clock in the morning of July 25th, the column halted

for about three hours, made coffee, and then resumed the march,

crossed the divide, and by _eight o’clock_ were in the valley of one

of the branches of the Little Big Horn.”

This is misleading and not altogether true. We halted about two

A.M., till eight A.M., then marched till ten A.M., halted, and it

was not until nearly noon that we crossed the divide. We were in a

narrow valley. The march is correctly described in my article. The

inference is that Custer was so very eager that he crossed the

divide into the valley of the Little Big Horn and put himself where

he could be discovered. General Hughes’ article is a _special plea_

to clear General Terry from the odium that he and his family seemed

to think was heaped upon him for failure to push forward with the

information they had on June 25th and 26th, and that General

Custer’s family and friends were supposed to hold him (Terry)

responsible for the disaster in a measure. I do not remember a

charge of disobedience as having been made at any time during this

campaign; nor, on the other hand, do I recall that much was said

that Terry and Gibbon did not do as they thought best on June 25th

and 26th.

The marching distance from the Yellowstone, where Gibbon’s command

was crossed, to the Little Big Horn, was about forty-six miles. East

of the Big Horn, the country over which Gibbon’s forces marched, was

rough—bad lands. The Second Cavalry on its march June 25th, saw the

“big smoke” (from the fire in the bottom at the time of Reno’s

attack) and at once sent word to General Gibbon (and Terry) that

they thought a fight was going on, or something to that effect. I

don’t know when they saw this “big smoke,” but my recollection is

that it corresponded or tallied very well with the time of Reno’s

attack. The Second Cavalry got to the Little Big Horn, four or five

miles above the mouth, about nine-thirty, June 26th. They were then

distant from the battlefield about eight or ten miles—an infantry

officer says six miles. They arrived in the vicinity of our position

about eleven A.M., June 27th, nearly two days after the “signs,” the

“big smoke” of the fight, had been communicated.

That the country between the Yellowstone and the Little Big Horn was

rough; that the 25th of June was hot; that the water was scarce, we

all know; but we thought it strange that, after they learned from

the Crow scouts—say at ten-thirty, June 26th, on the Little Big

Horn—that a disaster had occurred, it took them so long to get a

move. Yet none of us blamed them for being cautious at that time.

General Terry was not an Indian fighter and would never have made a

success of getting Indians on the plains. The idea is

preposterous[121] that a force can march through the open country (a

great big country like we had) pass by the Indians fifty or sixty

miles south, then turn round and find them in the same place, and

crush them between that force and another from the opposite

direction. They don’t linger that way. Our march from eleven P.M.,

June 24th, was in a close country and not exposed—was in a close

valley, a branch of the Rosebud. The Indians who discovered us and

sent word to the village would have discovered our trail and

consequently informed them of our movements.

General Custer did not intend to attack until June 26th, the date

Terry was to be at the Little Big Horn.[122] Herandeen was the scout

that was to take the information through to Terry, but developments

made it necessary, in General Custer’s opinion, if we were to strike

the Indians at all, that we should do it at once. Even then he

expected only a running fight. Their stand and concentration were

unexpected, because the chance of “surprise” was gone, and he

probably did not send Herandeen, as was intended, to communicate

with Terry for the reason that he did not think he could get

through.

Now, suppose the Indians had been located on the headwaters of the

Rosebud or Tongue, or Powder, and not on the Little Big Horn, and we

had bumped up behind them on the north, should Custer have backed

away, sent a scout through to Terry, made a detour so as to get to

the south side? Terry’s instructions had fairly located the Indians,

but it was a mere _guess_.[123] On the 17th they had fought Crook to

a retreat, then they concentrated upon the Little Big Horn.

In my opinion, if our attack had been delayed even a few hours we

would not have found the Indians all in the village. When we got to

the divide their pony herds were still out grazing; when the attack

was made all herds had been driven into the village; they did not

have time to strike their tepees and steal away. I don’t believe

they had a long warning of our advance. The Indian runners had the

same, or a greater, distance to get back than we had to advance. It

was their evident purpose to drop out of sight of our scouts who

were in position for observation before daylight, and did not see

them returning down the valley on the trail. Therefore, they must

have made a wide detour.

Again, when they discovered us we were probably in bivouac and, at

all events, an ordinary day’s march distant from the village. The

time of warning, I think, could be safely conjectured as the time of

arrival of the few warriors that came out to meet the advance and

attack Reno. All those warriors that had their ponies handy, I

believe, were assembled at once to come out and meet the troops. The

rapid advance didn’t give the Indians a chance to collect their

belongings and mature any plans to escape; otherwise I believe the

expected “scattering” would have taken place. And in just so much

was the attack a “surprise.”

That General Custer deliberately disobeyed Terry’s orders I do not

believe. Custer was intensely in earnest and fully determined to

find the Indians and, when found, to attack them, even if it took

him back to the agencies. Suppose Custer had asked Terry “If I find

these Indians shall I attack, or wait for you?” Undoubtedly Terry

would have replied “Attack!” He was too good a soldier not to

appreciate opportunity, but he was not enough of a cavalryman or

Indian fighter to appreciate the flash-like opportunities for

hitting the Indians on the broad prairies.

Custer was what in these modern days is styled a “strenuous” man.

Terry was not. He was the personification of gentleness and

deliberateness. And besides, Terry’s instructions _gave the

necessary latitude_. He told Custer what he thought should be done

but, after all, left it to Custer’s judgment and discretion when so

nearly in contact with the enemy.[124] If Custer had passed on south

and the Indians had escaped, or had gone forth and attacked him, as

they had Crook, and defeated him, would these instructions have

shielded him? Not much. He would have been damned as cordially for

the failure of the expedition as he is now, by those same men, for

courting disaster. I have no doubt in my mind, that if Custer had

passed south even one more day, the Indians would have attacked us

as they had General Crook, and upon almost the same ground, just one

week before.[125]

Terry says, in his instructions, “He will indicate to you his own

views of what your action should be, and he desires that you should

conform to them unless _you should see sufficient reason for

departing from them_.”[126] Custer was an experienced war soldier, a

thorough cavalryman, and an experienced Indian campaigner. So why

not give him the benefit of “sufficient reason”? Were Terry’s

instructions “definite and explicit”? Terry himself says in his

order that “definite instructions” were “impossible.”

There was not an officer or soldier of the Seventh Cavalry but that

expected a fight when we were preparing to leave the mouth of the

Rosebud. Where the fight would take place we knew not, but I venture

to say that never was there a thought that the Indians would take a

position and wait there for us to go through a lot of manœuvers.

Reno’s scout had not brought any _definite_ information. I find my

notes (June 20th) say that it was generally thought the trail, when

they left it, was about _three weeks old_ and the indications showed

perhaps three hundred and fifty lodges. I don’t think General Terry

had any later information than Reno’s scout on which to guess the

location of the Indians on the Little Big Horn. General Custer’s

statement that he would follow the trail until he found the Indians,

even if it took us to the agencies on the Missouri or in Nebraska,

does not indicate that he expected them to wait in position on the

Little Big Horn or elsewhere. This statement was made after it had

been decided that we should go over the trail, June 21st, but

probably before the general instructions had been made out.

As it turned out I think Custer did make a mistake in going in with

a divided force, not that the division of itself would have been

fatal, but because Reno failed to hold a leg even if he couldn’t

skin.

If Custer had followed Reno the latter, in my opinion, would never

have dared to halt, or even hesitate, in his attack. If Reno had

even held to the bottom, the overwhelming forces would have been

divided. There was nothing in Reno’s past career that would indicate

confidence should not be placed in his courage. Custer could not

have anticipated a faint-hearted attack or that Reno would get

stampeded.

I believe that Reno was dismayed when he saw the showing in front of

him, and when he failed to see the “support” promised, I think he

lost his nerve, and then when his Ree scouts stampeded and he found

his force being surrounded in the bottom, I believe he abandoned

himself to his fears, then stampeded to the hills and lost his

reason, throwing away his ivory handled pistols. If Reno had held to

the bottom, Custer’s left flank (Keogh and Calhoun) would not have

been so quickly overwhelmed (for the Indians leaving Reno made that

envelopment), and it is reasonable to suppose Custer would have had

a better show to withdraw and rejoin other forces.

If Custer had followed up Reno he would have taken matters in his

own hands, held and concentrated his men in such manner as to

control the situation until Benteen and the packs came up. The

Indians, as a rule, will not stand punishment unless cornered. I

went over the ground in the bottom where Reno was when he concluded

to go to the hills, and I believe he could have held the position. I

talked the matter over with General Gibbon and he practically agreed

with me. I know many others think otherwise, including some who were

in that part of the fight.

I have doubts about the saving of Custer if Reno had advanced after

the packs joined us, for I think the fight was practically over

then. To have advanced before then might possibly have done

something in favor of Custer, but probably not. I am of the opinion

that part of the fight was settled quickly. Custer’s battalion had

practically no shelter and no time to make any. While a good many

horses were killed, I fear that most of those getting away carried

their reserve ammunition, and it didn’t take long to get away with

fifty rounds in a fight. With a different commander than Reno we

might have created a diversion by advancing as soon as the

ammunition packs came up, which was some little time before

McDougall arrived with all the packs. Reno was apparently too busy

waiting for further orders from Custer to take any initiative. Weir

asked permission to take his troop to reconnoiter in the direction

of the firing on Custer, and Reno would not give it. Weir started on

his own hook, and Edgerly (Weir’s Lieutenant) supposing permission

had been given for the troop, followed Weir with the troop. I think

Reno subsequently tried to make it appear that this advance of Weir

was by authority. I don’t think Reno was drunk, for I don’t believe

there was enough whiskey in the command to make a “drunk.”[127]

At the Reno Court of Inquiry I was asked if I thought Reno had done

all he could as a commanding officer, and I replied “No.” That was

about the effect of the question and answer. The testimony and

proceedings were reported in full in the Chicago _Times_. The New

York _Herald_ had an able correspondent, Mr. Kelly, that joined our

forces on the Yellowstone in July or August, and wrote, giving all

the information he could gather from all sources that pervaded the

command, that he could _get at_. There were a “whole lot” of

correspondents in the field after the fight, but Mr. Kelly was

considered one of the ablest. Being in the field till September

26th, we saw but few newspapers from the east.

E. S. GODFREY.

On the receipt of this memoranda I sent Colonel Godfrey all the papers

printed above, and asked him further to discuss these papers. They were

returned to me with the following letter, accompanied by these

additional notes:

Headquarters, Ninth United States Cavalry,

Fort Walla Walla, Washington,

February 12th, 1904.

My Dear Doctor:

I return to-day the letters sent to me by registered mail. I am very

sorry to have kept them so long from you, but I have been suffering

from a sprained knee which has laid me up, and have been otherwise

under the weather.

I feel that I have not in my memoranda done justice to the subject.

It is largely one of sentiment, and the best rule is to put yourself

in his place and act under the lights then exposed to view. That

Custer may have been actuated by other motives I do not doubt. The

main question to me was whether he was justified from a military

point, in a campaign against Indians, in his conduct of the march

and battle.

If we could have foreseen as we now look back and see!

Sincerely yours,

E. S. GODFREY.

ADDITIONAL NOTES BY COLONEL GODFREY.

The statement of General Sheridan, quoted by Hughes, was made in his

annual report for 1876, and of course from data furnished by General

Terry. It is but natural that he should reflect more or less the views

of Terry. He could have had only the newspaper and other unofficial

accounts. Of course I recognize that “unofficial accounts” very often

give more _inside_ information than the official report.

A word as to that affidavit. I don’t know anything about it and am ready

to take Hughes’ say-so as to what _officers_ were present, but I suggest

a possible solution: When Custer dismounted he had his orderly and

generally his flags with him; naturally the orderly would be somewhat

retired, and when Custer went to mount his horse, Terry may have gone

aside to accompany him and spoken the caution to him in a subdued voice

so that Gibbon would not have heard him, but the orderly might have

heard.[128]

In going over a lot of letters relating to the campaign, etc., I find

one from General J. S. Brisbin (now dead), then Major, commanding Second

Cavalry Battalion. It is dated January 1st, 1892, just two weeks before

his death. In it he is very bitter against Custer. He says that Custer

disobeyed:

“If not in letter, then in spirit, and I think and have ever thought, in

letter as well as spirit. Terry intended, if he intended anything, that

we should be in the battle with you. I was on the boat, steamer Far

West, Captain Grant Marsh, the night of the 21st, when the conference

took place between Gibbon, Custer and Terry, to which you refer, and I

heard what passed. Terry had a map and Custer’s line of march up the

Rosebud was blocked out on it by pins stuck in the table through the

paper. Terry showed Custer his line of march and, being somewhat

near-sighted as you know, Terry asked me to mark the line, and I did so

with a blue pencil. Custer turned off that line of march from the

Rosebud, just twenty miles _short_ of the end of the pins and blue

line.”

Just how much dependence can be placed on Brisbin’s statements I don’t

know. He may have been present at this conference, but Hughes makes no

mention of him; in fact, entirely ignores him and may have forgotten

him. I will make another quotation from Brisbin:

“I read the order you print as being the one given by Terry to Custer

for this march. If that is the order Custer got it is not the order

copied in Terry’s books at Department Headquarters. You will remember

that after Custer fell Terry appointed me chief of cavalry. I looked

over all the papers affecting the march and battle of Little Big Horn

and took a copy of the order sending you up the Rosebud. The order now

lies before me and it says ‘you should proceed up the Rosebud until you

ascertain definitely the direction in which the trail above spoken of

leads (Terry had already referred to the trail Reno followed). Should it

be found, as it appears almost certain that it should be found, to turn

toward the Little Big Horn, he thinks (that is, the Department Commander

thinks) that you should still proceed southward, perhaps as far as the

headwaters of the Tongue River, and _then_ (‘then’ underscored in order)

turn _toward Little_ Big Horn, feeling constantly, however, to your

left, so as to preclude the possibility of the escape of the Indians to

the south or southeast by passing around your left flank. It is desired

that you conform as nearly as possible to those instructions and that

you do not depart from them unless you shall see absolute necessity for

doing so.’”

That part of the quotation from “It is desired” to “necessity for doing

so,” is omitted in the order as printed in the report of General Terry.

Not having seen the original order I cannot vouch for either being the

true copy, but the omission looks peculiar to say the least, if omission

there was.[129]

I do not know that I can add very much to what I have already sent to

you on the question of disobedience. Here is a commander who has had

experience in war, civilized and Indian, sent in command of his regiment

against an unnumbered foe, located we know not where (although well

conjectured in the instructions, as it turned out); given instructions

to _preclude their_ escape; to coöperate with another column separated

from fifty to one hundred miles, having infantry and artillery, marching

over a rough, untried country. Now if that commander thought that to go

on farther south before he had located the foe (when he was on the

trail) was to leave an opening and an almost certainty of their escape,

if they wanted to do so, is it reasonable to expect him to leave the

trail and go on “in the air”? The commander who gives him his

instructions cannot be communicated with. Is this isolated commander not

allowed to act on his own responsibility, if he thinks he cannot

_preclude_ the escape by leaving the very trail that will locate the

enemy?

Hughes in his article, and the official reports, make it appear that we

were at or near the “Crow’s Nest” at daylight and crossed the divide at

eight A.M. The scouts were at the “Crow’s Nest,” but at eight A.M. we

took up the march to near the divide and “Crow’s Nest,” arriving at ten

o’clock, A.M.; that is, we were in the Rosebud Valley, one mile from the

divide. We did not cross the divide till nearly noon. Hughes seems to

pooh-pooh the idea that we were not to attack till the morning of the

26th. We had Custer’s own statement as to that. He said so himself when

he called the officers together on the night of June 24th and again

reiterated the statement before crossing the divide.

During the second or third day (23rd or 24th) up the Rosebud, several

times we thought we (I mean some of us) saw smoke in the direction of

the Tullock, and finally we spoke of it to the General (Custer) at one

of the halts. He said it could not be, that he had scouts over on that

side and they most certainly would have seen any such “signs” and report

to him, and he reiterated that there were scouts out looking toward

Tullock’s Valley. After this assurance we made it a point to watch this

“smoke business” and we discovered the illusion was due to fleecy clouds

on the horizon and the mirage, or heated air, rising from the hills on

that side. The air was full of dust from our marching columns, which

helped the illusion.

With reference to my slip that “about eighteen hundred had gone _from

one agency_ alone.” I took that from my diary, as I had been informed by

some one who got the information from Department Headquarters. I had

never seen the despatch and put down the item as it came to me. It was a

matter of common report in the camp.

Another point occurs to me: “For Custer to be in coöperating distance on

the only line of retreat if the Indians should run away.” (Hughes’

magazine article, page 36.) Hughes intimates that there was only one

line of retreat, presumably up the valley of the Little Big Horn. The

Indians certainly could have retreated over their traveled route, or

could have cut across the headwaters of the Tullock for the Yellowstone

had Custer gone south. Hughes seems to forget that an almost impassably

rough country—the Wolf Mountains—would lie between Custer and those

lines of retreat. Yet he would insist that it was good generalship to

leave these routes open to close up one other. The Indians were in light

marching order and could travel faster than Gibbon over the Tullock

Divide, and there would have been a long-distance, “tail-end” pursuit

for Custer when he descended the Little Big Horn (by following the

“plan”) and found the enemy had escaped over the very trail he had left

behind him, or had struck for the Yellowstone, passing Gibbon’s left.

It has been the criticism almost ever since Indian fighting began that

commanders were too prone to follow some strategic theory and fail to

bring the Indians to battle—give them a chance to escape. It was

Custer’s practice to take the trail and follow it, locate the enemy and

then strike home by a surprise attack. Custer knew the ridicule and

contempt heaped on commanders who had failed to strike when near the

enemy; or who had given the enemy opportunity to escape when nearly in

contact with them. Whatever may be the academic discussions as to his

disobedience, I hold that he was justified by sound military judgment in

making his line of march on the trail.[130]

IV.

General Hughes and Colonel Godfrey may be considered fairly enough as

representatives of the opposing views on the question. I thought it

would be well to have the papers discussed by an officer who might be

considered as taking an impartial view of the matter. I therefore sent

them to Brigadier-General Charles A. Woodruff, U. S. A. (retired), and

his review of the whole question is as follows:

103 Market Street,

San Francisco, May 3, 1904.

My Dear Dr. Brady:

I have read with a great deal of pleasure, your three articles on

“War with the Sioux,” and I have taken the liberty of making various

marginal notes and corrections on the manuscript. I have also read

the letters from General Miles, Professor Andrews, General Hughes,

and Colonel Godfrey.

General Miles, in his letter of November 20, 1903, dismisses the

matter very curtly. He says “Custer did not disobey orders,” and he

states as military dictum that, in sending General Custer

seventy-five or one hundred miles away, Terry could not indicate

what Custer should do, and that, practically, Custer was not under

any obligations to execute Terry’s orders, even when he found

conditions as Terry had expected and indicated.[131]

The order states explicitly “Should it—the trail up the Rosebud—be

found (as it appears almost certain it will be found) to turn toward

the Little Big Horn, then you should still proceed southward.” Now,

when he found that it turned toward the Little Big Horn, instead of

going south or stopping where he was and scouting south or southwest

and west and try to locate the village, or examining Tullock Creek,

or sending scouts to Gibbon, he made that fatal night march with the

deliberate intention of trying to locate and strike the village

before Gibbon could possibly get up.

Gibbon says (page 473, Vol. I., Report of the Secretary of War for

1876), “The Department Commander (Terry) strongly impressed upon him

(Custer) the propriety of not pressing his march too rapidly.”

Whether Custer’s written instructions were based upon a “guess” of

the actual condition, as Colonel Godfrey suggests, or had no

“military merit,” as General Miles states, the facts remain: First:

That they were based upon a “foresight” as good as the present

“hindsight,” which is often not the case. Second: That Custer

accepted them without demur. Third: No further information was

gained to suggest a modification, or, to use the words of the

letter: “unless you see sufficient reason for departing from them.”

On the contrary, the supposed turn of the trail was found to be an

actual fact.

Therefore, Custer did not obey his written instructions, in letter

or spirit, and had no proper military justification for not doing

so, unless General Terry afterwards told him, “Use your own judgment

and do what you think best,” which, in my opinion, would have made

the instructions advisory rather than positive orders. If these

facts (I ignore the unproduced affidavit) do not constitute

disobedience of orders, I do not see how it is possible for the

charge of disobedience of orders to hold against any man, under any

circumstances, when away from his superior.

Here is a trifling sidelight on the matter. On the night of June

23d, General Gibbon, in reply to an optimistic remark of mine, told

me in effect, “I am satisfied that if Custer can prevent it we will

not get into the fight.” The meaning I gathered was that Gibbon

thought that Custer was so eager to retrieve the good opinion that

he might have lost owing to his controversy over post traderships,

that he would strike when and where he could.

While Terry, with Gibbon’s command, was camped at Tullock’s Creek,

Saturday night and Sunday morning, June 24th and 25th, he was

looking for a message from Custer very anxiously, so I was told at

the time.

Colonel Godfrey speaks of the odium Terry’s family seemed to think

was “heaped upon him for the failure to push forward on the

information they had on June 25th and 26th.” Now let me say a few

words with reference to that.

The smoke that is spoken of as having been seen by Terry’s

command—and I saw it myself—was on the afternoon of June 25th. It

was occasioned, I understood, by attempts to drive some of Reno’s

stragglers out of the brush, and must have been somewhere from two

to four o’clock in the afternoon. Now let me quote from a telegram

of General Terry, dated June 27, and found on page 463, Vol. I.,

Report of the Secretary of War of 1876, to show that Gibbon’s

command did not linger by the wayside:

“Starting soon after five o’clock in the morning of the 25th, the

infantry made a march of twenty-two miles over the most difficult

country which I have ever seen. In order that the scouts might be

sent into the valley of the Little Big Horn, the cavalry, with the

battery, was then pushed on thirteen or fourteen miles farther,

reaching camp at midnight. The scouts were sent out at half-past

four in the morning of the 26th. They soon discovered three Indians,

who were at first supposed to be Sioux; but, when overtaken, they

proved to be Crows, who had been with General Custer. They brought

the first intelligence of the battle. Their story was not credited.

It was supposed that some fighting, perhaps severe fighting, had

taken place; but it was not believed that disaster could have

overtaken so large a force as twelve companies of cavalry. The

infantry, which had broken camp very early, soon came up, and the

whole column entered and moved up the valley of the Little Big

Horn.”

I want to say that the infantry broke camp about four o’clock on the

morning of the 26th. It had rained that preceding night and the lash

ropes of the packs were soaked with water and, as we moved, they

stretched continuously and we were stopping constantly to replace

the packs, and besides that, mind you, traveling in adobe mud was

very trying. I continue the quotation as follows:

“During the afternoon efforts were made to send scouts through to

what was supposed to be General Custer’s position, to obtain

information of the condition of affairs; but those who were sent out

were driven back by parties of Indians, who, in increasing numbers,

were seen hovering in General Gibbon’s front. At twenty minutes

before nine o’clock in the evening, the infantry had marched between

twenty-nine and thirty miles. The men were very weary and daylight

was fading. The column was therefore halted for the night, at a

point about eleven miles in a straight line from the mouth of the

stream. This morning the movement was resumed, and, after a march of

nine miles, Major Reno’s intrenched position was reached.”

It was the general opinion from indications found next day just

beyond where we halted for the night, that had we proceeded five

hundred yards more, we would have been in the midst of a night

attack from the Sioux Indians, who came to meet us as a means of

guarding their fleeing village.

In reference to the number of Indians, the same telegram of General

Terry’s says: “Major Reno and Captain Benteen, both of whom are

officers of great experience, accustomed to seeing large masses of

mounted men, estimate the number of Indians engaged at not less than

twenty-four hundred. Other officers think that the number was

greater than this. The village in the valley was about three miles

in length and about a mile in width. Besides the lodges proper, a

great number of temporary brushwood shelters were found in it,

indicating that many men, besides its proper inhabitants, had

gathered together there.”

I am under the impression now that we counted positions occupied by

twelve hundred lodges.

I coincide with your view that had Reno proceeded in his attack,

with the audacity that should characterize, and usually does

characterize, a cavalry charge, there would have been a different

story to tell; perhaps as many men would have been killed, but they

would have been divided among at least eight, if not eleven, troops

of cavalry rather than concentrated in five, which meant

annihilation for those.

I have been told, or was told at the time, that it was thought that

about sixty lodges were a few miles up the Little Big Horn above the

main village, and that, in the early morning, when Custer’s

proximity was discovered, that this small village, knowing that they

were but a mouthful for Custer’s command, hurriedly packed up and

dashed down the valley. It can readily be understood that sixty

lodges, with the horses and paraphernalia, moving rapidly down the

valley, might well create the impression that a very large force was

in retreat.

Now, if the Indian village was in retreat, Custer’s division of his

forces was not altogether bad. One command to hurry them up and

continue the stampede, his main force to attack them in the right

flank if they turned that way, which was most probable, Benteen’s to

attack them if they turned to the left, which was possible but not

as probable.

Unfortunately for Custer they were not fleeing. Colonel Godfrey

rather dwells upon the fact that Custer had to attack these Indians

or they would have gotten away from him. The fact is, as I have

stated above, when he left the Rosebud he did not know where they

were, had not located them, was not in visual contact even with

them, and a glance at the map will show that, standing on the

Rosebud, where the trail left it to go over to the Little Big Horn,

Custer was in the best possible position for intercepting these

Indians on three of their four lines of retreat. For having passed

into the Little Big Horn Valley, there were only four practicable

routes of flight for the Indians, north, toward Gibbon, or east,

northeast, or southeast. From the point where he left the Rosebud,

Custer was in a position to strike either one of the three last

lines of flight, whereas, if, after making the forced night march

with his fatigued animals, he had struck the Little Big Horn, and a

reconnaissance had shown that the village had left the Little Big

Horn, going northeast, on the 24th of June, he would have been two

days’ march behind them.

Had he sent a scout, on the night of the 24th, to Gibbon, whose

exact whereabouts was almost known to him, that scout would have

reached Terry or Gibbon, on Tullock’s Fork, a few miles from the

Yellowstone, on the morning of Sunday, and by Sunday night Gibbon’s

command would have been within less than ten miles of what is

designated as Custer Peak, the hill on which Custer perished. Then,

with Custer moving on the morning of the 26th, Gibbon’s infantry and

Gatling guns could have forced those Sioux out of the village on to

the open ground, extending from the Little Big Horn to the Big Horn,

and Custer’s twelve troops of cavalry and Gibbon’s four, sixteen

troops in all, between them would have made the biggest killing of

Indians who needed killing ever made on the American continent since

Cortez invaded Mexico. While this is a speculation, and an idle one,

it is to my mind a rather interesting one.

I think myself that General Hughes makes out his case in reference

to that affidavit that General Miles has so carefully treasured for

so many years. It would be a very interesting historical document,

but it would have been more satisfactory if it had been produced

while Terry or General Gibbon or both were alive. I doubt very much

whether Major Brisbin’s supposed copy of the order book at Terry’s

headquarters was compared with the original after Brisbin had made

it.

I regret to say that my paper upon this campaign was lost, and I

have not even the notes from which it was written. I found one brief

page, which I quote merely as indication of my reasons for believing

that there were more than two thousand Indian warriors in the battle

of June 25th: “Before May 10th of ’77 more than one thousand

warriors came in and surrendered, not including the warriors killed

in that battle or the half dozen other engagements, nor the

individual warriors by the hundreds that sneaked back to the

agencies and those who went to British America under Sitting Bull,

numbering, it was understood, over two thousand warriors.”

I do not think you are too severe upon Major Reno. I conversed with

most of the officers of that command at one time or another, while

in the field, and nearly all were very pronounced in their severe

criticism of Reno. The testimony at the Reno court of inquiry was

less severe than the sentiments expressed within a few days, weeks,

and months after the occurrence. That was perhaps natural. It is

barely possible that some of it was due to the fact that Captain

Weir, one of General Custer’s most pronounced friends and one of

Major Reno’s most bitter critics, died before the court of inquiry

met.

I do not think that Sturgis, Porter, etc., were captured and

tortured. I found most of the lining of Porter’s coat in the camp,

which showed that the bullet that struck him must have broken the

back and passed in or out at the navel. My theory has been, with

reference to those whose bodies could not be found, that most of

them made a dash into the Bad Lands in the direction of the mouth of

the Rosebud, where they had last seen General Gibbon’s command. It

would have been easy for them to have perished from thirst in the

condition they were in, and if they reached the Yellowstone and

undertook to swim it, the chances were decidedly against their

succeeding.

Very sincerely,

C. A. WOODRUFF,

Brigadier-General, United States Army, Retired.

V.

So soon as this appendix as above was in type, I sent printed proofs of

it to Generals Hughes, Woodruff, and Carrington, and to Colonel Godfrey

for final revision and correction before the matter was plated. In

returning the proof, General Carrington and Colonel Godfrey both add

further communications, which I insert below.

I also sent the same proof to Mrs. Elizabeth B. Custer, widow of General

Custer, and to Mrs. John H. Maugham, his sister, with an expression of

my willingness—nay, my earnest desire—to print any comment they or

either of them might wish to make upon the question under discussion.

At Mrs. Custer’s request I sent the appendix to Lieutenant-Colonel Jacob

L. Greene, U. S. V., now president of the Connecticut Mutual Life

Insurance Company, who was Custer’s adjutant-general during the war and

his life-long friend thereafter. His able defense of his old commander

is printed as the last of this interesting series of historic documents.

Desiring that Custer, through his friends, may have the final word, I

print it without comment, save to say that I fully join Colonel Greene

in his admiration for the many brilliant qualities and achievements of

his old commander.

GENERAL CARRINGTON’S LETTER

Hyde Park, Mass., Sept. 25, 1904.

Dear Dr. Brady:

I appreciate the favor of reading the proof-sheets of the appendix

to your papers upon the Custer massacre. When it occurred I was

greatly shocked by an event so similar in its horrors to that of the

Phil Kearney massacre, in 1866. A previous interview with General

Custer came to mind, and I attended the sessions of the court of

inquiry at Chicago, taking with me, for reference, a map which I had

carefully prepared of that country, with the assistance of James

Bridger, my chief guide, and his associates.

The evidence indicated that when Custer reached the “Little Big

Horn” (so known upon that map) and sent Benteen up stream, with

orders that, “if he saw any Indians, to give them hell,” ordering

Reno to follow the trail across the river and move down toward the

Indian camps, while he moved down the right bank, detaching himself

from the other commands, he practically cut the Indians off from

retreat to the mountains, which was part of his special mission;

but, in the flush of immediate battle, lost thought of the combined

movement from the Big Horn, which had for its purpose the

destruction of the entire Indian force by overwhelming and

concentrated numbers.

Indeed, the court of inquiry did not so much discredit the conduct

of Reno as reveal the fact that he faced a vastly superior force

with no assurance that he could have immediate support from the

other battalions, so vital in a sudden collision with desperate and

hard-pressed enemies. The succeeding fight, on the defensive,

protracted as it was, with no information of Custer’s position, or

possible support from him, was a grave commentary upon the whole

affair.

The interview with General Custer referred to was in 1876, when,

upon leaving the lecture platform of the Historical Society in New

York, he made the remark, on our way to his hotel, “It will take

another Phil Kearney massacre to bring Congress up to a generous

support of the army.” We spent several hours together, while he

discussed his troubles with the authorities at Washington. He

recalled the events of 1867, and felt that General Sherman had

severely judged his operations on the Republican, but that the time

was near when he might have an opportunity to vindicate himself, and

that, “if he again had a chance he would accomplish it or die in the

attempt.” He was practically on a leave of absence, and its

extension was not his choice. Colonel Smith was sick, and he claimed

the right to command his regiment, since it had been ordered to

report as part of General Terry’s command.

The famous sutlership scandal was fully discussed, and here there

has been confusion as to Custer’s position. He had nothing to do

with the popular complaint that Belknap was farming out sutlerships

for personal emolument. Neither is it technically correct that the

Secretary of War could make original appointments of the kind

complained of. Post commanders, with their councils of officers, had

both the selection of their sutler, and fixed the prices of articles

to be sold. The Secretary simply issued the appointment thus

designated, unless for good reasons declined, thereby requiring

another selection by the officers. In cases of troops in campaign,

or detached, or on distant service, the commanding General confirmed

the officer’s choice. Custer’s position was manly, legal, and just;

but his assertion of this right, so far as made, offended Belknap,

at the expense of officers whose rights were overruled by

non-military influence.

Custer was _not under charges_ that would militate against his

assignment to the rightful command of his regiment when ordered into

field service. I did not hesitate to urge him to press his claim,

but could not entertain the idea that he would go to Bismarck, or

otherwise to make his claim in person, except through Washington

Headquarters.

If ever a man had an incentive to dare odds with his regiment, this

fearless fighter and rider, whose spirit reached the verge of frenzy

in battle, was the man for the occasion.

Through all the papers cited by you, there runs the same subtle

suggestion that he who, as an independent commander of aggressive

cavalry in the Civil War, was almost expected to take into the field

a large discretion as to his actions (whereby he had formerly

achieved success) when confronted by the enemy, within striking

distance in the Little Big Horn Valley, lost all sense of danger and

all thought of prescribed details of action in the confidence that,

somehow, the old Seventh could not be whipped by any savage force

whatsoever!