The Last Days of George Armstrong Custer (13 page)

Rosser had been born into a farming family on October 15, 1836, in Campbell County, Virginia, and moved thirteen years later to Panola County, Texas, from whence Rosser entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1856. Custer roomed next door and the two young men became intimate friends—Rosser tall and swarthy with jet-black hair and piercing black eyes; Custer slender with wavy blond hair, blue eyes, and fair complexion. This close relationship sadly ended in late April 1861—two weeks before graduation—when Rosser resigned from the Academy to join the Confederate army.

Rosser was commissioned a lieutenant and assigned duty as an instructional officer with the Washington Artillery. He was in command of a company of that unit three months later at the First Battle of Bull Run and was promoted to captain two months later. Rosser distinguished himself while commanding the battery during the Peninsula Campaign and the Seven Days' battles and was wounded in May 1862 at Mechanicsville—the first of nine wounds he would suffer during the war.

He was promoted to lieutenant colonel of artillery while he recovered from his wound and when he returned to duty was promoted by Major General Jeb Stuart to colonel of the Fifth Virginia Cavalry. On September 28, 1863, he was promoted to brigadier general and assumed command of the Laurel Brigade. His brigade was in constant action, including the May 11, 1864, battle at Yellow Tavern, where General Stuart was killed. Rosser faced his friend Custer as an opposing general on the field of battle on several occasions, with Custer generally—with one exception at Trevilian Station—gaining the upper hand.

Throughout the war, Rosser proved himself an excellent field commander, but eventually his depleted ranks presented little challenge to the Union horsemen. In spite of the lack of success, he was promoted to major general on November 1, 1864, and remained in the Valley until March 1865, when he joined the main army.

After the war, Rosser and his wife moved to Baltimore, where he briefly studied law and became superintendent of the National Express Company. He soon accepted the position as an assistant engineer in the construction of the Pittsburgh and Connellsville Railroad. Rosser left that position in the spring of 1870 to join the Northern Pacific Railroad. In February 1871, he was appointed chief engineer of the Dakota Division at Fargo.

Custer later wrote about their relationship on the Yellowstone Expedition:

Scarcely a day passed, during the progress of the expedition from the Missouri to the Yellowstone, that General Rosser and I were not in each other's company a portion of the time as we rode in our saddles, boot to boot, climbed together unvisited cliffs, picked our way through trackless canyons, or sat at the same mess table or about the same campfire. During the strolling visits we frequently questioned and enlightened each other as to the unexplained or but partially understood battles and movements in which each had played a part against the other.

Although the expedition moved along at its normal pace, it was inevitable that the headstrong Custer and Colonel Stanley, who has been described as “a squat, humorless, peevish alcoholic … the antithesis of Custer,” would come to loggerheads. Neither man had much respect for the other.

Shortly after the expedition was under way, a drunken Stanley, who had invited another sutler along for his infantry, ordered that Augustus Baliran, a sutler attached to the cavalry, return to Fort Rice by that evening or face death by hanging. The incident was reported to Custer, who reminded Stanley that permission had been given to Baliran to accompany the Seventh Cavalry. Stanley relented but ordered Colonel Frederick Grant to destroy Baliran's stock of whisky. Instead of carrying out the order, the kindhearted Grant advised the sutler to temporarily distribute his stores to various Seventh Cavalry officers for safekeeping. Stanley rescinded the order when he sobered up.

Another matter of contention concerned the presence of Custer's black cook, Mary Adams, and the cast-iron stove that he had brought along. Mary's preparation of wild game made Custer's mess extremely popular, and this apparently did not sit well with Stanley. The colonel ordered that Custer rid himself of the stove, which was nonmilitary equipment, but it survived several attempts to have it abandoned.

The column halted on July 1 at Muddy Creek, which was overflowing and would require the infantrymen to construct a makeshift bridge in order to cross. Custer, whose troops Stanley had expected to assist with the crossing, had, under his own initiative, marched a detachment of his cavalry some distance ahead of the main body. He then dispatched a messenger requesting that Stanley send him forage and rations. An angry Stanley ordered that Custer return at once and consider himself under arrest.

The Seventh Cavalry with its insolent commander was exiled to march at the rear of the column. Tom Rosser reasoned with Stanley, advising that common sense dictated that the cavalry lead the way. A sober Stanley agreed and not only lifted the arrest but also apologized to Custer, asked his forgiveness, and vowed to quit drinking. Regardless of promises, Stanley remained in an intoxicated state, which for all intents and purposes permitted Custer to assume leadership of the expedition.

In mid-July, Custer led two companies on a treacherous march through the Badlands to reach the Yellowstone River where the steamer
Far West
waited with provisions and mail. They constructed a supply depot on the south bank of the Yellowstone about eight miles above the mouth of Glendive Creek and left Captain Frederick W. Benteen and two companies behind to guard “Stanley's Stockade.”

The party atmosphere ended when the expedition moved into the Yellowstone River Valley, an area known to be populated by the Lakota Sioux tribe. The order of march was Custer's cavalry, followed by the surveyors with their transits and maps, and the infantry brought up the rear.

Custer, his favorite scout, Bloody Knife, and a small detachment would normally ride in advance of the column. Bloody Knife became concerned by the frequency of fresh Indian sign and warned Custer to be prepared for an attack.

Custer generally heeded the advice or information provided by Bloody Knife without question. There was no doubt that a bond of trust had developed between the two men, although their time together had been brief.

Bloody Knife (Arikara name: Nee si Ra Pat; Sioux name: Tamina WeWe) was born sometime between 1837 and 1840 in Dakota Territory to a Hunkpapa Sioux father and Arikara (Ree) mother. He lived with the Sioux, who were traditional enemies of the Arikara, and was discriminated against due to his mixed blood and treated as an outcast. This resulted in a deep hatred for that tribe and in particular one of his peers, Gall, with whom Bloody Knife developed a feud that endured for years. Sitting Bull, who had adopted Gall as a younger brother, also subjected the mixed-blood boy to abuse.

When Bloody Knife was about fifteen years of age, his mother left her husband and returned to her people at Fort Clark, an American Fur Company trading post on the upper Missouri near present-day Stanton, North Dakota. He was able to make good use of his multicultural background in the early 1860s when he carried mail between Fort Totten and other Missouri forts. Many mail carriers were killed by Sioux on this route, which made it difficult to employ riders, but Bloody Knife almost always got the mail through on time. He also occasionally worked as an army scout and a runner and hunter for the American Fur Company.

The animosity between Bloody Knife and Gall nearly resulted in Gall's death during the winter of 1865–66. Bloody Knife was serving as a scout with a detachment of soldiers who went to arrest Gall, who was visiting a Sioux camp south of Fort Berthold. Gall attempted to escape, and was bayoneted. Bloody Knife stepped forward with intentions of shooting his enemy in the head but was stopped by an officer who believed that Gall was already dead. Gall miraculously survived and became a war chief with whom to be reckoned.

In 1866, Bloody Knife married an Arikara woman named either She Owl or Young Owl Woman, who would give birth to at least one daughter and one son. The daughter, however, evidently died young, according to a grave marker at Fort Buford that bears the inscription: “Daughter of Bloody Knife, December 28, 1870, Disease.”

Bloody Knife enlisted as a corporal in the army's Indian scouts at Fort Stevenson in May 1868 and soon acquired a serious problem with alcohol, which may have contributed to his desertion that September. He was, however, promoted to lance corporal in 1872.

When Fort Abraham Lincoln was established in June 1872, Bloody Knife was a leader of the Arikara scouts attached to it. Bloody Knife was hired for the Yellowstone Expedition of 1873, which was where he met George Armstrong Custer for the first time. He quickly became Custer's favorite scout by proving himself a faithful companion and invaluable at reading sign.

By early August, the expedition was deep into hostile territory, camped on the Yellowstone several miles downstream from the Tongue River. At noon on August 4—with the temperature hovering around 110 degrees—Custer, Captain Myles Moylan, First Lieutenants Tom Custer and James Calhoun, and Second Lieutenant Charles A. Varnum, with about ninety cavalrymen from companies A and B, had taken a break from a scout to halt in a grove of cottonwood trees near the mouth of the Tongue River (the site of present-day Miles City, Montana). The horses had been turned out to graze, the men were lazing around, and Custer was taking a nap when pickets shouted, “Indians!” The cavalrymen began firing at the small group of warriors who were attempting to scatter the horses.

Custer, with his brother and Jimmy Calhoun, mounted twenty men and gave chase. Moylan was ordered to advance more slowly with the main body. After riding about two miles up the valley, Custer became suspicious and halted his squadron. Custer, accompanied by two orderlies, cautiously continued after the Sioux, in his words, “to develop their intentions.” Those intentions quickly became known when three hundred mounted warriors burst from a stand of timber and charged. It had been a trap.

Custer wheeled his thoroughbred, Dandy, and easily outdistanced the Indians to arrive back where he had left his small detachment. Moylan brought up the remainder of the squadron, and the troopers were formed into a skirmish line in the cottonwoods behind the bank of a dry streambed. The men would rise up to fire point-blank into the onrushing warriors with effective volleys that discouraged each advance. The Sioux pulled back, dismounted, and began to creep through the tall grass toward the position of the cavalrymen.

Custer and his troopers spent the long, hot afternoon defending their position against repeated assaults. The Sioux eventually set fire to the grass and advanced behind the smoke but were repulsed each time.

By late in the afternoon, ammunition was running low when—just like the script of a Western movie—the rest of the cavalry could be observed riding to the rescue. A confident Custer mounted his men and surprised the Sioux by executing a counterattack. The Indians broke and ran, and the cavalrymen chased them several miles down the valley. Custer lost only one man and two horses in the skirmish.

While Custer had been pinned down, about thirty Sioux had happened upon veterinarian Dr. John Honsinger and sutler Augustus Baliran as the two men, unaware of danger, rode ahead of the main body to join Custer. Honsinger and Baliran were brutally murdered. Most accounts relate that Private John H. Ball was also killed, although evidence does exist to suggest that he had deserted.

The command pushed up the Yellowstone until—on August 8—scout Bloody Knife, riding with Custer in the advance, discovered the site of a recently abandoned Indian village. The scout estimated that it consisted of five hundred lodges, which would indicate the presence of perhaps as many as one thousand warriors.

Custer received permission from Stanley to follow this hot trail found by Bloody Knife and immediately dashed off with eight companies and the Arikara scouts.

After a thirty-six hour march, the trail led to the banks of the Yellowstone near the mouth of the Bighorn River. Bloody Knife swam across to determine that the tracks continued on the south side, but the river at this point was too deep and swift for the cavalry to cross. Custer decided to camp for the night and would resume attempts to cross the following morning, August 11.

At daybreak, however, the Sioux made their presence known. Hundreds of warriors hidden in the cottonwoods on the opposite bank opened up with withering rifle fire and a torrent of arrows. While the women and children gathered on the bluffs to watch, hundreds more warriors began swimming the river above and below Custer's position.

Custer reacted quickly and deployed sharpshooters to engage and, he hoped, pin down the entrenched warriors. To counter the threat from the flanks, he dispatched two companies commanded by Captain Thomas H. French down the valley and two companies under Captain Verlin Hart up the valley. Hart posted twenty men under Second Lieutenant Charles Braden in a forward position on a benchland rising from the valley.

Braden's detachment bore the brunt of the initial assault. His small unit bravely repelled four concerted efforts by the superior force to breach their line. During the battle, Braden's left thigh was shattered by a bullet and he fell critically wounded.

Custer was seemingly everywhere, handling his command with the calm deliberation and battlefield instincts that he had developed in the Civil War. He rode along his line shifting companies to meet each attack or to flush out groups of warriors from nearby ravines, all the while exposing himself to a vicious onslaught of bullets and arrows.

Finally, Stanley arrived on the field and began lobbing artillery shells into the timber across the river. Custer decided to seize the initiative. He mounted his entire 450-man command, signaled for the band to strike up “Garry Owen,” and ordered a charge. He once again had surprised his enemy with this bold tactic. The Sioux responded by scattering and racing away as fast as their ponies could run. The cavalrymen chased the fleeing Indians for nine miles before losing the trail.