The Last Days of George Armstrong Custer (7 page)

Custer's orders called for him to scout south to the forks of the Republican River, turn northward toward Fort Sedgwick, which had access to the Union Pacific Railroad, where he could replenish supplies and perhaps receive orders from Sherman, then sweep the plains along the Republican to the South Platte. Four days later, Custer went into camp along the forks of the Republican without finding any sign of Pawnee Killer.

Sherman had made vague mention about Libbie Custer perhaps joining her husband at some point at Fort McPherson. Custer, however, wrote to his wife and requested that she travel to Fort Wallace, the westernmost post in Kansas, and he would send an escort. Presumably for that reason, Custer chose not to report to Fort Sedgwick. Instead, on June 23 under the cloak of darkness Major Joel Elliott and a small detail were dispatched to Fort Sedgwick to check for orders.

At the same time, First Lieutenant William W. Cooke led a forty-eight-man wagon train south to Fort Wallace to requisition supplies—and possibly escort Libbie Custer back to her husband.

Custer's trusted adjutant, William Cooke, was born into a prominent family on May 29, 1846, in the hamlet of Mount Pleasant, a few miles south of present-day Brantford, Ontario, Canada, where his ancestors—British loyalists—had fled after the American Revolution. At the age of fourteen, he moved to Buffalo, New York, to live with relatives. He had lied about his age in 1863 to join the Twenty-fourth New York Cavalry in Niagara Falls as a recruiter and was commissioned a second lieutenant on January 26, 1864. Cooke was wounded on June 17, 1864, at Petersburg, and returned to duty a month later as unit quartermaster. He was promoted to first lieutenant on December 14, 1864, and in March 1865 assumed command of Company A and participated in battles at Five Forks, Dinwiddie Court House, and Sayler's Creek. He received brevets of captain, major, and lieutenant colonel for his service and returned home to Canada when honorably discharged on June 25, 1865.

Cooke's father encouraged his son to form a cavalry unit in Canada, but he instead chose the United States Army. He was commissioned a second lieutenant in Company D in the newly formed Seventh Cavalry and reported for duty on November 16, 1866. (His name at times has been listed as “Cook” due to an administrative error.) He became known by the nickname “The Queen's Own” and had the reputation as one of the best shots and fastest runners in the regiment. His appearance was also quite distinctive. He wore long “dundreary” side-whiskers, named after Lord Dundreary, a character in the play
Our American Cousin,
which was playing at Ford's Theatre the night President Lincoln attended and was assassinated.

Now Cooke was involved in a particularly perilous resupply mission to Fort Wallace.

At dawn on June 23, an Indian raiding party attempted to stampede Custer's horses but was driven off with only the sentry being wounded. The Indians formed on a nearby hill, and Custer requested a council. To his surprise, the raiders were led by Sioux chief Pawnee Killer. Custer refused to issue supplies and the parley ended without resolution.

Meanwhile, a small Indian decoy party invited pursuit and Custer obliged by sending Captain Louis Hamilton and two companies after them. The sturdy Indian ponies easily outdistanced the heavier army mounts, and the Sioux attempted to lure the cavalrymen into an ambush. Disaster was averted when Hamilton recognized the potential danger and dismounted his men to drive off the warriors.

On June 26, Lieutenant Cooke's fifty-man resupply detachment was attacked by an estimated six to seven hundred Sioux warriors on its return trip from Fort Wallace. Cooke formed the wagon train into two parallel columns, and a running battle ensued. The Indians, after being fought off on a direct assault, commenced circling the steadily moving wagons. The warriors exhibited great horsemanship skills by racing at full speed, leaning low to hide and fire from behind their ponies while the cavalrymen expended most of their ammunition.

This tedious battle lasted for more than three hours until, surprisingly, the Sioux abruptly withdrew. Custer had, without being aware of the circumstances, prudently ordered two companies—Captains Edward Myers and Robert W. West—to ride out and reinforce the detail. The approach of this column was sighted by Indian scouts, and, just like in the movies, it had arrived in the nick of time to rescue Cooke's beleaguered command.

To Custer's relief, his letter to Libbie had never reached its destination or her life would have been in peril riding with the wagon train. Standing orders had been issued for officers to shoot any white women to save them from capture should an Indian attack appear overwhelming. There had been a number of female captives taken by the Indians, and the consensus opinion in the military—and the country at large—was that the husbands or fathers would rather have their wives or daughters killed than returned after being defiled and mistreated by a warrior.

Cooke reached camp on June 27, and Major Elliott returned the following day, without carrying any new orders. Those orders had actually arrived the day after Elliott had departed and likely would have been available had Custer reported to Fort Sedgwick as ordered. The dispatches were then placed in the care of Second Lieutenant Lyman S. Kidder and a ten-man detail.

While Kidder scoured the area, attempting to locate Custer, he was discovered by Pawnee Killer on July 2. The mutilated bodies of Kidder and his men were subsequently discovered by scout William Comstock strewn across the Plains near Beaver Creek where each had fallen in a desperate running battle with the Sioux.

Custer, complying with his original orders, resumed his sweep of the headwaters of the Republican, his route curiously leading away from locations where the Indians were known to be operating. The march into Colorado across a desolate, waterless terrain spotted with only cactus and rife with bothersome ravines under the scorching July sun proved torturous for both the troopers and the horses. Relief from this demanding march—as well as the prospects of riches in Colorado's mines—became a temptation that many of the troopers could not resist. The column was victimized by a mass desertion.

According to regimental records, over 120 cavalrymen since April 19 had already deserted. Then, on the morning of July 7, 34 more men disappeared. Theodore Davis noted, “This out of a force of less than three hundred was a serious misfortune.” The readiness of the command in the event of an Indian attack had been severely compromised.

Shortly after noon on that same day thirteen troopers—seven on horseback—brazenly deserted in full view of the command. Custer ordered several officers—Elliott, Tom Custer, and Cooke—to give chase and stop the fleeing cavalrymen by whatever means necessary. Six of the deserters were subsequently returned to camp. Three of them had been shot and wounded, one of whom, Private Charles Johnson, would later die. Custer loudly ordered that the wounded not be given medical attention but quietly directed Dr. Isaac Coates to care for them.

The Hancock Expedition had for all intents and purposes fizzled to an end when on July 13 the exhausted command—without any additional desertions—headed into camp near Fort Wallace. Both men and mounts were in poor condition and could not return to the field until rested and resupplied. Custer had led his command to the fort, which was presently under the command of Captain Myles Keogh and Company I.

The handsome, mustachioed Keogh was one of the more colorful officers on the Seventh Cavalry muster roles. He was born at Orchard House, Leighlinbridge, County Carlow, Ireland, on May 25, 1840. Keogh later stated on his application for a commission in the United States Army that he had attended Carlow College until the age of sixteen, when he quit for a six-month tour of Europe. During that time, he claimed to have joined the French Foreign Legion and participated in the closing stages of the Algerian Campaign.

In August 1860, Keogh was appointed second lieutenant in the Battalion of St. Patrick, a volunteer unit that went to Italy to fight for Pope Pius IX when the Papal States were being threatened by Napoléon II and the Piedmontese. About one month later Keogh distinguished himself at the Adriatic port of Ancona when his outgunned battalion was attacked by a superior force of Piedmontese supported by artillery. Keogh's unit repulsed several bayonet charges and drove back their enemy. For his extraordinary gallantry during this battle, Keogh was awarded the coveted Pro Petri Sede medal and the Ordine di San Gregorio (Cross of the Order of St. Gregory the Great). After the flag of the Papal States was lowered in defeat the following month, Keogh remained to serve for two years in the Papal Guard.

This routine duty, however, was contrary to Keogh's adventurous nature, and in March 1862 he resigned his commission and sailed for the United States. On April 1, he arrived in New York City and offered his services to the Union army. Keogh was commissioned a captain on April 9 and assigned as acting aide-de-camp to Brigadier General James Shields, another Irish emigrant.

Keogh's soldierly qualities soon came to the attention of General George B. McClellan, and he was assigned to the staff of the army commander. He subsequently served as an aide-de-camp to various generals and participated in such engagements as Cedar Mountain, Second Bull Run, South Mountain, Antietam, Brandy Station, Aldie, Gettysburg, and Mine Run.

Keogh was promoted to major in April 1864. Three months later he was on the staff of General George Stoneman during a raid to liberate Andersonville Prison when his seven-hundred-man unit was captured at Sunshine Church, near Macon, Georgia. His confinement, however, was brief. He was exchanged for Confederate prisoners two months later. Keogh went on to distinguish himself in operations in southwestern Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia and was brevetted lieutenant colonel in March 1865. He was mustered out of the service on September 1, 1865, after having participated in over thirty engagements. With recommendations from several generals, Keogh joined the Seventh Cavalry on July 28, 1866, as a captain and commander of Company I.

Most accounts relate that Keogh was a favorite of George Armstrong Custer, but, contrary to his commander, he was known to habitually drink to excess and during those times his mood became dark and combative. Alcoholism was an epidemic at isolated posts that existed without any form of nearby entertainment, and the officers and men had a habit of retiring to the officers' club or sutler's wagon each day after work. There is no evidence, however, that Keogh's drinking affected his abilities as an officer.

Keogh also has been credited as the person who introduced Custer to the Seventh Cavalry's traditional regimental marching and battle song, “Garry Owen.” Gaelic for “Owen's Garden,” this distinctive, jaunty, Irish quick-step tune became synonymous with Custer's Seventh Cavalry, although when and by whom it was introduced to the unit has been the subject of much conjecture. Several Irish regiments, including the Fifth Irish Lancers, had embraced it as a rowdy drinking song. Keogh's father may or may not have been a member of the Fifth Irish Lancers.

Some researchers have disputed much of Keogh's heretofore-accepted biography, which casts doubts about whether or not his father in fact ever served in that particular unit. Libbie Custer, however, was under the impression that Keogh had made her husband aware of “Garry Owen” shortly after the formation of the Seventh Cavalry at Fort Riley. The tune apparently dates back to Revolutionary War days and might have been known to Custer as early as his schooling at West Point. Regardless of its origins, “Garry Owen” became the regimental battle song of the Seventh Cavalry and was played during expeditions, campaigns, battles, and ceremonies to the delight of its members and onlookers alike.

Fort Wallace, the westernmost post in Kansas, had miserable, primitive living conditions and was under constant siege by hostile Plains Indians. Custer learned that mail and dispatches had not been able to get through on the Butterfield Overland stagecoach line due to the Indian presence along the Smoky Hill Trail.

General Hancock had recently passed through from Denver on his way east to the comforts of Fort Leavenworth but had not left behind any orders for Custer. Custer was also informed that Captain Albert Barnitz and his Company G, which had ridden to Pond Creek Station, had been attacked on June 26 by Roman Nose's Cheyenne and sustained six killed and six wounded.

On July 15, Custer, in an act that defied explanation, impulsively assembled three officers—Hamilton, brother Tom, and Cooke—along with illustrator Theodore Davis and seventy-two men with the best stock available. After assigning Major Joel Elliott the command, Custer headed east with his detail on the Smoky Hill Trail toward Fort Hays, a distance of about 150 miles.

Along the way, the detail met a wagon train containing forage commanded by Captain Frederick William Benteen, which unknowingly carried cholera germs that would infect Fort Wallace. Later, two mail stages were stopped by Custer in a futile effort to find a letter from Libbie. Just east of Downer's Station, a trooper disappeared, and Custer ordered Sergeant James Connelly and six men to chase after this deserter. The missing man was captured, but the party was attacked by Indians on the way back, suffering one man killed and another wounded, and took refuge at the station. Connelly reported the incident to Custer, who—even at the urging of Captain Hamilton—refused to delay his march to rescue the beleaguered men, who were only about three miles away. Custer reasoned that there was an infantry detachment guarding the station and that time was of the essence in their march east. An infantry detail later found the victims, and the wounded man survived.

Custer and the exhausted cavalrymen arrived at Fort Hays on the morning of July 18, having covered the 150-mile distance in an extraordinarily fast time of fifty-five hours. Custer, his brother Tom, Cooke, and Davis immediately departed from Fort Hays with four government mules and an army ambulance and proceeded sixty miles to Fort Harker, where Custer expected to find his wife, and arrived at 2:00
A.M.
Libbie, however, had returned to Fort Riley. After informing Colonel A. J. Smith of his presence, Custer boarded a train headed to Fort Riley. The next morning, Smith sent a telegram to Custer ordering him back to Fort Harker to be placed under arrest for deserting his post at Fort Wallace.