The Real Custer (40 page)
Authors: James S Robbins
From Custer's point of view, a “shoot to kill” order made sense under the circumstances. Peacetime executions for desertion were outlawed in 1830, but Custer's defense produced orders, including from General Hancock, saying if men were caught in the act of deserting to “shoot them down when taken.”
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As for the charge of cruelty, it had to be put in context. This was still the era where being “branded a deserter” was not just a figure of speech. Tattooing and branding were legal forms of punishment until 1872âincluding being branded with the entire word “deserter.”
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The men could get over a bumpy wagon ride.
Custer also maintained that he was never absent without leave from his unit; he acted on his own discretion when temporarily without orders. And his team raised technical objections to the composition of the court, noting that four of its members were inferior to him in rank and another was a commissary officer he had censured for corruption.
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Equally problematic, Custer pointed out that Captain Lyford was one of his classmates and a close friend.
On September 26 Custer wrote with confidence, “The prosecution have examined about half their witnesses, including the most important. I would not hesitate to let my case go to the court on the evidence addressed by the prosecution. . . . Everything is working charmingly.”
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But Custer was in more trouble than he thought. The monthlong trial drew to a close on October 11, and after deliberating a few hours the court returned its verdict. Custer was found guilty on almost all the charges and specifications, except for those related to intentional cruelty. However, the court attached no criminality to his actions, and Custer was sentenced to be suspended from rank, command, and pay for one year.
Some, such as General Grant, thought Custer got off easy. Others, such as Sheridan, believed that he never should have been brought to trial. Libbie believed “the sentence is as unjust as possible. Autie merits acquittal.”
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For George himself, it was the low point in his career. With the 7th Cavalry drawn up in parade, Custer had to sit on horseback before the command as the orders of the court were read. He sat stiffly, showing no emotion, looking out at the horizon. He was a long way from the cheers of the Grand Review in Washington two and a half years earlier.
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uster met the guilty verdicts with a brave face, but privately he was fuming. “All with whom I have conversed decree the sentence unjustly severe,” he wrote. “It is not sustained by the evidence.” But he asked Sheridan not to try to review the case or lessen the sentence, “as I will not accept it.”
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Libbie dismissed the affair as “nothing but a plan of persecution for Autie.”
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The court-martial was another blow to Custer's reputation. One Michigan paper said that the trial “very materially changes our opinion of the man” and that it was “sufficient in itself to justify the dismissal of any officer.”
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Custer's affidavit in defense was summarized and reprinted in various papers, but he did not have a deep well of support. His excesses in Texas in 1865 and foray into politics in 1866 had alienated many editors and politicians on both sides of the political divide who otherwise might have spoken up in his defense.
Sheridan, who took over command of the Department of Missouri from Hancock just as Custer's trial began, remained an important and durable Custer ally. He graciously let George and Libbie use his quarters at Fort Leavenworth while he was on leave, and the couple settled in for the winter.
“I have nothing to do but to kill time,” George wrote, “which I manage to do quite successfully.”
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It hardly seemed like punishment. Libbie's cousin Rebecca Richmond, who visited the couple during this period, wrote in her diary that their time was taken up with singing, games, hunting, theater, hops, and parties.
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A typical entry, from January 3, 1868, read, “Armstrong and Libbie, Charles, Mary and I rode over to town this morning in the flanigan [carriage]. A bright, beautiful day but a trifle cooler than yesterday. . . . Sang as we rode, also ate an apple which was presented by an outrider, a cavalryman.” But then Rebecca notes, “This evening just before retreat, Gen'l Custer was arrested by two officers from town on a charge of murder.”
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Shooting the deserters still came back to haunt Custer. Captain West pressed the state of Kansas to charge Custer and William W. Cooke for the murder of Charles Johnson, the deserter who had been shot in the head and later died. Custer was implicated as an accomplice for giving the order to shoot and denying medical care afterward. Cooke was charged with pulling the trigger.
The case was initially dismissed for lack of jurisdiction, since the incident took place in Nebraska. But a second attempt led to a court hearing at Fort Leavenworth, including testimony from Clement Willis, one of the deserters. As in the court-martial, however, witnesses were vague or conflicting on key aspects of the events, and one newspaper concluded that “there appeared little doubt but the officers would be acquitted.”
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On January 18 the judge dismissed the charges for lack of sufficient evidence.
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Custer retaliated by having West brought up on charges of drunkenness, garnering him a two-month suspension.
After the winter at Fort Leavenworth, the Custers went back to Monroe, where George spent time writing, fishing, tending to his horses, and on other pursuits. Meanwhile, after failing to bring about a military solution to the troubles on the Plains, the government sent a peace commission to try negotiating. Members of the commission included, among others, General Sherman, Brigadier General Alfred Terry, and old Indian fighter General William S. Harney, now retired, who had become an advocate for fair play with the tribes.
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In October 1867 at Medicine Lodge River, the commissioners met with the leaders of many of the southern Plains tribes, including Black Kettle of the Cheyenne, Satanta or White Bear of the Kiowa, and Ten Bears of the Comanche. The peace delegates opened with an apology for the burning of the village at Pawnee Fork that started Hancock's campaign, an implicit admission that the entire effort had been a mistake. The Indians were willing to deal, and tribal leaders agreed to move south of the Arkansas River and to end raids into Kansas and other settled areas. This would clear the main route west for railroads and settlements. They also agreed to move onto reservation lands in exchange for food, periodic payments, guns and ammunition for hunting, and other forms of support. The series of agreements was known collectively as the Medicine Lodge Treaty.
Peace was made with the northern Plains tribes under the Treaty of Fort Laramie in February 1868. Under this agreement the forts along the Bozeman Trail were abandoned, and whites were banned from the Power River country. The government established the Great Sioux Reservation, which comprised all the land west of the Missouri River in the southern part of the Dakota Territory, including the Black Hills. In addition, hunting lands were reserved for the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho in Wyoming, Montana, western Kansas, and eastern Colorado. It was a victory for Red Cloud, who achieved all his war objectivesâbut only if both sides honored the treaty.
Hopes for a peaceful year on the Plains began to wilt as the new grass grew. Headlines in the summer told of Indian raids, rapes, kidnappings, burnings, scalpings, mutilations, and attacks on wagon trains and settlers. A lieutenant and five men from Fort Larned were ambushed and killed. The government responded by holding back the arms and ammunition promised to the Indians for hunting; the Indians saw this as a betrayal. “The hope which was cherished,” the
Philadelphia Evening Telegraph
opined, “that difficulties with the Indians on the Plains would be avoided during the present year, has proved delusive. The savage fondness for plunder and scalps has again been displayed. . . . It is as difficult for the bold spirits of the predatory tribes to restrain their murderous proclivities as it is for the hardened professional criminals of civilized life to become honest men.”
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One attack that gained national attention took place in October. Seventy-five Indians waylaid a large wagon train along the Arkansas River, heading from Kansas to Colorado. Four wagons were captured, some of the others were lit with flaming arrows, and the ox teams were run off. The Indian band swelled to around two hundred warriors, and a weeklong siege commenced. Eventually soldiers arrived and the Indians withdrew, but they took with them twenty-year-old Clara, wife of settler Richard Blinn, and their two-year-old son, Willie. A note found four miles away read, “Dear Dick, Willie and I are prisoners. They are going to keep us. If you live, save us if you can.”
Sheridan said that Clara was kept alive “to gratify the brutal lust of the chief, Satanta.” Satanta, a signatory of the Medicine Lodge Treaty, was a noted Kiowa warrior with a dramatic flair. During the 1867 campaign, Hancock had been so impressed with the chief after meeting with him that he gave him a U.S. Army jacket with the rank of major general, a yellow sash, and plumed hat. A month later Satanta's men raided Fort Dodge and drove off the garrison's horses; the chief raised the plumed hat as he rode away.
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In another, longer letter in November, Clara wrote that the Indians told her, “When the white men make peace we can go home.” She urged, “Do all you can for me. Write to the peace commissioners to make peace this fall. For our sakes do all you can and God will bless you. . . . I am as well as can be expected, but my baby is very weak.”
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The letter was sent to Colonel William B. Hazen of the 38th Infantry regiment, on special Indian duty at Fort Cobb. (This was the same Hazen who had arrested Cadet Custer in June 1861 for the fistfight incident the day before graduation.) He was involved in negotiations for Clara's release; the deal at that point stood at five ponies for the woman and her son. He forwarded the letter to Sherman, who sent it to the secretary of war, who used it to lobby Congress to keep up the fight against the Indians.
To many Americans the continued violence on the Plains seemed to violate the letter and spirit of the peace treaties. However, that was open to interpretation. Indians understood treaties differently than whites, and some bands could rightly claim not to be party to agreements they did not sign, even if others in their tribe did. And there were generational conflicts in the bands that agreed to the terms. The young men with something to prove were vexed by the old chiefs telling them to abandon the ways of the warrior. “The Indians feel that they are rich when at war and poor while at peace,” noted Theodore R. Davis, who rode with Custer on the Hancock expedition. “There are many old chiefs who prefer peace, but the young men are invariably for war. The chiefs cannot control the âbucks,' who take the war-path as naturally as the quail does the bushes or the young ducks to the sedge.”
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