The Real Custer (54 page)

The Sioux expedition went forward regardless of the changing circumstances. Terry moved west on May 17; Crook set off from Fort Fetterman on May 29; and Gibbon's column, which had set off in April, was already camped along the Yellowstone.

The campaign attracted a lot of press attention. Sherman had sent word to Terry to “advise Custer to be prudent, and not to take along any newspapermen who always work mischief.”
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But Terry disobeyed Sherman's guidance and granted permission for a reporter from the
Bismarck Tribune
to come along. Mark Kellogg, a
Tribune
reporter and Associated Press stringer, went in place of editor Clement Lounsberry, who was nursing his ailing wife. Kellogg's reports were also carried in the
New York Herald
, where Custer had arranged to send his own anonymous reports. As one paper unkindly put it, “Gen. Custer is troubled with a personal vanity which makes him overly anxious to see his name in the papers.”
¹⁴

Terry's column moved west in search of the foe, said to be nearby and in large numbers. The country got progressively more difficult as they proceeded. Rains slowed the advance, muddy tracks hampering the wagons. Custer personally led some scouts, but they found only old Indian camps. Private Peter Thompson of C Company said that Custer's rushing ahead of the column “would have seemed strange to us had it not been almost a daily occurrence. It seemed that the man was so full of nervous energy that it was impossible for him to move along patiently.” Custer's thoroughbred mounts outpaced the government-issued horses, and he also had his dogs along “for hunting purposes and many a chase he and his brother had when on this march.”
¹⁵

Boston Custer wrote to his mother that George, Tom, and he, with Lieutenant William Cooke, Second Lieutenant Winfield Scott Edgerly, and some soldiers and Indian guides, raced ahead of the column to the Powder River on June 7, seeking a passable route over the badlands, with sharp cliffs, sagebrush, and cactus. They were, he claimed, “the first white men to visit the river at this place.” They got so far out in advance they had to stop, but the column caught up that night. Boston hoped the campaign would be a success, “and if Armstrong could have his way I think it would be,” but other officers with limited experience and “having
an exalted opinion of themselves, feel that their advice would be valuable in the field.”
¹⁶

Days passed with no signs of the enemy. “All stories about large bodies of Indians being here are the merest bosh,” Custer wrote.
¹⁷
But as long as the Indians did not want to be found, the lumbering column would never find them. And elsewhere they were making their presence known.

On June 16 Crook's column reached the headwaters of the Rosebud River. He received a message from Sitting Bull via Crazy Horse saying, “Come so far, but no farther; cross the river at your peril.”
¹⁸
Crook crossed, and the next day battle was joined. Crazy Horse struck first. The Indians mounted a series of massed frontal attacks on Crook's men, a rarity on the Plains, and wholly unlike the tactics of the Apaches Crook was used to fighting, who conducted ambushes with small bands.

“Come on Dakotas,” Crazy Horse said, leading his warriors into the fray, “it's a good day to die!” But there was bravery evidenced on both sides, and when Colonel “Fighting Guy” Henry of the 3rd Cavalry was shot through both cheeks and partially blinded, he shrugged off the wound saying, “It's nothing. For this are we soldiers.”
¹⁹

They fought across the valley for six hours until, as one Indian participant put it, “we got tired and we were hungry, so we went home.” Crook had suffered only fifty casualties and held the battlefield. He could have given chase, or resumed his march north down the Rosebud. But he had expended much of his ammunition, and rather than waiting for his train to come to him, he pulled back fifty miles to Goose Creek where his wagons were waiting. There, inexplicably, Crook sat until August.

Crook felt he had won the battle on the Rosebud, and perhaps he did by most measures. But he squandered his victory by not continuing north toward the other two converging columns. From the Indians' perspective, Crook won nothing. The whites approached; they were warned to stop; they kept on coming; there was a fight; then the whites went back the way they came. If anything, Crazy Horse could be justified in assuming the victory had been all on his side.

Crook also made no move to communicate directly with Terry or Gibbon to inform them of the Rosebud battle, or his unilateral decision to bow out of the campaign. This significant lapse in judgment compromised the entire expedition. His column represented about half the strength of the overall force, and Terry and Gibbon assumed Crook was still in the field and maneuvering according to plan. If a detached war party of Sioux and Cheyenne could push back Crook's men, the entire band of warriors from the combined nations could easily deal with the others—especially a flying column under Custer.

Libbie wrote to George of news reports of a “small skirmish” between Crook and the Indians. “They call it a
fight
,” she wrote. “The Indians were very bold. They don't seem afraid of anything.” But Custer did not receive the letter. Terry complained that he heard nothing from Crook and “if I could hear I would be able to form plans for the future more intelligently.”
²⁰
But by then Crook was out of action, waiting for reinforcements, and hunting and fishing in the Bighorn Mountains.
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He sent word of the Rosebud battle to Sheridan in Chicago, but the dispatch did not reach Terry until a week after the battle at Little Bighorn. S. L. A. Marshall concluded, “The whole operation proceeded as if, instead of hunting Indians, the Army was seeking a memorable catastrophe.”
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Once Terry's force reached the Powder River, they headed downstream to the supply point on the Yellowstone to find Gibbon. They still had not located the Indians. Crow scouts believed that the band would be found in the “big bend” of the Little Bighorn, then 120 miles distant. To try to get some grasp of where the enemy was, and perhaps where Crook had gotten to, Terry sent a scouting expedition up the Powder River under Major Marcus Reno on June 10.

Reno was a taciturn officer whom the Arikara scouts called Man With Dark Face. He entered West Point with the Class of 1855, but due to a series of washouts and reinstatements graduated two years late.
²³
Like Custer, he was often caught breaking the rules, and over his six years he racked up 1,031 demerits, far outpacing Autie's 726. But Reno had
six years to work on his total against Custer's four, and he averaged 171.8 per year versus George's 181.5.

Reno served in the Civil War as the commander of the 12th Pennsylvania Cavalry and rose to the rank of brevet brigadier general. He was one of three majors in the 7th Cavalry, and the only one present on the campaign. He had never fought in an Indian battle and never before served directly under Custer, since this was the first time all the companies of the regiment had gone on campaign. And Reno had definitely gotten off on the wrong foot with his commander. Weeks earlier when Custer was fighting for his command and career, Reno had lobbied to be named commander in his stead, and Grant concurred.

Reno scouted about sixty miles up the Powder River, then turned west. He found evidence of an encampment near the Tongue River, and even clearer signs along the Rosebud. Meanwhile, the rest of the command marched to the mouth of the Tongue River to meet the
Far West
, then proceeded to the Rosebud, linking up with Reno along the way on the nineteenth. His scout had gone farther and taken longer than expected, and Terry chastised him for exceeding his orders. But Reno brought back valuable information. He had run across the remains of huge campsites with evidence of around four hundred campfires, and a trail leading toward the Little Bighorn valley. Reno estimated around eight hundred enemy, though Terry assumed the number was closer to prior reports of 1,500. Custer, who had opposed the scout from the beginning, criticized Reno's “failure to follow up the trails [which] has imperiled our plans by giving the village an intimation of our presence.”
²⁴

Terry's force arrived at the mouth of the Rosebud on June 21, meeting Gibbon with a battalion of troops, the rest encamped upstream. The two commanders and Custer held a meeting aboard the steamer
Far West
to plan their next steps. They came up with a plan for a two-pronged operation. Custer would leave June 22 and take the 7th Cavalry south up to the headwaters of the Rosebud, turn west to the upper
reaches of the Little Bighorn valley, and move north downstream. Gibbon and Terry would meanwhile move to the mouth of the Bighorn and head upriver to the Little Bighorn. The idea was to catch the Indians in a pincer movement, assuming that the enemy was where they thought they were and that the timing worked. Terry wrote Sheridan that he hoped at least “one of the two columns will find the Indians.”
²⁵
Trooper McBlain believed “the plan would have worked admirably had both its parts been conducted as the commander had a right to expect they would be.”

Custer was the wild card. Terry had wanted him to come on the expedition because of his knowledge of the area, his experience fighting Indians, and his tactical intuition. But Custer on the hunt was hard to restrain, and Terry complicated things by giving him a written order that allowed ample room for interpretation. “It is of course impossible to give you definite instructions as to your movements,” Terry wrote. “Even were it otherwise, the Officer in Command has too much confidence in your zeal, energy and skill to give you directions which might hamper your freedom of action when you have got into touch with the enemy.” He then gave Custer very definite instructions on his expected movements, but the damage was done. George assumed that Terry would let Custer be Custer.

Later that evening General Terry went back to Custer's tent to reinforce his intention that he should use his discretion if he encountered the Indians.

“Custer, I do not know what to say for the last,” Terry said.

“Say what you want to say,” George replied.

“Use your own judgment, and do what you think best if you strike the trail,” Terry said. “And whatever you do, Custer, hold on to your wounded.”
²⁶

Afterward, Custer emerged from his tent and saw Lieutenant Cooke and Lieutenant Edgerly sitting on a log smoking. “General, won't we step high if we do get those fellows!” Edgerly said.

“Won't we!” George replied. But he said it depended on the junior officers. “We are going to have a hard ride, for I intend to catch those Indians even if we have to follow them to their agencies.”
²⁷

Boston Custer wrote to his mother that he was “feeling first-rate” and they would set off the next day. He said Armstrong was going “with the full hope and belief of overhauling [the Indians]—which I think he probably will, with a little hard riding. They will be much entertained.”
²⁸
He hoped to bring back one or two Indian ponies “with a buffalo robe for Nev.”

Back at Fort Lincoln on the morning of the twenty-second, Libbie wrote, “My own darling—I dreamed of you as I knew I should. . . . Oh Autie how I feel about your going away so long without our hearing. . . . Your safety is ever in my mind. My thoughts, my dreams, my prayers, are all for you. God bless and keep my darling.”
²⁹

That same morning, George wrote to Libbie about the freedom of action he believed Terry had given him on his “scout,” quoting only the relevant portion of the order. “Do not be anxious about me,” he wrote. “You would be surprised how closely I obey your instructions about keeping with the column. I hope to have a good report to send you by the next mail.” He signed off, “Your devoted boy Autie.”
³⁰

At noon the 7th Cavalry passed in review before Terry, Gibbon, and Custer as it made its way out of camp, heading for the Rosebud. The Indian scouts rode after, singing the traditional death songs that preceded a battle. They did so at George's request; as scout Red Star noted approvingly, “Custer had a heart like an Indian.”
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Custer left to join his command. “God bless you!” Terry shouted after him.

“Now Custer, don't be greedy!” Gibbon added. “Wait for us!”

“No,” George replied. “I won't.”
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