The Last Days of George Armstrong Custer (14 page)

The Seventh Cavalry had suffered three men killed, four wounded, and eight horses lost during the engagement. Custer estimated that about forty Indians had been killed in both August battles. The identity of the Indians who attacked the Seventh Cavalry has been a matter of speculation—although Frank Grouard, a future army scout who was known to have been adopted by Sitting Bull, claimed to have participated.

Following this skirmish, the survey moved up the Yellowstone another thirty miles before halting on August 15 at Pompey's Pillar, a solitary sandstone landmark some 380 miles west of Fort Rice that had been named by Lewis and Clark. The column had settled in to rest for the day when a group of Sioux warriors opened fire on some swimming soldiers, who were scared and scattered but were otherwise unharmed. Custer chose not to pursue the hostiles.

Had the Sioux known that the cheap transportation provided by new railroads would eventually lead to the extermination of the buffalo, they might have offered more resistance to the Yellowstone Expedition. By this time the southern herds were steadily being decimated, and the northern herds were soon to follow. By 1883, all but a few small herds had vanished, and with them the fortunes of the Plains Indian tribes, who were dependent on this beast for life itself.

The Plains Indians not only regarded the buffalo as sacred, but these nomadic hunters also viewed a herd of these shaggy animals with the same prospects that modern consumers might contemplate a spacious shopping mall or grocery supercenter. There in one centralized location was nearly every item required not solely for basic survival but also as a dependable source for those luxuries that provided a comfortable standard of living.

Best of all, this shaggy beast had covered the plains in abundance. During the early nineteenth century, buffalo herds were estimated to total upwards of 75 to 100 million, an impressive figure considering that each animal weighed around a ton, with most bulls tipping the scale at a ton and a half. Nowhere else in the annals of food resources can such an infinite provider of sustenance be documented.

There has been a continuing debate about whether or not the by-products derived from the buffalo were indeed vital to the health and welfare of the average Plains Indian. Granted, there was an abundance of other wild game and those animals were assuredly a part of the menu and wardrobe. But these nomadic people sustained a thriving self-sufficiency by ingeniously utilizing every portion of the buffalo but the bellow.

The most obvious, and important, benefit was food. Buffalo were truly a four-legged commissary. The muscle was high in protein, and other parts supplied more than the daily requirements of vitamins and minerals. What was not readily consumed could be preserved for the long winter months. One manner was by drying the meat under the sun, another by pounding berries and fruit into that dried meat to create pemmican—a treat that provided every element necessary for a balanced diet.

Within the village proper, the first thing to catch the eye would be the structures, the lodges or tepees, which were constructed mainly from buffalo hides. Inside those lodges were warm coats and sleeping robes also fashioned from those same hairy hides and summer blankets made soft by scraping off the hair and tanning both sides. These dressed hides were also sewn into shirts, leggings, moccasins, and women's dresses.

Green skins made serviceable kettles for drinking and cooking. Buffalo hair was braided into ropes, lariats, and reins for ponies. Horns were used for ladles, cups, and other containers. Bull boats to traverse the rivers were made watertight with stretched hides. Hooves were boiled down to make glue for many applications. Bones could be carved into arrowheads, spear tips, or needles. Sinew for bowstrings. Skin for battle shields. Axes and hoes from shoulder blades. Sledge runners from ribs. Paint from blood. Hair to stuff pillows. Fly swatters and whisk brooms from the tail. The black beard an ornament to adorn clothing. Fuel for campfires from buffalo chips, the dried droppings. Primitive toys, including baby rattles, were constructed from various parts. And the list goes on and on.

Another advantage was that the buffalo was relatively easy to kill in whatever numbers desired. As white hunters quickly discovered when one fell, the others simply continued grazing and if the herd should happen to stampede it could be directed toward a cliff and chased over to die at the bottom.

Other game may have collectively provided the bulk of the aforementioned products, but the buffalo offered everything. It was the difference between a shopping trip to the mall compared to one to the corner convenience store.

Thus, the destruction of the great buffalo herds led to the demise of this major aspect of traditional Plains Indian lifestyle. And the railroads, which brought the hunters and made it easy to ship millions of hides to Eastern tanners, were largely responsible for those huge piles of weathered bones that were scattered about the plains as a tragic reminder of man's greed and disregard for other cultures—or for the buffalo. Railroads advertised that passengers could actually shoot buffalo while the train moved along the tracks, and the thousands of carcasses that littered the nearby landscape attested to that fact. The expanding trail of railroad tracks also chased the great herds of buffalo away from traditional ranges, which caused the various nomadic Indian tribes to follow where they came into conflict with white settlements and wagons moving west.

On August 16, Custer's column headed east on a difficult yet uneventful return march overland to the Musselshell River and down the Missouri, finally reaching Fort Abraham Lincoln on September 21—several days before Stanley's plodding foot soldiers and wagon train made their appearance. Stanley estimated that the expedition had covered 935 miles in ninety-five days.

Ironically, on the day that Custer reached Fort Lincoln, Jay Cooke & Company, the sponsor of bonds for the Northern Pacific Railroad, collapsed, bankrupting the railroad. The demise of that firm was followed by those of numerous banks and even caused the temporary closure of the New York Stock Exchange in what became known as the Panic of 1873. The end of track would be stalled at Bismarck for six years until the Northern Pacific could raise the resources to resume operations westward.

But the expedition into the Yellowstone had afforded George Armstrong Custer his first taste of battling the Sioux. It would not be his last.

 

Six

Black Hills, Red Spirits

George Armstrong Custer was showered with further accolades as the country's foremost Indian fighter for his actions during the Yellowstone Expedition—not to mention strengthening his relationship with the Northern Pacific Railroad. His official report of the campaign, which was published by
The New York Times
and the
Army and Navy Journal,
was well received by an adoring public.

Upon his return, he was issued orders from the War Department assigning him the command of the newly established Fort Abraham Lincoln—five miles south of Bismarck, Dakota Territory, on the Missouri River—which was still under construction when the Seventh Cavalry arrived. Six companies of the Seventh and three infantry companies would be posted at the fort, while the four additional cavalry companies, under the command of Major Joseph G. Tilford, would be stationed at Fort Rice, twenty-five miles downstream. Major Marcus A. Reno and companies I and D were wintering at Fort Totten, where they would resume escort duty for the Northern Boundary Survey in the spring.

Almost immediately, Custer departed for Monroe, Michigan, and returned with Libbie to their new duty station in November. The regimental band struck up “Home Sweet Home” and then “Garry Owen” as the officers and wives warmly welcomed the first couple.

The Custers settled into their quarters and presided over the busy winter social season at the isolated fort. There were drama performances to participate in and they would enjoy hunts, sleigh rides, monthly company balls, and nightly gatherings for conversation and playing charades and card games. On many occasions guests would assemble around the piano that had been rented in St. Paul to sing all the favorites. Custer spent much time reading and writing and, with no school at the fort, volunteered to tutor several children.

From all accounts, the atmosphere that winter at Fort Lincoln was quite congenial, which was rare at military posts where petty jealousies were known to disrupt harmony. One visitor to the Custer home said: “One was permitted to receive the courtesies of the happiest home I ever saw, where perfect love and confidence reigned. The whole regiment with one or two exceptions seemed imbued with the spirit of its commander, and in fact so close was he to his officers, that when off duty one would be led to think that all were brothers, and happy brothers at that.”

Perhaps that cordiality could be attributed to the fact that notorious Custer critic Captain Frederick W. Benteen as well as Major Marcus Reno, with whom Custer shared cool relations, were stationed elsewhere.

Unfortunately, that happy home suffered tragedy on the night of February 6, 1974, when the Custer residence burned to the ground. The attic had been insulated with “warm paper,” a petroleum-based product, which caught fire, and it consumed the entire house. Carpenters began work on a new two-story house that would meet Libbie's request for a bay window in the parlor.

Fort Abraham Lincoln was located on the fringes of Sioux country and therefore was rarely threatened. An Indian raiding party in April stampeded a herd of civilian mules, which Custer and all six companies recovered after a chase. Again in May, Custer rode out in an effort to prevent a rumored Sioux attack against the Arikara and Mandan but was unable to make contact. Otherwise, duty settled into the typical monotonous routine of an isolated frontier post that was known to provoke troopers into desertion, bad behavior, or drowning themselves with whisky.

Winter in Dakota Territory, however, meant blizzards dropping huge piles of snow and barbed-wire winds that tore through the countryside. It was a difficult time for man or beast, especially the Indians, whose ponies would become weak from lack of forage, and their own supplies would quickly dwindle. This was the season when patrols from the fort were limited and the officers and men settled in, waiting for spring.

While Fort Lincoln shivered in the arctic blasts, General Phil Sheridan was in Chicago making plans. He had set his sights on establishing a post that would be strategically located near the Red Cloud and Spotted Tail agencies for the purpose of discouraging the Sioux from raiding into Nebraska and the travel routes to the south. Ideally, this fort would be located somewhere in the western portion of the Great Sioux Reservation—in the vicinity of the Black Hills—territory that had been given to the Indians by provisions of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 and had been deemed sacred by that tribe.

The Revolutionary War patriots had been engaged in fighting to gain independence from England when a small band of Sioux Indians led by warrior Standing Bear—prompted by their nomadic instinct—had walked from their homeland in Minnesota to visit for the first time a wilderness region along the South Dakota–Wyoming border that runs roughly one hundred miles north to south and sixty miles east to west and was known as the Black Hills.

This group of adventurers were members of the Teton or Lakota Nation of Sioux who, along with their brethren the Dakota and Nakota Sioux, had migrated from the South in the sixteenth century to settle near the headwaters of the Mississippi in northern Minnesota. The three groups over time had split into distinct nations, each speaking a different dialect and occupying their own territory, and collectively were known as “Sioux.” That title, however, a French interpretation of the Chippewa word
nadoue-is-iw
meaning “little snake” or “enemy,” served only as a genetic name for the three separate nations.

Standing Bear's Lakota Sioux hunting party were not by any means the first American Indians to view the Black Hills, for its dominion had been the matter of contention between a number of tribes for centuries. These particular explorers, however, regarded the discovery as if it had been preordained by their Creator. There was apparently an awakening within their souls that spoke to tell them that the innate spirits that dwelled within the Black Hills had reserved that place for them—as if some mystical magnet was calling home those who had wandered for so long. Although other tribes may have discovered this place before them, the Lakota were the first to recognize that it was sacred land.

Standing Bear returned home from his trek and spoke in glowing terms about his wondrous discovery. His assessment of the Black Hills affected his people with such a seductive force that they abandoned the north and journeyed en masse to that unknown territory to establish a homeland for the Lakota Sioux Nation. The Dakota and Nakota remained in Minnesota.

The seven principal Lakota Sioux bands that comprised the tribe—Blackfeet, Brulé, Hunkpapa, Miniconjou, Oglala, Sans Arc, Two Kettle—became the final group of Native Americans to arrive in that part of the country.

The emigrating Lakota declined to settle permanently inside the boundaries of the Black Hills, for it was considered sacred land. For three-quarters of a century they would rarely make camp out of sight of this place they now called Paha Sapa, “Hills That Are Black,” and would enter only to hunt, cut lodge poles, hide out after raiding parties, or to perform ceremonies.

Each autonomous band established its own territory throughout Montana, Wyoming, Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakota Territory but enjoyed greater numbers than their rivals due to a supportive alliance and thereby became the strongest tribe on the Great Plains. They acquired proprietorship of the area by force from the Cheyenne, who years earlier had pushed aside the Comanche, who years earlier had pushed aside the Crow. Land was taken, controlled, and protected by violence, and no tribe was better at gaining and holding territory than the Lakota Sioux.