Chapter V

The Most Forgotten Last Stand of June 25

While charging relentlessly ever nearer to the ford, pounding horse hooves raised a larger cloud of choking dust, protected by iron horseshoes shod by 7th Cavalry blacksmiths like Rhode Island–born Henry Allen Bailey, who now rode in Company I’s ranks and was eager to conquer “Sitting Bull and his cut throats,”1 as he penned in a letter. Fine dusty particles stung troopers’ eyes during the sweeping charge toward the ford. Custer felt a surge of excitement while moving ever closer to the Cheyenne village, seemingly all but vacant, where lay the victory—or so it seemed.

By this time, Custer almost certainly would have now recognized the distinctive markings of the lodges (like those of the Washita) were Cheyenne. Custer might have now wondered of the strange destiny that had seemed to have ensured a longtime private war between him and the Cheyenne, especially with regard to his attack on Black Kettle’s Cheyenne village on the Washita. This was no unimportant consideration: Custer overlooked the possibilities of an angry people’s revenge and a terrible retribution in charging still another Cheyenne village to tempt fate.

In his typically self-assured manner, Custer had also already overlooked the wise warning from his favorite scout, Bloody Knife. The son of a Sioux father and “Ree” (Arikara) mother, Bloody Knife met his Maker not far from Major Reno in the chaos of the valley fighting amid the timber (second position) along the river, before the wild flight to the bluffs. Custer dismissed Bloody Knife’s startling conclusion that an incredibly large village lay hidden amid the timber, mostly cottonwoods, that filled the Little Bighorn’s bottoms, and more warriors than ever seen before.

He was now going for broke in a final bid to gain the kind of victory that had been so elusive since the beginning of his rather mundane military service on the Great Plains. As he had so often in the past, Custer was relying on his famed luck, tactical savvy, and experience on thrashing a good many opponents, both red and white. The faithful husband of She Owl and the devoted father of a son, Bloody Knife had warned about a more formidable opponent than previously encountered. However, Custer was only amused by the mere thought of what he considered most improbable; the “Sioux won’t run” in Bloody Knife’s words.2 Troopers like Blacksmith Henry Allen Bailey, Company I, expressed the representative mood in a letter to his sister just before the campaign was launched. He wrote that when “Custer gets after [Sitting Bull] he will give him fits for all the boys are spoiling for a fight.”3

This same determined resolve of Custer and his troopers now equally applied to the village’s few Cheyenne, members of three warrior societies of elite fighting men, including the Kit Fox Society, who served in a guardian role as the “camp police,” the Cheyenne Dog Soldiers, and the Elk Scrapers Society. Respected for their combat skills and leadership abilities while serving as the tribe’s principal protectors, the expert fighters of these warrior societies would defend their women and children to their last breath in this critical situation.

For generations, these were the most defiant warriors, especially the Dog Soldiers, who had always refused to recognize any peace treaties with the hated whites. Remembering the horrors of the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre when rampaging Colorado soldiers had killed a good many Cheyenne women and children, the late November 1868 horror of the 7th Cavalry’s attack along the Washita, and other Indian villages that had suffered the wrath of the pony soldiers, these veteran warriors were determined to protect their village at all costs. Tactically flexible and experienced, and despite being few in number, the Cheyenne of the elite warrior societies needed no orders or commands about how best to fight, especially in this emergency situation. Most of all, these premier fighting men were motivated by the firm conviction that their moral duty called for now defending their people with their lives. Ironically, they were motivated by the same deep bonds of a warrior ethos that cemented the relationship among Custer, his younger brother, and their inner circle of close friends and relatives now charging toward Medicine Tail Coulee Ford.

The Cheyenne camp opposite the ford was still devoid of almost every warrior. They were still now far to the south, after having rushed upriver under Two Moons, the leading Cheyenne war leader, to confront Reno’s threat. Custer’s chance for success was never greater, because only a handful of members of the warrior societies had been left behind to protect the northern camp. After Two Moons and his warriors had already ridden south upriver, only a few Cheyenne warriors now remained in the village, to Custer’s maximum tactical advantage: those with guardian duties, or those warriors who were now asleep in their lodges (without specific duties or responsibilities), after the night’s dance until the red dawn rose over the Little Bighorn.

After catching sight of Custer’s descent down the coulee and charge across the open ground opposite the ford, additional warriors hurriedly grabbed their weapons and made personal preparations for once again meeting the pony soldiers. Frantic warriors attempted to find their horses, while others remained at their lodges to make final preparations for battle. Fulfilling a religious obligation by ensuring that their sacred regalia for battle were exactly in the right place as prescribed in fast-induced visions or advised by respected holy men before entering into combat, these warriors had to look just right as prescribed by rigid religious guidelines. Warriors also carefully painted faces and bodies with sacred vision–related designs that they had seen in vivid religious dreams that had dictated the specific course of their lives.

These remaining few warriors in the Cheyenne village were in the right place at the right time, although quite by accident. Bobtail Horse, a seasoned Cheyenne warrior, had slept late because he had been dancing the entire night and seeking an attractive lover, as the odds were high for success with the large number of young women now at this massive encampment: the same reason why White Cow Bull, the Oglala who was a ladies’ man in his own right, had been visiting the Cheyenne village since morning. Bobtail Horse had emerged half-asleep from his lodge after Two Moons and his Cheyennes had ridden south in a great hurry to save the village’s southern end. Bobtail Horse had attempted to retrieve his horse from the herd to join the fight against Reno. This had taken more time than expected, because the herder boys, too young to be warriors but fulfilling a necessary tribal responsibility, had still not found and brought his favorite war horse to the village. However, the delay allowed Bobtail Horse the opportunity to now face Custer, paying an unexpected dividend to the village in this crisis situation.

In such a desperate situation, where five full companies of troopers were charging toward the village—without any obstacles before them except the shallow river at the ford—these relatively few warriors clearly now needed assistance from the Great Spirit for a successful defense of Medicine Tail Coulee Ford. Again, the crisis was also especially severe because the few remaining Cheyenne warriors in camp were now without horses, which were still part of the vast pony herds and beyond immediate reach. Since the early morning, the tribe’s horses had been set out to graze in the lush bench grasslands on the gently rolling hills to the west: a situation that made the village especially vulnerable and increased Custer’s chances for success.

For an inordinate period of time, consequently, what continued to be presented to Custer was a golden tactical opportunity to reverse the day’s fortunes to not only compensate for but also to negate Reno’s defeat: the most favorable tactical situation that stacked even greater odds in Custer’s favor. Unfortunately for Custer’s ambitions, these precious few warriors who still remained in the village—the only ones who were close enough to meet the attack down Medicine Tail Coulee—were some of the Cheyenne’s tribe’s best fighting men, especially the reliable Buffalo Head Lodge guardians, such as Roan Bear. These veteran warriors could be depended upon in this critical situation that was now presented in full.4

Mostly Buffalo Head Medicine Lodge guardians, these few warriors in the Cheyenne village finally secured the nearest horses that belatedly became available, because Custer’s troopers were now so near to the ford. Finally, after much time had passed, the herder boys finally brought additional horses into the Cheyenne camp, including Bobtail Horse’s mount. But for other warriors, there was no time to retrieve their own animals from the vast herd now out grazing in the expansive grasslands that stretched west of the river far beyond the cluster of buffalo hide lodges, whose openings faced east to catch the warmth of the morning sun. In a hurry, and evidently at the village’s west side, where he had not initially seen Custer’s approach, Bobtail Horse hurriedly mounted his war horse. At long last, he was now fully prepared to ride south to face Reno’s interlopers, until he looked east to the high ground above the ford. The astonishing sight of Custer’s troopers pouring down the coulee had shocked him to the core and no doubt took his breath away. In his own words: “It was not long … when I first saw Custer [and his] body of soldiers coming down a little dry creek; not in it, but following down by it.”5

After having gained fresh horses (unlike Custer’s men, who were now seriously disadvantaged by exhausted and thirsty horses) and after completing their final ritualistic preparations for battle, Bobtail Horse (Elk Scrapers Society) and a mere handful of Cheyenne warriors were now finally ready to meet the greatest threat at the village’s northern end as best they could. These premier warriors, so respected by their tribe, now realized that not only hard fighting lay ahead, but also an unprecedented crisis situation and one upon which the tribe’s very life now depended. They realized that so few fighting men had absolutely no chance of stopping Custer’s attack, but that did not matter because a solemn duty called. Hysterical shouts of terrified women that the pony soldiers were “about to cross the river and get into the camp” still rang in their ears, fueling the warriors’ determination to do their best against impossible odds: a desperate attempt to buy time for the warriors’ arrival from Reno’s sector. In White Cow Bull’s words: “We saw the soldiers in the coulee were getting closer and closer to the ford, so we trotted out to meet them.”6

As an “elk dreamer” who drew moral strength from his mystical vision of a majestic Bull Elk that had made him part of the Elk Scrappers Society, Bobtail Horse was now donned in full battle regalia. He had made his required ritualistic war preparations, including those that were time-consuming. Wearing a sacred elk tooth in his hair to protect him for the white soldiers’ bullets, he now rode rapidly toward the ford. On the way, he met other warriors, including White Cow Bull, also galloping east in a mad dash to reach Medicine Tail Coulee Ford before the fast-moving troopers gained this vital crossing point: a forgotten race for this key ford when much was at stake, including the battle’s outcome.

Fearing that his companions might lose strength of heart at the unnerving sight of so many bluecoats headed straight toward them with flags flying when almost every warrior was still far away in the Reno sector, Bobtail Horse felt the need to encourage the few fighters galloping forth to reach Medicine Tail Coulee Ford. Therefore, Bobtail Horse shouted to other warriors that they must rally with courage to meet the day’s greatest threat that had appeared so suddenly to catch everyone by surprise. These few defenders, including White Cow Bull, Bobtail Horse, Dull Knife (Lame White Man), and Roan Bear dashed on bareback toward the ford at breakneck speed to reach this strategic point before the 7th Cavalry’s arrival. As fate would have it, and as Custer had hoped, this handful of fighting men were the only warriors who were now in the way of five full companies under America’s celebrated Indian fighter. Clearly, this was a most formidable challenge. Beside his older brother at the head of five charging companies, Captain Tom Custer believed that “a single company of can lick the whole Sioux nation!”7

Ironically, no warrior realized that the dark blue formations were led by Custer himself. At the same time that the defenders galloped toward the ford, a handful of Sioux were now fleeing before Custer’s relentless push toward the river. Along with an Oglala Sioux warrior called Shave Elk, who was on his own, these five warriors had ascended the coulee in an attempt to gain Reno’s rear—now located atop the bluff after the retreat from the river bottoms. With Custer’s troopers getting ever closer to the low-lying river valley filled with virgin cottonwoods and the concentration of Cheyenne lodges, the six Sioux warriors (five in a group and Shave Elk on his own) now fled for their lives, riding down the coulee at a frantic pace. To escape Custer’s last charge, they headed straight for the village’s safety. These Lakota were literally showing Custer the way down the dry coulee and straight to the ford and village’s northern end. In their desperate effort to escape the 7th Cavalry’s most concentrated and largest onslaught of the day, they were now only concerned about slipping out of harm’s way before it was too late.

These fast-moving revered cousins of the Cheyenne were not decoys for an ambush, as long assumed, because the village was still not defended at this time. At the right place at the right time, these five Lakota warriors from the same tribe now benefitted from ample wartime experience. They knew that the only possible defense of the village was by taking cover and making a defensive stand among the brush and trees that grew thick in the bottoms. However, these warriors realized that any offensive effort or attempt to slow the 7th Cavalry’s advance was all but suicidal. Therefore, these five Sioux continued to ride their swift ponies, small and fleet compared to Custer’s larger mounts, rapidly down the coulee to escape the bluecoat onslaught. The Lakota’s lithe ponies (fed on native green grasses that also nourished the buffalo) more easily navigated rough terrain than by the larger 7th Cavalry horses (fed on oats).

Fortunately for the upcoming defense of the ford, the five Sioux warriors now headed straight toward the band of Cheyenne (and the Oglala White Cow Bull), who were also racing toward the ford from the opposite direction by accident rather than any planned design: a fortunate development when the village was never more vulnerable. What was about to result was a most-timely union of Cheyenne and Sioux warriors: a mere handful of veteran fighters who banded together at the right time and place in a desperate bid to meet the day’s greatest threat.8

After having spent a relaxing morning catching trout for dinner, White Shield likewise rose to the challenge in splendid fashion, after detecting Custer’s relentless advance. In a hurry like everyone else, he finally joined the small group of warriors now heading on their fast ponies toward the ford in the hope of reaching some good defensible point from which to defend their village. Clearly, this was now literally a deadly race between Custer’s men and the foremost warriors to gain the ford first. White Shield explained how Custer’s attacking formation “was coming fast, making for the Little Bighorn [and] [n]ear me I could see only Roan Bear, Bobtail Horse and one other man” named Mad Wolf.9

With Custer’s troopers getting ever closer to the well-worn buffalo ford, and with time of the essence, these foremost Cheyenne now found themselves with an opportunity to make a disproportionate contribution far beyond their numbers in saving their people, including their relatives. These were the right warriors: veterans of strong religious faith who could be depended upon to make the supreme effort and sacrifice, if necessary. In the face of Custer’s onslaught, they had mastered their own fears, refusing to flee and save themselves, which seemed entirely sensible under the circumstances. Among this small group were warriors and hunters who were determined to stand firm in the ford’s defense at any cost: Bobtail Horse, Buffalo Calf, White Cow Bull, Dull Knife (Lame White Man), Mad Wolf, and Roan Bear.

Although short in stature, and excessively modest for a proud Great Plains warrior in a culture in which boasting of martial deeds was encouraged, Bobtail Horse was every inch of a fighter, whose veteran leadership could not be underestimated in such a key situation. He was a revered member of the Elk Society warriors that guaranteed that he possessed hard fighting qualities and astute tactical judgment. With traditional warrior society rivalries ever in mind, and that now merged with his deep hatred of the pony soldiers, Bobtail Horse was determined to represent this revered society to the best of his ability in the ford’s defense. Having been left behind since morning to guard the sacred Buffalo Head at the Cheyenne Medicine Lodge (which was the most honorable of protective roles), Roan Bear was a Fox Society fighter who could be depended upon to defend the ford to his last breath. He, too, was a proud representative of this highly revered warrior society. Roan Bear had been named after the light-colored brown bear of the Big Horn Mountains that had long awed these warriors with its legendary strength. Roan Bear was destined to play an inspiring leadership role in the ford’s defense when it was needed the most, along with Bobtail Horse and his Sioux friend White Cow Bull. As fate would have it, they had engaged in story telling about “our brave deeds in the past” and assisted Roan Bear in guarding the most sacred lodge of the Cheyenne before the 7th Cavalry’s sudden arrival, which now allowed them the opportunity to defend the ford.

Roan Bear and his friends now realized that the best way to protect the Cheyenne people’s Buffalo Head “sacred hat,” with horns, was to defend the ford. The Northern Cheyenne believed that this “buffalo cap” possessed powerful medicine in exemplifying the animal’s abundance and promise of its annual return to provide for the people.

Buffalo Calf (ironically, the Cheyenne name for Captain Tom Custer) was another hard-fighting member of the elite band of warriors now heading rapidly toward the ford in the hope of quickly establishing an ad hoc defense. He was part of the Crazy Dog Society, whose members were the fiercest Cheyenne warriors in their untamed world dominated by the harsh laws of survival of the fittest. These warrior society members consisted of elite fighting men who knew that this emergency situation was now their special destiny. They possessed experience not only in hunting but also in battling not only pony soldiers and Custer’s Indian allies like the hated Crow and Arikara or Arikaree (known as “Rees” by the whites), especially Custer’s Crow scouts.

In this crisis situation, these warriors naturally put aside all of their clan societal and tribal differences, and often-heated rivalries, to unite together as one. All that now mattered now was riding together toward the Medicine Tail Coulee Ford with the common goal of creating a united defensive effort, before it was too late. Clearly, these defenders of the Cheyenne village, who had suddenly come together at the last minute by circumstance, when Custer’s troopers had nearly reached the ford, were highly motivated.

Mad Wolf was another warrior now riding toward the ford with White Shield and the others. He was a veteran fighting man who offered no mercy to opponents. Mad Wolf had been hit by two bullets in an 1865 clash, which engendered a passionate hatred of white soldiers. Gaining a lofty reputation among the people as a revered shaman, Mad Wolf was an inspirational force among this band of warriors. It had been early believed that he possessed the power to make warriors bulletproof to projectiles from the revolvers and rifles: a spiritual belief that had played a part in fueling the repeated mounted attacks on the band of white frontiersmen and scouts trapped on Beecher Island (known as the battle of Arikaree Fork), Colorado Territory, in mid-September 1868.

However, the death of warriors, especially the emboldened Chief Roman Nose, in leading the mounted attacks had convincingly proved the fallacy of his “medicine” at Beecher Island and elsewhere to diminish Mad Wolf’s credibility. Of course, the defenders’ combat prowess, thanks to repeating rifles, was the true source of the defeat. Nevertheless, an undaunted Mad Wolf displayed a stubborn streak by continuing to believe in his own supernatural abilities. He never doubted that he possessed special power, taking the loss of prestige because of the Beecher Island setback in stride. To enhance that power by now wearing a prized “war shirt,” Mad Wolf was not only now properly but also specially attired for the ford’s defense. He now wore White Shield’s prized “war shirt” that he had taken from his friend’s lodge to thoroughly prepare for battle, securing additional spiritual protection and power. Despite not being a holy or medicine man in the traditional sense, this respected older warrior was also called Mad Hearted Wolf (a name incorrectly interpreted by whites as Rabid Wolf—the English corruption of his true Indian name, Wolf That Has No Sense).10

Although a poor man (without large numbers of horses) as evident from the thin, bony horse that he now rode bareback, Mad Wolf was respected for his deep knowledge, especially as a mystical shaman. Mad Wolf was also a Cheyenne Dog Soldier. As mentioned, this was no ordinary warrior society. The Cheyenne Dog Soldiers were correctly considered by whites to be “the most mischievous, bloodthirsty and barbarous” warriors on the Great Plains. Born among the Southern Cheyenne in 1825, Mad Wolf was now in his early fifties. The depth of Mad Wolf’s knowledge and wisdom was respected even among the younger warriors, who would follow his lead into battle regardless of the odds. Therefore, when Mad Wolf first rode up to the fast-moving band of crack fighting men heading toward the ford, this sage elder warrior shouted words of wisdom that caught the younger warriors’ attention. A rare alliance because of the emergency situation, the ford’s defense was about to be undertaken by both young and older warriors, when traditionally only younger warriors fought.

Shouting the correct tactics most needed with an air of authority, Mad Wolf yelled: “No one should charge yet—the soldiers are too many.” Knowing that this second major threat posed by Custer’s men, who had dared to confidently descend into the Little Bighorn Valley, was the day’s most serious, Mad Wolf offered sage tactical advice to hot-headed youngsters, who only wanted to charge the pony soldiers and count coup. For all to hear, he emphasized the best possible tactic for defending the Cheyenne village: it made no sense for a mere handful of Indians to madly charge headlong into the mass of pony soldiers (as the over-eager young warriors saw as the most courageous possible act), because the overall situation was so desperate. The young men wanted to engage the pony soldiers in hand-to-hand combat to gain the greatest individual honors as dictated by their warrior society. According to their warrior values, they saw no honor at all in shooting down an opponent from behind cover with long-range shots. Mad Wolf fully understood that it was now necessary to employ a more sensible tactic to confront the pony soldiers at the ford, because this was all about saving the tribe and not individual honors. Knowing exactly what he was talking about in tactical terms, and with no illusions about time-honored concepts of bravery that would have ensured the quick wiping out of the small band of warriors by Custer’s men, Mad Wolf screamed that it would be a grave mistake to charge in the midst of the bluecoats who seemed too many to count.

Instead, he emphasized to his comrades that what was now most required to save the vulnerable Cheyenne village was a clever defensive stand amid underbrush and trees along the river bottoms to disguise their diminutive numbers. To convince the young warriors, who were determined to die in a glorious charge that would become an enduring legend to future generations, the ever-sensible Mad Wolf repeatedly shouted words of wisdom to the young warriors. While heading toward the ford at a brisk pace, he continued to scream that there were simply far too many enemies before them, and it was absolute folly to charge all of them.11

While his old nag, “a rack-of-bones horse,” could barely keep up with the young men’s more fleet horses, now fat and full of life from the new spring grass that stood high, Mad Wolf continued to emphasize the wisdom of taking a good ambush position. Shouting at the top of his voice, he implored the stubborn and proud young men to listen: that charging so many pony soldiers was absolute folly because “they had no chance against a whole army.”12 In response, a fatalistic, if not slightly irritated, Bobtail Horse shouted back at Mad Wolf and his repeated advice and warnings with the typical warrior psychology in this crisis situation: “Uncle, only the Earth and Heavens last long. If we four can stop the soldiers from capturing our camp, our lives will be well spent.”13

Proud to have been named for the powerful animals that roamed through the Bighorn Mountains to the south at the Little Bighorn’s headwaters, Roan Bear was the brother of Cheyenne warriors Little Fish and Hard Robe. Known for his wise ways, he was a sub chief of the Kit Fox Society, whose members guarded the village as “camp police.” Besides having held the prestigious position of serving as the guardian of the tribe’s “sacred Buffalo Head” at the Cheyenne Medicine Lodge, Roan Bear also possessed a never-say-die disposition and what whites called command presence: qualities that now transformed him into the highest-ranking leader (more moral, and in terms of respect, than military in the traditional white sense) of the upcoming defensive stand against the odds at the ford. Demonstrating his own good tactical sense in the day’s greatest crisis, Roan Bear readily agreed with Mad Wolf’s tactical wisdom. As members of a democratic society, a common consensus was now reached with regard to exactly what was now most of all needed to save the village: a defensive stand in a good ambush position, instead of a foolish headlong charge that was doomed even before it was launched. Like Custer, these warriors had formulated their tactics while literally on the move and based upon the fast-changing circumstances.

Roan Bear possessed the depth of character, and experience level, that were about to pay dividends in the ford’s defense. By any measure, he was a capable natural leader. He was occasionally hot-headed as much as the overly aggressive young warriors, but he now kept this trait under control. When his wife eventually ran off with another man to shame him before the tribe and diminish his lofty standing, Roan Bear responded in the most appropriate manner that he could possibly imagine.

He only made a simple request for a dog meal as the equitable settlement to compensate for the loss of his wayward wife. In this novel way, he publicly showed absolute contempt for his unfaithful woman in order to maintain his personal dignity in the face of a public humiliation. As everyone realized, Roan Bear was basically revealing to one and all that his philandering wife was worth nothing more than a lowly dog meal that was a poor substitution for tasty roast buffalo meat: the ultimate insult to the loose woman he had once loved. In much the same way, Roan Bear was the kind of experienced and inspirational leader who was about to make still another strong personal statement in the ford’s defense, when personal revenge, determination, and pride likewise played their roles, as in losing his wife.14

After having ridden toward the ford from a different direction (the north) than the other warriors because he had been fishing in the river, White Shield would belatedly join the mounted group of warriors heading toward the ford just in the nick of time. In many ways, he was one of the most remarkable warriors of this contingent of determined fighting men. White Shield’s previous displays of heroism in the face of the enemy (red or white) were fueled by his courage and, as he believed, his protective charms that he believed had saved him numerous times.

White Shield had recently earned greater recognition for killing several of Crook’s men at the Rosebud. He basked in the recognition of what he had achieved in that day-long clash that had sent Crook’s forces reeling in defeat. A no-nonsense fighter regardless of the odds, White Shield was a ruthless killer without compassion for his people’s enemies, especially if they were white. He was engaged in a true holy war on this afternoon when so much was at stake, guaranteed that he would fight with his heart and head this afternoon. White Shield was proud of his eldest and most handsome son, Porcupine, who also aspired to be a great warrior like his father.15

With Custer’s two battalions advancing relentlessly as if nothing could possibly stop them in a full-fledged assault on the ford, White Shield viewed the onslaught of Custer’s “soldiers in seven groups (companies) [and] [o]ne company could be seen a long way off [because] the horses were pretty white [or grey which signified Company E, which was leading Captain Yates’ battalion, and] the company was coming fast, making for the Little Bighorn” to cross the ford with this powerful concentration.16

Fortunately, for the Cheyenne village’s defense, a handful of stalwart warriors who rallied together in timely fashion were literally the only fighting men who were now even remotely close to the ford at this time. This upcoming resistance effort would be something told around campfires and in lodges for generations to come, if they could somehow stop the pony soldier onslaught. Despite the odds, confidence remained surprisingly high among so few warriors, thanks in part to their strong spiritual faith that fueled resolve and even the recent success over Crook. After all, this surprising victory on the Rosebud had eliminated one column (the largest) of the overall strategic plan of converging on the Indians to ensure no escape, or so it had been optimistically hoped in Washington, DC, while causing an anxiety-ridden Libbie to worry even more about her husband’s fate, when so deep in Indian country.

In addition, the fighting spirit among some of these warriors had been earlier lifted by the sight of an elated Cheyenne warrior, who had earlier returned to his village from the Reno fight with a war trophy, before riding back upriver. In triumph, he had frantically waved a blue blouse, with the brass crossed saber insignia with the number “7” on the collar, back and forth for the Cheyenne people to see. This was one of the first war trophies of the battle. Yelling that “this day my heart is made good” by killing some of Reno’s men, this warrior’s bloodlust was now satisfied, because “he had seen [this uniform] before, on the soldiers who had killed his mother and his wife on the Washita.”17 In the Cheyenne camp, a number of women had recognized the distinctive insignia and its awful implications, rekindling horrific memories of the killing of relatives, including noncombatants, by these same 7th Cavalry soldiers on the bloody winter day that they would never forget.18

Likewise, these few Cheyenne warriors who were about to defend the ford with their lives might have recalled the sage words of the ancient Cheyenne Great Spirit, Sweet Medicine, to inspire them to perform extraordinary martial efforts against the odds. This legendary story had been passed down as long as anyone now encamped along the Little Bighorn could remember. Consequently, the warriors about to defend the ford had heard about Sweet Medicine since their earliest childhood days when they had been consumed with grown warrior dreams, while sitting around campfires or inside warm lodges of buffalo skins. For these young men, such stories had long brought a sense of spiritual warmth even in the most severe winter. Sweet Medicine had long ago warned of the sudden arrival of a strange, light-skinned people, whom the Cheyenne had never seen before, from some faraway land of an unknown name. It was most ironic that these interlopers on big horses who were now attacking toward an obscure place buffalo crossing called Medicine Tail Coulee, which might prove to be a “Sweet Medicine” trap for Custer and his men, if the Great Spirit still look favorably upon his people in their greatest hour of need.

For the hard-pressed Cheyenne people, the longtime westward push of thousands of white settlers and the pony soldiers, who protected them, had been nothing less than the coming of the Apocalypse. Sweet Medicine had warned of this alien people with “light hair and fair skin,” who had become a dark blight upon the land. This was still another horrifying prophetic vision that had come true, and this was now personified in these 7th Cavalry troopers now nearing the ford. Worst of all, the white interlopers had caused the disastrous turn of events that was spelling the doom of the Cheyenne people, bringing an unprecedented amount of death, disease, and destruction, especially with regard to the buffalo herds, with them. Therefore, the ugliest vision and most haunting prophesy of Sweet Medicine was now most tangibly represented by Custer to symbolize awful warnings of Sweet Medicine so long ago, but never forgotten by the people.19

Also fueling their fighting resolve to new heights, these Cheyenne warriors now galloped rapidly toward the ford in a desperate bid to reach it before Custer’s troopers gained the river’s west bank, was their own worst nightmares if their women and children were captured. They already knew of the possible horrors lay in store for some women (like the tragic fate of an eight-year-old Southern Cheyenne girl raped by troopers in an abandoned village just before Custer attacked Black Kettle’s Washita village) if captured by lustful pony soldiers.

Some warriors now dashing toward the ford might have now recalled the fate of three Cheyenne children who had been captured by Chivington’s Colorado boys at Sand Creek in 1864. One child was taken to Denver for public display. Another child, a five-year-old boy, when captured, became part of a sideshow of the popular Wilson and Graham traveling circus. In negotiations with the United States government, Cheyenne leaders obtained the return of the three Cheyenne children, including the Indian boy who was finally mercifully released from being a living circus exhibit. These were only a few reminders that explained why these warriors were about to fight with an abandon and almost maddened desperation to defend their village and people.20

Additionally, the haunting screams of panicked women and the crying children, who had fled the village before Custer’s attack, still rang in the ears of these warriors. They now wanted revenge on the pony soldiers for having caused so much havoc in this once-peaceful village. By this time, the majority of the panicked throng of women and children “had run away to the hill benches to the westward,” allowing the upcoming showdown at the ford to be fought without risking noncombatant lives.21 However, these defenseless ones might still be threatened if these relatively few warriors allowed the troopers to ford the river and charge through the Cheyenne village.

These warriors were prepared to sacrifice themselves if necessary for the greater good of their people. As this was an emergency situation in which they were literally ready to die, they had taken their time to exchange their “ordinary” clothing for their “best clothing” and “fine garments.” In preparation of getting killed at the ford’s defense (which now looked inevitable), these experienced Cheyenne fighting men were not only dressed in their finest war regalia, they had also taken the time to create sacred designs, as instructed long ago by medicine men and as deemed by visions, on their faces and bodies for self-protection with colorful war paints made from plants. Such necessary ritualistic formalities were just part of the warrior ethos. All of these time-consuming preparations were necessary according to custom for not only protection against enemy bullets but also, as Wooden Leg explained, “for presenting his most splendid personal appearance [to the Supreme Being because] he got himself ready to die.”22

Death, however, was only briefly contemplated by these fighting men, as they were focused on somehow stopping Custer’s five companies from riding through the Cheyenne village. Wooden Leg emphasized the thinking of these warriors at this crucial moment when everything was at stake, because each one “wants to look his best when he goes to meet the Great Spirit,” if killed in defending the ford.23 In her last letter (written in June and never received) to her husband and with a wife’s intuition, Libbie had warned Custer that something had changed from the past ways of fighting Indians, because these same warriors no longer fled before pony soldiers. As she penned prophetically after having learned of Crook’s shocking Rosebud defeat while literally tortured by worry for her husband’s welfare, as if knowing that he was about to meet a grisly end far from his Fort Abraham Lincoln home: “The Indians were very bold [and now] They don’t seem afraid of anything.”24 As Custer was about to be discover at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford, the Indians’ lack of fear was also about to be demonstrated against the other arm of Custer’s pincer movement.

While riding onward to the east toward the buffalo ford, few warriors felt that they would see the sunrise of June 26, quite unlike Custer’s confident men who only envisioned victory. Therefore, while galloping rapidly toward the ford, two or three of them began to sing their high-pitched Cheyenne death songs. Possessing a spiritual power all their own, the words of these hauntingly eerie songs now helped to steel their fighting resolve, once they made their final stand. Some inspiring words of these songs included “Nothing lives long only the earth and the mountains.” Despite the fact that these battle-hardened warriors, now dressed for glory and death, felt that they could not possibly survive the attack of so many bluecoats, who continued to charge onward as if nothing in the world could stop them, they were determined to do their best “to stop the soldiers from capturing our camp,” in Bobtail Horse’s words, and winning the day.25

By this time, the first shots in the ford’s defense had already been fired at Custer’s advance, but these first shots came belatedly. As was customary at a tribal encampment, two lonely Cheyenne guards of the Kit Fox Society had been earlier assigned to guard positions on the river’s east bank at either side of the coulee’s mouth. This first precautionary measure was just part of routinely guarding the ford because of its proximity to the Cheyenne village. Even as Reno unleashed his attack on the village’s opposite end, the fact that the two warriors had still remained in place in their guardian role displayed the high discipline of these fighting men, who whites (more civilians than soldiers) believed possessed no military discipline because they were nothing more than lowly savages, according to the pervasive stereotypes.

All the while, the troopers looked big on their large horses (including thoroughbreds, which Custer rode with his usual equestrian grace, purchased in Kentucky by regimental quartermasters) branded with “U.S.” and “7C” for 7th Cavalry, to these two warriors in the river valley. They realized that these hated “Long Knives” had proved extremely audacious by having attacked from two different directions to hit opposite ends of the vast village complex. Perhaps these Cheyenne warriors even wondered if the long-haired white leader, who they called “Son of the Morning Star” (known as “Old Iron Ass” by disgruntled troopers for his martinet ways), was now leading the way toward the ford.

The solitary guardian on the north side of the coulee’s mouth earned the distinction of firing the first shot at Custer’s attackers. Relying on their best instincts instead of forfeiting their lives for nothing, these two Cheyenne ford guardians retired across the river to take cover in the brushy bottoms. Here, they were about to be reinforced by the handful of Sioux and Cheyenne warriors who were coming from the opposite direction. Displaying moral courage, these two ford guardians had not fled west through the village to save themselves, but remained defiant despite the impossible odds.26

Meanwhile, the Cheyenne warriors and White Cow Bull, the Oglala who loved these Cheyenne warriors like brothers, continued to ride east through the northernmost village in the hope of reaching a good advanced defensive position to defend a ford, before it was too late. It now appeared to White Shield that Custer’s formations were about to “force their way across the river” with ease because there was no opposition to stop them.27

When near the river’s sparkling blue waters and the old buffalo ford, the Cheyenne warriors and White Cow Bull were encouraged to literally stumble across several Lakota boys (old enough to fight) and a few old men (spry enough to fight, but beyond the traditional fighting age of about age fifteen to about thirty-seven). These Sioux youngsters were already situated in concealed positions amid the thick underbrush and willows along the river. Taking the initiative without having been told and working together as a team, they had prepared their own ambush out of urgent necessity, because they realized that they were the only available warriors to do their duty in protecting their village and people. Not far from the river’s west bank, the mounted band of Cheyenne and Sioux (there were only subtle, tribal differences—unrealized by pony soldiers—in their appearances) were now united with this small band of Lakota, adding strength to the collective warriors who hoped to somehow stop Custer’s attack.28

With Custer and his companies charging in full sight, these warriors might have wondered about Sitting Bull’s Sun Dance vision of so many pony soldiers falling helplessly into the village “like grasshoppers” and then being systematically destroyed: a source of moral strength. With so few ford defenders available, there seemingly was no possibility that all five of Custer’s companies could possibly be stopped by only a handful of warriors, however.29

Nevertheless, with their spiritual faith and Sitting Bull’s prophesy bolstering fighting resolve, these warriors had reason to believe that the “Great Spirit” was now by their side in their darkest hour. Perhaps they now took heart from the fact that at the battle of the Rosebud, Crazy Horse “rode unarmed in the thickest of the fight invoking the blessing of the great spirit on him—that if he was right he might be victorious and if wrong that he might be killed.”30 The fighting men fated to defend the ford felt much the same, because they were most of all moral warriors now united with the holy mission of saving their village and people.

Ironically, in a strange coincidence, White Shield had been fishing in the river with grasshoppers as bait when he had first learned of the attack, which had a direct prophetic connection to Sitting Bull’s vision of enemies falling into the village “like grasshoppers” had become a reality as the people had believed.31 With satisfaction, a woman named Pretty White Buffalo heard Custer’s blaring bugles and saw the column surging down Medicine Coulee, knowing that the “Great Spirit had delivered the white men into the hands of the Lakota.”32

Indeed, in overall tactical terms, this was true because Custer’s pincer movement had been reduced to a flank attack without adequate support: Reno had been repulsed, Benteen was still too far away to assist, and Crook’s force had retired all the way back to the Wyoming Territory instead of applying pressure from the south as planned. A veteran Civil War cavalry general correctly understood as much after later surveying the Little Bighorn battlefield: instead of “an open field, in which you could handle your command … Custer was buried in a deep ravine or canyon [coulee], and, as he supposed, stealthily advancing upon an unsuspecting foe, but was, by the nature of the ground” now placed the five 7th Cavalry companies at a tactical disadvantage.33

With a sense of pride, White Cow Bull described the most audacious, but most forgotten, Indian effort of the day that set the stage for the dramatic showdown at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford, which was destined to determine the battle’s outcome. He emphasized one of the most improbable sights at the Little Bighorn at about quarter after 4:00 p.m.: “We charged [toward the ford] and we rode straight to Custer.”34

Natural Defensive Position of a Low Rise

To compensate for Reno’s sharp reversal, Custer was now in an ideal position (facing almost no opposition) to charge straight through the Cheyenne village to reap a sparkling success as at the Washita. Custer now posed the ultimate nightmare scenario for the relatively few warriors who voluntarily chose to defend their village on their own without guidance or advice from leadership (religious or military). Indeed, Custer was seemingly about to gain a key position between the warriors upriver facing Reno and the greatest mass of women and children who had fled west from the Cheyenne village.

Recovering from the shock of a most serious new threat suddenly coming from a new direction and one of the first fighter-hunters, to dash east to defend the ford, American Horse, a respected Cheyenne warrior who also took the initiative on his own, described how he “saw Custer coming down the hill and almost to the river. I was one of the first to meet the troops and the Indians and the soldiers reached the flat [opposite the ford] about the same time. When Custer saw them coming, he was down on the river bottom at the river’s bank.”35

Most importantly, the first ford defenders had won their race by the narrowest of margins. Incredibly, the visions of Sitting Bull and Box Elder had now proved prophetic, first at the village’s upper end with Reno’s repulsed attack, and now at the village’s northern end with Custer’s charge: the decisive one–two punch.36

The sight of Custer and a mass of bluecoat troopers surging down Medicine Tail Coulee and across the open ground at the coulee’s mouth was literally a prophetic dream come true for these few warriors, who fully understood what was at stake. After quickly surveying the river bottoms for the best defensive position with the eyes of an experienced hunter upon nearing the riverbank, Bobtail Horse shouted, “Let us get in line behind this ridge” to make a defensive stand. Members of this band “slid off our ponies” and quickly took “whatever cover we could find” and the best firing positions on the river’s west side along the slight rise or “low ridge,” in White Cow Bull’s words. Covered in underbrush and saplings, including the silt-loving willows, this slight elevation (or rise) of sand and sediments that had been washed up by the river at flood stage. The Cheyenne village was located on ground that was several feet higher than the river, while the land gradually rose to the west. This slight rise just west of the river bank was situated on a shelf of land that stood about several feet higher than the village and about six feet higher than the rocky, lower-lying bottom on the river’s opposite side (east) that was the lowest-lying part of the flood plain. Therefore, despite positioned in the river bottoms, this united band of Sioux and Cheyenne possessed a slightly elevated advantage. They could now deliver a slightly plunging fire on the troopers once they reached the lower ground at Medicine Tail Coulee’s mouth and attempted to cross the swift-moving Little Bighorn.

Here, amid the relatively light cover of underbrush, willows, and cottonwood saplings that grew along this sandy rise, or slight “low ridge,” consisting of silt and sand that had been created from the once-flooded river, which had since shifted farther east closer to the bluffs, this slight rise (perhaps the edge of an ox-bow, a former river bank) ran parallel to the river and was located inside a wide bend of the meandering river. The bend swung to extend east and near the bluffs on the river’s other side, and on either side of the coulee’s mouth. Here, along the brushy rise of soft soil, the warriors had found an excellent defensive position to make their last stand. They were now situated in good cover that effectively hid them from the view of Custer and his troopers, who were about to fall into an ambush, when least expected. The density of the bright green vegetation of the stands of small willows and cottonwoods was now in full summer foliage, these estimated initial ten to fifteen warriors were concealed in a natural ambush position, unrealized by the advancing troopers.

Symbolically, this united defensive consisted of the Sioux and their Cheyenne cousins, representing that vital alliance that had become the key to mutual survival for both people. The band of Sioux (the handful of Sioux boys and older men who had earlier been found in place in the bottoms just in front of the low rise by the mounted warriors before the two bands united) were also highly motivated to stand firm. These Sioux defenders were partly inspired this afternoon by the memory of the spiritual legacy of White Buffalo Calf Woman. She had long served as the foundation to the identity of the Lakota people, and brought good fortune year after year. Fueling determination to defy the odds, they feared that the bluecoats were about to capture the women and children as hostages like at the Washita. Custer evidently contemplated the duplication of his old Washita trick of capturing women and children to keep any future concentration of warriors at bay to leverage a victory, especially after Reno had been repulsed.

Meanwhile, Custer had no idea that he was leading his five companies straight into an ambush by an ad hoc band of recently gathered warriors, because of the Indians’ naturally camouflaged defensive position and since he had only recently viewed a peaceful camp from the high ground. Knowing that they had to make every shot count, the concealed warriors, including good fighting men armed with the 15-shot repeating rifles, waited only briefly for the bluecoats to get closer to the ford, after having taken good firing positions under cover. Then, at about 4:18 p.m., when the first “few soldiers reached the river’s edge and began to cross, the Cheyenne–Lakota contingent opened fire” at targets that they could not miss at such close range.37 One Indian woman saw the terrible effect of the “withering fire which greeted [Custer’s] approach from the willows on the Indian side of the stream.”38 The Sioux warrior named He Dog claimed that the number of defenders was from “fifteen to twenty” at this time, but there were certainly more warriors, including a Sioux named Big Nose, than this lowest estimate.39

Symbolically, and evidently by deliberate design or tradition (or both) to invoke Great Spirit’s assistance when it was most needed, the defenders of the tribe’s sacred Buffalo Head were the first to unleash their fire on Custer’s men, looking big on their large horses, when they neared the ford. In the words of Long Forehead, “Roan Bear, a [Fox warrior] Cheyenne, was the first to fire at Custer’s command.”40 Clearly, the mighty brown bear’s magical power, as so often seen in the most remote locations in the Big Horn Mountains, now roared in defiance near the Little Bighorn’s west bank at the troopers’ determined bid to possess Medicine Tail Coulee Ford. Then, Dull Knife (Lame White Man) opened fire on the mounted targets of blue that were already at the river and attempting to cross, after having paused briefly to realign at the riverbank on Custer’s orders.41 Along with the other defenders who realized that they had to hold firm at all costs, White Cow Bull blasted away with his fast-firing repeating rifle at seemingly too many targets to count.42 While rapidly firing, silent prayers were said by these fighting men “to the Great Spirit, or God … the Great Controlling Power of this Universe” which determined all outcomes.43

Wisely understanding psychological warfare (ironically, much like Custer in long relying upon the music of the 7th Cavalry’s regimental band for unnerving opponents and the early blaring of bugles in the advance down Medicine Tail Coulee), the ford defenders had their own trick up their sleeves. To disguise their small numbers, the warriors now unleashed a chorus of war cries that coincided with the crescendo of barking guns that they now fired as rapidly as possible. These defiant shouts and war cries coincided with the roaring gunfire that had so suddenly exploded from the underbrush and willow saplings, catching Custer and his troopers by surprise. This cacophony of noise, this wild shouting from the thick underbrush echoed over the wooded river bottoms, helped to unnerve Custer’s hard-hit men in the front ranks.44

These Cheyenne and Sioux warriors, including Bobtail Horse, who blasted away with a muzzleloader, were now resolved to do or die because, in the words of Low Dog: “The Indians held their ground to give the women and children time to get out of the way [to the west because] our men were fighting to save their women and children,” which the Cheyenne warriors had been unable to accomplish at the Washita, where the 7th Cavalry had run roughshod over the village.45

So highly motivated were these warriors that Mad Wolf continued to admonish the young fighters not to do what they still wanted to unleash: to launch a headlong charge the pony soldiers at the ford. Exhibiting more of his trademark wisdom that was much-needed in this crisis situation, Mad Wolf shouted to these young fighting men how “the soldiers are too many [to charge therefore] [j]ust keep shooting at them.”46 From the high ground above the ford, Crow scout White Man Runs Him, the son of Bull Chief and Offers Her Red Cloth, saw that the “Sioux [and Cheyenne] were right across the river” from Custer’s attackers.47 White Cow Bull was mesmerized by the daring leader of these pony soldiers, who had decided to attack such an immense village in broad daylight: “One white man [who was clearly the leader] had little hairs on his face and was wearing a big hat and a buckskin jacket [and] riding a fine looking big horse,”—Lieutenant Colonel Custer. Firing from his well-concealed position behind the slight rise amid the underbrush, White Cow Bull also described this dynamic officer who was leading the way in the forefront: “The soldiers came down to the ford led by one with mustache and buckskin jacket on [a] sorrel.”48

However, the daunting spectacle of so many enemy soldiers advancing ever closer was an unnerving sight that was too much for even one of these battle-hardened men. Dull Knife (Lame White Man), after firing at the bluecoats for some time, suddenly lost his nerve. He bolted rearward where his horse was tied, leaving his fast-firing comrades behind the brushy rise on their own. After having reached his psychological breaking point under the stress of an intense battle, especially with the 7th Cavalry troopers now so close it seemed they could not possibly be stopped, Dull Knife gained his horse. He leaped on the horse’s back, and then shouted to his fellow fighters, “It’s no use. We cannot stop them.”49

Fortunately for Indians today, the other defenders along the slight rise in the river bottoms were far more steadfast than Dull Knife, whose name proved especially symbolic. Continuing to fire as fast as possible at an ample number of moving targets around the ford, the defenders believed that they had no choice but to stand firm and do their best in this critical situation, because so much was at stake. Bobtail Horse shouted encouragement for the warriors to hold out as long as possible, yelling that they had to “try to stop or turn them. If they get in camp they will kill many women.”50

At this crucial moment, not long after Dull Knife rode away to the west at a brisk pace, the defenders’ steely resolve had been additionally solidified by the unexpected arrival of the five Sioux warriors who had been recently chased down Medicine Tail Coulee. They had only narrowly escaped Custer’s advance. After whipping their horses and splashing across the shallow ford, they had circled around and ridden in behind the defenders crouching below the low rise, covered in the clumps of underbrush and small willows. A most timely reinforcement that raised spirits in the face of Custer’s onslaught, these five Sioux fighters took good firing positions behind their busy Cheyenne and Lakota comrades. These newcomers likewise began to fire with rapidity, utilizing the marksmanship skill of lifelong hunters. As part of a culture than emphasized selfless sacrifice for the tribe’s general good, the warriors as individuals continued to demonstrate initiative, good judgment, and tactical flexibility. The lifelong experiences and abilities of these fighting men were ideally suited and tailor-made for such a key situation as the ford’s defense. Perhaps an arrow or lance, more than six feet long and ritualistically decorated, was driven into the ground to signify this last stand along the slight rise. Ironically, Custer would have better served had he assigned a company of his best marksmen atop Bouyer’s Bluff, just to the south and overlooking the ford, to rake the defenders along the rise with a plunging fire. Custer, however, had believed that the charge across the ford would not be opposed—until the ambush revealed otherwise. Consequently, no time had existed for such a sensible tactic, although three of Custer’s Crow scouts had fired at the five fleeing mounted Sioux from this commanding height, because it would have taken too long for already-weary troopers to climb to the bluff’s top.

Meanwhile, the number of defenders increased, including another new addition—a veteran Cheyenne warrior named Rising Sun, who joined his fellow Cheyenne defenders. He also now fought beside two separate bands of Sioux defenders: the youngsters and older warriors who they had first encountered under natural cover just before reaching the slight rise, and the other band of timely reinforcements—the five Sioux mounted warriors who fled down the coulee before Custer’s advance—who had recently united with them. Like a handful of others, Shave Elk, an Oglala Sioux who also had fled down Medicine Tail Coulee to escape the advance, also might well have joined the defenders at this time. Regardless, the last reinforcements brought the total number of defenders to about twenty-five to thirty warriors, and possibly even more.51

Never having seen or fought white men before, dark-skinned White Cow Bull, who rapidly fired his repeater, felt astonishment mixed with curiosity at the sight of so many strange-looking Caucasians in blue uniforms before him. These odd-looking, light-colored fighting men looked exceptionally big on their large horses. To White Cow Bull, who had seen only dark-skinned people for his entire life, Custer’s men appeared not only white but also eerily pink and hairy.

Indeed, at this time, Custer’s troopers had an extra shaggy growth of facial hair from the past thirty-one days since departing Fort Abraham Lincoln with high hopes. With the 7th Cavalry troopers now so close, White Cow Bull was surprised at the sight of so much facial hair, especially their beards, unlike the Indian people, whose insular culture viewed these white characteristics with disgust. Custer’s men were now close enough that White Cow Bull plainly saw their pale reddish color (like a buffalo calf in spring) and blonde hair. These were strange-looking hues on humans never seen before by him. This veteran warrior might have been reminded of having seen a white buffalo, a spirit or “medicine animal,” roaming free on the plains, or a white buffalo robe, a sacred object. No animal of the Great Plains was more eagerly sought with greater zeal by the warriors than the revered white buffalo.52

After unleashing the first shots that caught Custer and his men by surprise, and with the Sioux and Cheyenne warriors now firing rapidly at will, this was developing into a showdown that would have the greatest impact on the battle’s overall outcome. Clearly, the highly flexible Indian style of fighting as individuals now paid immense dividends, because this divergent group of warriors of different ages, tribes, and warrior societies (although they looked the same to Custer’s men) had suddenly come together to create a masterful ad hoc defense on the fly to face the day’s crisis situation.

Of course, precise testimony about the effect of the Indians’ fire is lacking from whites, because none of the attackers of Custer’s five companies survived the battle. Pretty Shield learned from warriors, such as White Cow Bull, that Custer, Mitch Bouyer, and a color–bearer were the first to enter the ford’s waters and were cut down. Do any white accounts substantiate the words of Pretty Shield? Before riding off to safety and agreeing with Curley’s account, packer Lockwood saw what happened to the troopers, with Custer and his headquarters staff leading the way, including flag–bearers carrying their colorful banners in front.

To the warriors in the low-lying river bottoms, the words from the Old Testament’s Song of Solomon 6:10 were now appropriate, because nothing is as “terrible as an army with banners.” In Lockwood’s words, which agreed with Indian oral testimonies, “the Indians were waiting for them [along the slight rise and when] those Indians opened fire on the general and his staff, and they all fell at the first volley.”53 Again, Lockwood’s account is in agreement with ample Indian oral testimony that he never saw. For example, two warriors, the Cheyenne Bobtail Horse and Sioux White Cow Bull, and others described how the leader of the charge was hit and fell into the river.54 Custer always led from the front, so this could have been Custer as alleged by the collaborating Indian oral testimony, including that of Pretty Shield. Indeed, Custer went all the way down to the river, leading the way as usual, with Bouyer and a color–bearer. With a commanding high ground view above the ford, Scout White Man Runs Him also verified as much, emphasizing how Custer “went right to the river bank [as] I saw him go that far,” reaching the ford.55

Of course, watching this fight from a distance, Lockwood was incorrect about so many staff members falling, but a number of men went down as Indian accounts revealed. Dr. Lord, in front with the headquarters staff, might have fallen at this point because his surgical case was later found in the Cheyenne village. From his higher ground perch and even from a good distance, he could have seen Custer because of the prominence of his white hat and buckskin coat (verified by scout White Man Runs Him and ford defender White Cow Bull) while he led the charge as usual, especially in a crisis situation.56

In general terms, Lockwood’s words were verified by White Cow Bull and Horned Horse, who described how “several men tumbled into the water” of the Little Bighorn, and Pretty Shield, who emphasized that Custer was one who fell.57 This heavy volume of fire maintained by the ford defenders was also confirmed by this same warrior. Horned Horse told how Custer and his foremost troopers were swept a “tremendous fire from the repeating rifles” (rapidly firing 15-shot weapons, either the Winchester or Henry repeating rifles, or both) of the ford defenders.58 Crow scout Curley “saw two of Custer’s men killed who fell into the stream.”59 One woman described this “withering fire … from the willows [because] [o]ur people, boys and all, had plenty of guns and ammunition to kill the new soldiers.”60

With regard to Custer’s fall, Less Spotted Hawk, the grandson of Little Bighorn veteran Spotted Hawk, learned from the family’s oral tradition that “Custer was riding at the head of his troops [when] [h]e was shot in the chest as they prepared to cross the river.”61 As mentioned, both Bobtail Horse and White Cow Bull also verified that the leading officer in the charge on the ford fell, after having been shot in the chest.62

This traditional story from the warriors who defended the ford matched the chest wound when Custer’s body was found atop Custer Hill, where he might have been eventually carried or assisted by staff members for the famous Last Stand.63 One of the great mysteries of the battle of the Little Bighorn has revolved around the question of which warrior hit Custer with a well-aimed shot at the ford: White Cow Bull or Bobtail Horse? Pretty Shield said that the Sioux warrior named Big Nose was the one who shot Custer, but this was a least likely possibility. Bobtail Horse cut down at least one trooper, who fell from his gray horse and then tumbled into the Little Bighorn’s waters. White Cow Bull specifically targeted officers with his Winchester or Henry repeating rifle that blazed at a rapid rate. A veteran warrior, he instinctively knew that the key to repulsing the attack was to eliminate white leaders, who were obvious by their commanding appearance and behavior. Just before hitting his target with a fine shot, White Cow Bull “aimed his repeater at one [officer in front] in a buckskin jacket who appeared to be the leader.” More important, he correctly identified not only the exact attire of the leader of the charge across the ford, but also the correct horse that Custer rode, to reveal that White Cow Bull [as he explained] shot Custer, who “was wearing a high hat and a buckskin jacket [riding] a fine looking big horse, a sorrel with a blazed face and four white stockings. On one side of him was a soldier carrying a flag and riding a gray horse, and on the other side was a small many on a dark horse [Mitch Bouyer] … so I gave the man in the buckskin jacket my attention” with the fast-firing reaping rifle.64 Again and as mentioned, Crow scout White Man Runs Him emphasized that on this afternoon Custer “wore buckskin,” providing additional proof that the lieutenant colonel was indeed hit at the ford.65

The heavy volume of firepower unleashed by the fast-firing band of ford defenders was also revealed by Crow scout Curley, who witnessed the attack down the coulee from the vantage point of higher ground. Emphasizing that Custer ran into an ambush in the river bottoms, Curley described how, when the troopers “neared the river, the Indians, concealed in the undergrowth on the opposite side of the river, opened fire on the troops….”66 Telling what he had learned from his warriors after their most successful day against the pony soldiers in Sioux history, Sitting Bull revealed the effects of superior firepower. He emphasized the tenacity of the defense of Medicine Tail Coulee Ford, stating how: “Our young men rained lead across the river….”67

Based on first-hand information that he obtained from Custer’s youngest Crow scout, Curley, Custer was not the first to be hit. Trooper William O. Taylor wrote: “After the head of the column reached the river, Curley saw a man on a gray horse with stripes on his arm, meaning a Sergeant, ride into the river, evidently to see if he could find a ford [by ascertaining the river’s depths and] [a]t that moment the Indians opened fire on the column.”68

Despite relatively few defenders blasting away from the brushy rise and clumps of willows, the rate of fire was not only heavy but also accurate because Custer’s hard-hit troopers suffered losses from the beginning. What was the most-forgotten factor that explained the unleashing of such massive firepower from so few men from their good defensive positions? First and foremost, the forgotten answer lay in the superior weaponry of the 15-shot repeating rifle, which was vastly more lethal and faster-firing than the single-shot Springfield carbines of the 7th Cavalry troopers.69 White Cow Bull fired a repeater, either a 15-shot Winchester or Henry rifle, during the ford’s defense, including in blasting away at Custer. Almost certainly a number of defenders, perhaps even the majority although it cannot be verified with any accuracy, also possessed repeating rifles. Therefore, a relative handful of defenders unleashed a tremendous volume of fire—verified by Sitting Bull and others—that was all out of proportion to the low number of defenders.70

The erroneous impression has been that only White Cow Bull possessed a repeating rifle, while the other defenders were armed with only bows and arrows, which was certainly not the case.71 The Sioux warrior named Horned Horse and others, including Sitting Bull, explained the secret that revealed exactly why their defense of the ford was so effective against the odds. Horned Horse emphasized how Custer’s men “made a dash to get across, but was met by such a tremendous fire from the repeating rifles” from the Cheyenne and Sioux that a crossing was impossible.72 Encountering such a heavy volume of fire from the finest repeating arms in America should have come as no surprise to the 7th Cavalry troopers. Ironically, a concerned Captain Yates had sagely warned in December 1874, “I observed the Indians [Sioux] were splendidly armed principally with Henry and Winchester Rifles.”73

Ironically, the Winchester rifle has been commonly viewed as “The Gun That Won the West,” especially the famed Winchester model ’73. Ironically, and although unrecognized, this gun actually played a far larger and disproportionate role in winning the battle of the Little Bighorn. In fact, this June 25 reality was even more appropriate and on–target in terms of deciding the crucial contest at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford. Consisting of models 1866 (known as the “Yellow Boy” because of the yellow color of its brass receiver), 1873, and 1876, the massive volume of firepower unleashed from this classic lever action repeating rifle far outmatched and outclassed the 7th Cavalry’s single-shot Springfield carbines: a forgotten explanation about how so few warriors could prevail at the ford. All in all, these fast-firing Winchester rifles played a key role in determining loser from victor on June 25.74

What was happening was very much a showdown of weapon technology. Manufactured in New Haven, Connecticut, and like the Winchester rifle, the Henry rifle was actually the first authentic Winchester rifle. The Henry rifle had first proved its lethality during combat by a relatively few Union soldiers, mostly in the western theater. These Yankees had been armed with the day’s most innovative weapon, which decimated attacking Confederates, who were severely handicapped by using single-shot muzzle loaders. Firing .44 caliber bullets from metallic cartridge casings, the rate of fire (like the Winchester) from the 16-shot Henry was devastating, and unlike anything experienced by Southern soldiers.

Quite simply, the Henry repeating rifle was the best weapon in the Union arsenal, while the Winchester was the best weapon of the Indian Wars.75 However, some defenders, more Sioux than Cheyenne, in the ford’s defense only possessed bows and arrows. Even these ancient weapons proved effective in arching arrows high across the river to rain down on the lower ground on the east side. With long iron heads obtained from white traders, Cheyenne arrows were marked by three wavy lines on the wooden shaft (designating the sacred spirit that had long assisted in bringing and killing buffalo for subsistence) that distinguished them from Sioux arrows.

Amid the underbrush and willows that covered the slight rise, those warriors, like White Shield, without firearms continued to fire a hail of arrows, with lengthy points, at the attackers. These arching arrows repeatedly flew high and across the river to strike targets, now well within deadly range. While unleashing arrows in a high arc and in quick succession, the experienced archers remained behind protective cover that allowed them to be unseen by Custer’s men. Consequently, they were able to let loose with arrows without exposing themselves to the troopers’ return fire from the .45–70 caliber Springfield carbines.76 With either rifles or bows and arrows, these veteran hunters, in the words of one officer, were “a most dangerous warrior within two hundred yards [because this is] the range which he is accustomed to kill game….”77

Most symbolic like the timely (but entirely unplanned) unity of Cheyenne and Sioux warriors who now stood firm before the battlefield’s most strategic point at this time, the ford’s defense proved formidable, thanks to a strange combination of the most ancient weapons, the bow and arrow, combined with the most advanced weapons technology of the Winchester and Henry repeating rifles: a somewhat bizarre synergy of old and new weaponry that were ideally suited in the ford’s defense when least expected by Custer. Unfortunately for the attackers, they encountered the fire of more advanced weaponry than imagined and at a closer range than from bows and arrows: a shock that shook confidence and sapped the charge’s momentum.78

Leading the “Gray Horse Company” (E) in the attack at the head of Captain Yates’s battalion on the ford was “Fresh Smith.” He was known by this nickname to separate him from Captain “Salt Smith.” As his sobriquet indicated, “Salt Smith” was a crusty officer and a 7th Cavalry wagoner of the Black Hills Expedition, possessing a seaman’s background in the merchant marine. The modest, less-worldly “Fresh Smith,” a quiet married man, was the antithesis of “Salt Smith.” Smooth-faced and handsome, Lieutenant Algernon Emory Smith was a popular young officer of outstanding promise. He was called “Smithie” by his best friends, including Custer. They preferred this more familiar nickname to “Fresh Smith,” a name that revealed a measure of disrespect from the older officers that indicated a strict regimental pecking order.79

As sad fate would have it, Lieutenant Smith was almost certainly fatally cut down at the ford, while leading the advance of Yates’s battalion. Respected historians Sandy Barnard, Brian C. Pohanka, and James S. Brust concluded: “Lieutenant Algernon E. Smith of Company E—whose presence, a considerable distance from the other men of his company, may indicate that Smith was an early casualty.”80

In overall tactical terms, and thanks to the fast-firing repeating rifles of White Cow Bull and other warriors, what was now happening in the ad hoc defense of the ford was quite remarkable by any measure. Against all odds, a mere handful of warriors were in the process of thwarting the lofty ambitions and boldest tactical plan (flank attack) of one of America’s greatest Civil War heroes. All the while, a good many factors continued to ensure that these defenders could not have been more highly motivated or determined at this time.

As mentioned, these warriors knew that they must hold firm to protect the village’s women and children, doing their duty to their people. To fuel the determination of the Cheyenne warriors at the ford, thoughts reverted back to the searing memories of Sand Creek. Here White Necklace, the wife of Wolf Chief, found her niece decapitated by Colorado’s unrestrained soldiers. Likewise, the memory of the killing of an estimated seventy-five women and children (mostly accidental) by the 7th Cavalry at the Washita proved a grim reminder of what might happen along the Little Bighorn, if these warriors were now pushed aside. Therefore, the battle cry for the Cheyenne warriors on this hot afternoon was “Remember the Washita.” This war cry was a powerful motivating factor for them to hold firm against the odds.

The tenacity of these Cheyenne and Sioux warriors can also partly be explained by the inspirational power of spiritual faith. All in all, a host of complex factors now combined to make these men some of the best fighters of their respective warrior societies. Quite simply, they were the elite fighters of the tribe, and they were now demonstrating as much in the ford’s defense. These young men and boys (Cheyenne and Sioux) had been thoroughly indoctrinated in the cherished values of their respective warrior societies, which now fueled their motivations to new heights. Making them supreme fighters when everything was at stake, these warriors stoically believed that it was far better to die in battle in defending their people (especially helpless women and children) than to live to old age and then quietly fade away when well past their prime. Consequently, this crisis situation at the ford was exactly what the Cheyenne warrior most gloried in, providing the ultimate challenge.

Since childhood, these warriors had heard the fables that glorified the heroic actions of fighting men in protecting the tribe. Therefore, Cheyenne war heroes (in the past and the present day) were the most respected and popular members of the tribe, much like Hollywood and sports stars in America’s popular culture of today. Such warrior heroes were long idolized by young males preconditioned in warrior values from infancy in a society in which battle courage was the most revered quality. They were moral fighting men and holy warriors whose lives were devoted to giving thanks to God for His blessings and the tribe’s protection. These Cheyenne and Sioux defenders of the ford believed that the “Great Prophet” now gave them the strength to stand firm against the odds after having met Custer’s column head-on.81

Among the thick underbrush of the sun-baked river bottoms, the defenders of the slight ridge needed all of the spiritual power to face the attack of five companies of a proud regiment that was considered elite across America. With only three companies, Reno should have delivered an offensive blow as Custer had ordered. Despite the heavy fire pouring from the repeating rifles, an increasingly alarmed Bobtail Horse still “believed they would cross the river and get into the camp” and win the day.82 Clearly, Custer realized that crossing the river at this point was the key to victory. Lieutenant Winfield Scott Edgerly, Company D, 7th Cavalry, later realized the excellent tactical possibilities for Custer to reap a sparkling success in gaining the Cheyenne village, because the river at the ford was “only about fifteen or twenty yards wide….”83

Fueling their determination to hold firm, these warriors were now also inspired by the moral legacy of the Cheyenne holy girl who had existed so long ago. Bestowed with the spiritual power of sacred animals and the Great Spirit, this female orphan had directed the basic shape of Cheyenne tribal council and leadership. Even more symbolic, the Cheyenne warriors now battling with their hearts from behind the brushy rise also fought in the honor of Sweet Medicine, the Cheyenne’s mythical hero. Serving as the sacred tool of the Great Spirit atop the “Sacred Hill” in the Black Hills where she gained wisdom, Sweet Medicine had first presented the warrior societies with their sacred rituals and regalia centuries before. She had been granted four sacred arrows by this personified great spirit. Not unlike those now let loose in rapid succession toward Custer’s men at the ford, these arrows were the supernatural means, or “grace,” by which the Cheyenne people survived in the future.

In purely spiritual terms, the Cheyenne also hoped to repulse the threat from Medicine Tail Coulee Ford to gain favor from Sweet Medicine’s sacred memory. These warriors now fought for the survival of everything that they knew and loved: a distinctive culture, a unique way of life, and freedom-loving people who were now under threat not only from the 7th Cavalry, but also the relentless push of modernity and progress. Providing inspiration, these crack fighting men of the Northern Great Plains were convinced that the all-knowing “Spirit who Rules the Universe” was now beside them in the ford’s defense, bestowing moral strength and courage to them. The centrality of this all-consuming religious faith in the daily lives and traditional value systems of these Cheyenne and Sioux warriors led them to defend the ford with a tenacity and stubbornness unexpected by Custer’s men.84

Protective Charms and Audacity in the Face of All Tactical Reason

Last but not least, and like Bobtail Horse, who wore his protective elk’s tooth, the warriors defending the ford also believed in the spiritual power of their special charms, including eagle feathers and buffalo tails that were darker in color than the bison’s tan-colored body hair. The most colorful protective charms in the ford’s defense were the “helper birds,” including stuffed hawks worn in long black hair, which had been long envisioned by these warriors in dreams to protect them and give them strength in the heat of battle. A typical medicine pouch (a counterpart to Dr. Lord’s surgical case) might contain a buffalo tail and eagle feather, or these sacred charms might hang from the warrior’s body. To these battle-hardened fighters, these revered charms offered guidance and protection from harm, especially the lead bullets of the white man, while fueling a tenacious defense along the Little Bighorn.85

To heighten resolve in the ford’s defense along the slight rise, no stuffed bird now worn by these warriors atop their heads or tied to their hair was more symbolic than the kingfisher. Therefore, White Shield now wore a stuffed kingfisher atop his head, believing that it provided spiritual power that protected him from harm. This was all part of the complex Cheyenne spiritual belief system (like that of the Sioux) that explained why they were so carefully dressed in full battle regalia. If killed, then these fighting men wanted to look their best when they entered the next world of their ancestors, and the stuffed kingfishers were among the finest war regalia to impress the Great Spirit. Since children, these warriors had watched in amazement at the expert hunting prowess of the brightly colored kingfisher (whose magnificent colorful plumage consists of bright blue and yellow breast feathers) that patrolled swiftly above the waters, including along the Little Bighorn, in search of fish. Sighting an unwary target near the surface, the kingfisher then dove into the water to spear fish with its long, dagger-like beak. Imitating the kingfisher’s cry in the heat of battle, these warriors took inspiration from its amazing hunting skills, because “If it dives into the water for a fish, he never misses in prey,”: a fact that these warriors now sought to emulate against the tribe’s enemies, and especially now in defending Medicine Tail Coulee Ford.86

Like his superiors who believed that the worst of all fates would be for the “savages to beat us” on the battlefield, in General Sherman’s words, Custer had badly underestimated the overall martial qualities of these warriors, especially with regard to motivations. When his Crow scouts had recently informed him that there were a sufficient number of Sioux in the village to ensure a battle of two or three days, an amused Custer could hardly keep from laughing. He had responded, with a smile, “I guess we’ll get through with them in one day.”87 Despite his bold words, Custer was still not able to break through only a mere handful of defenders at the ford, all the while knowing that everything was now at stake. In Bobtail Horse’s words, the warriors now “were firing as hard as they could and killed a soldier,” whose horse then bolted across the river at the shallow ford.88

At this time, ironically, the ford defenders had no idea who led these attackers, despite knowing of Custer because of his devastating Washita attack. Cheyenne and Sioux accounts have revealed that no one expected that these bluecoats were led by Custer. Custer’s recently cut hair made their identification of him (including after the battle) impossible. Therefore, the Indians believed that they were now once again battling Crook’s soldiers from the Rosebud fight, where they had emerged victorious after demonstrating that they were “the best cavalry in the world.”89

However, the oral account of Sioux warrior Hollow Horn Bear revealed that a fellow warrior had told him “that he saw a man with a red and yellow handkerchief around his neck and a buckskin jacket on [and] the warrior who made this remark said it must be Long Yellow Hair.”90 After having become the Union’s youngest general at age twenty-three during America’s fratricidal conflict, Custer had created a special uniform for himself. As if to remind him of his glory days (and like other members of his inner circle, who wore these colorful “neckties,”) Custer had worn, in the words of one of his men, “a conspicuous red tie.”91

A number of Custer’s officers of the inner circle, including Tom Custer, wore stylish buckskin shirts or coats. Now covered in alkali dust, these buckskin garments had been long popular among the officer corps of the 7th Cavalry. Custer wore a buckskin shirt and pants, and esteemed members (officers) of the Custer clique followed the lieutenant colonel’s example. In fact, even officers outside the clique, like the dashing Irish wing commander Captain Myles Walter Keogh (who now carried a photo of Captain McDougall’s sister) also wore buckskin shirts or coats. Custer clique members now wearing buckskin shirts or coats included Keogh’s top lieutenant now commanding Company I, Lieutenant James Porter, Lieutenant Henry Martin Harrington, Tom Custer, who rode on his Kentucky thoroughbred near his brother in the charge down the coulee, Lieutenants James Calhoun and Algernon Smith, Adjutant Cooke, and the other wing commander, Yates. Marveling at the bravery of the 7th Cavalrymen, Red Horse described one especially courageous “officer [who] wore a large-brimmed hat and deerskin coat.” This was most likely Tom Custer, who wore a buckskin coat and a white broad-brimmed slouch hat while serving as part of his brother’s staff at the forefront during the attack on the ford.92

One of the misconceptions about the battle of the Little Bighorn was that Custer wore no buckskin shirt or coat during the combat. With a penchant for confusing details in later years, it was thought by Trumpeter Martin that Custer had taken off his own buckskin coat or shirt and then placed it behind his saddle. The Italian immigrant-turned-bugler stated that Custer wore a blue shirt with buckskin pants. Even if questions have continued to exist in this regard, Custer might well have put his buckskin back on (serving as a duster) in leading the charge on the ford, because a number of other officers wore buckskin shirts or coats as verified by numerous Indian accounts.93

As mentioned, ample evidence and testimony exists that Custer was hit early in the attack. Sioux warrior White Cow Bull presented oral testimony that he shot down the leader of the charge donned in a buckskin shirt or coat during the charge across the ford: a claim that packer Lockwood, who never knew about White Cow Bull’s testimony, supported and verified in his forgotten memoir. Hairy Moccasin, Goes Ahead, and White Man Runs Him “saw [or heard of] Custer’s fall at the river” that fateful afternoon.94 In this regard, this was one of the few times that white and Indian testimonies were in agreement. Lockwood emphasized that he saw Custer “fall at the head of his advancing troops, and that he was ‘the first to fall’ before the real battle began.”95 After analyzing the often-confusing details of the battle (due to no white survivors) to a degree like few other historians, Jack L. Pennington concluded in no uncertain terms that “Custer must have been shot at the ford….”96

From a good many Indian accounts that he carefully analyzed, historian David Humphreys Miller also emphasized how “Custer … fell, a hostile bullet through his left breast.”97 All of this testimony (white and red) by those who witnessed what actually happened at the ford was additionally verified by the words of a Northern Cheyenne, the grandmother of Sylvester Knows Gun. Having heard the personal views of the battle from surviving warriors, including those men who had defended the ford, she explained how the leading officer in a buckskin jacket was “the first one to get hit” by the ford defenders’ fire. Pretty Shield, wife of Goes Ahead, learned from warriors, including her husband, that Custer fell at the ford.98 Just when the officer appeared about to fall off his saddle and into the clear, cold waters at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford, three men (staff members, if this was Custer) rushed to his assistance. “They got one on each side of him,” in the oral testimony of this Northern Cheyenne woman, “and the other got in front of him, and grabbed the horse’s reins [and then] they quickly turned around and went back across the river.”99

White Cow Bull, one of the Sioux who fired a repeating rifle (either a Winchester or Henry rifle), described the destructive fire from the last stand defenders that led to the fall of the leading officer whom he believed was Custer himself, because it had the effect of eroding the overall momentum of the attack (as verified by Curley and Lockwood) at the ford:

The man in the buckskin jacket seemed to be the leader of these soldiers [and this] man who seemed to be the soldier chief was firing his heavy rifle [not the standard issue cavalry carbine] fast [and] I aimed my repeater at him and fired. I saw him fall out of his saddle and hit the water. Shooting that man stopped the soldiers from charging on. … Some of them got off their horses in the ford and seemed to be dragging something out of the water, while other soldiers [Keogh’s battalion on higher ground behind Yates’ battalion in the low ground at the mouth of Medicine Tail Coulee and the ford] still on horseback kept shooting at us.100

White Cow Bull’s revealing words seemed to indicate that if this was Custer who was hit (which is most likely the case), then he was only wounded. If so, then an injured Custer was eventually assisted up by his men (most likely staff officers and other inner circle members, especially Tom Custer) and eventually carried all the way up to Custer Hill, nearly three-quarters of a mile away, where his body was later found. Fully convinced that Custer had been killed at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford, Sioux warrior Horned Horse concluded that the “Little Big Horn [River flows and] cuts off the edges of the northern bluffs sharply near the point where Custer perished.”101

Blazing Repeating Rifles

Like other warriors, White Cow Bull revealed why this blistering fire pouring from the slight rise amid the underbrush and willows was so devastating (something that even amazed Sitting Bull) for a lengthy period of time: some defenders, perhaps even a majority, possessed weaponry far superior to the men of the 7th Cavalry. Firing beside White Cow Bull, who blazed away with “my repeater,” Bobtail Horse also shot a trooper (the first bluecoat to fall at the ford according to White Cow Bull) “out of the saddle” and off his gray horse while most likely firing a repeating rifle.102 Sioux warrior Horned Horse revealed that the key to Custer’s unexpectedly harsh reception and sharp setback at the ford was due to “such a tremendous fire from the repeating rifles” that roared.103 The number of repeating rifles used in the ford’s defense was not an unusual situation, because large numbers of warriors along the Little Bighorn were armed with repeating rifles on this day: the ultimate shock to Custer, who had hoped to surprise his opponent, but instead had been surprised in this regard. Two Young Moons, the Northern Cheyenne leader born in 1855, described: “We were pretty well armed [including] rimfire Winchesters [and the] Indians had many .45 and .50 caliber guns and Winchesters at [the] time of [the] Custer fight.”104

Ironically, Custer already knew about his opponent’s superior weaponry, but certainly not with regard to the ford’s defenders until it was too late. In referring to Sitting Bull’s Hunkpapa band, Indian agent John E. Smith had warned Custer in February 1874 that “two-thirds were well-armed [and] [a]bout half the warriors remaining at Agencies have repeating rifles, Winchesters & all others have breech–loaders [and] I have known Indians … to have 3,000 rounds of ammunition for a single gun.”105

The undeniable reality of the vast superiority of Indian weaponry was also realized throughout the 7th Cavalry. Private Taylor emphasized how the warriors were splendidly armed. He mentioned how “many of the Indians carried … Winchesters.”106 An embittered Sergeant John Ryan, Company M, described the supreme disadvantage now faced by Custer at the ford: “Sitting Bull’s trusty and most persistent allies were the Indian Department and the Indian traders who supplied him with Winchester rifles and patent ammunition” in large quantities.107 Indeed, in the words of one modern historian (and unfortunately for Custer and his men), “The Interior Department and its Bureau of Indian affairs looked after their charges, providing arms and ammunition for the hunt, while the army suffered the consequences of superior weapons in the hands of already able warriors.”108

Ample archaeological evidence from the Custer battlefield has revealed the truth of the Indians’ large number of the day’s cutting-edge firearms technology, the Winchester and Henry repeating rifles. Archaeological studies have also coincided with the analysis of Reno and Benteen and their lucky survivors, who lived to fight another day thanks to Custer’s flank attack.109 Therefore, the words of Baltimore, Maryland–born Captain Thomas Henry French, who rode a Kentucky thoroughbred as the commander of Company M, the son of an Englishman, and a Civil War veteran, were not an exaggeration with regard to the Northern Great Plains warriors: “These Indians all had Winchesters 17 shooting breech loaders, which may be fired as rapidly as a slight turn of the hand can be made. They had, some of them whom I have seen at the agencies, four belts of cartridges—two about the loins, one each way from the shoulder over the chest.”110

Custer’s attack was so hard hit at the ford by the rapid fire from superior weaponry only because these guns had been sold to these warriors by white traders, including licensed Department of the Interior traders.111 One Arapaho (who were allies of the Sioux and Cheyenne) warrior named Left Hand explained the central foundation of the longtime mass arming of the Northern Great Plains Indians with superior weaponry: “The white men used to trade us guns for buffalo robes….”112

Sitting Bull correctly saw the ford contest as a mismatch because of a broad disparity in weaponry in the most fundamental terms that proved the decisive in the end: “They fired with needle [single-shot carbines] guns [and] [w]e replied with [16-shot] magazine guns—repeating rifles.”113

If Custer was not hit, despite ample Indian and white testimony that has deemed otherwise, then two possibilities existed with regard to the identity of this officer who fell at the ford. Charging immediately behind Custer and his headquarters staff, Yates’ battalion (Companies E, C and F, respectively) was also swept by same fire that hit the headquarters staff. When Smith’s Company E was hit by the hot fire erupting from the brushy river bottoms, Company C reinforced Company E out of urgent tactical necessity after the shock from the first volley and sustained fire. Exposed in the open and an easy target, Lieutenant Smith also wore a buckskin shirt or coat when he was cut down.114 By this time, Company C’s soldiers, including dark-haired and black-eyed Private Patrick Griffin, who had been born in Dingle, County Kerry, Munster Province, in southwest Ireland, were shocked by the rapid fire and “sharp crack of Winchesters and Henrys as the Indians killed” members of Yates’s battalion, which was swept by the ford defenders without let up.115

Continuing to throw the odds in favor of the relatively few ford defenders as the firefight lengthened, Custer’s men simply could not match this heavy volume of gunfire, especially when they were mounted during the charge, which guaranteed an inaccurate return fire. The single-shot Springfield carbines were simply no match to the Winchester and Henry repeating rifles. No doubt, these fast-firing weapons included those decorated brass tacks on wood stocks, a popular style among the Northern Great Plains warriors. The embattled ford was now impassible, in part because Custer’s men no longer possessed the superior weapon that had once unleashed a greater volume of firepower than their Springfield carbines The troopers no longer carried the Spencer seven-shot carbine, a fast-firing repeater.

Even more symbolic, Custer’s Wolverines of his Michigan Cavalry Brigade had been so effective in the Civil War years in no small part because they relied upon Spencer rifle’s firepower. However, in its conventional wisdom that now doomed a good many its own members to cruel deaths along the Little Bighorn, the United States Army had decided to discontinue the superior Spencer carbine (capable of firing ten shots in a minute) in favor of the inferior model 1873 Springfield carbine that was so badly outmatched this afternoon at the ford, when the battle’s outcome was being decided.116

Charging Across Medicine Tail Coulee Ford

In the absence of so many veteran officers, lower-ranking leaders rose to the fore as best they could under difficult circumstances. Commanding Company C in Tom Custer’s absence and in his first battle, Second Lieutenant Henry Moore Harrington also wore a buckskin shirt or coat. In this regard, Harrington followed the habit of their esteemed commander and other leading officers, especially Custer’s close-knit inner circle who wore this popular attire. As mentioned, the so-called buckskin scout jacket or shirt was a popular style among the leadership corps of the 7th Cavalry, including among Custer’s staff.117

Captain Tom Custer (or “Brother Tom,” in Libbie’s words), Captain Myles Walter Keogh (who possessed an Irishman’s sensitive heart hid under a rough-hewn hardened exterior), and the highly competent Adjutant Cooke, Boston “Bos” Custer (the youngest of the Custer brothers, who now served as a civilian guide officially assigned to the quartermaster), Ohio-born Lieutenant James “Jimmy” Calhoun (a Civil War veteran known as the handsome “Adonis of the regiment”), and other highly respected men all wore buckskin shirts or coats. Married to Custer’s sister Margaret, or “Maggie,” the mannerly, blond-haired (like his brothers-in-law) officer of Scotch-Irish descent, Lieutenant Calhoun possessed intellectual inclinations and now rode at the head of Company C. All of these respected officers, Custer’s favorites, wore buckskin shirts or coats at the Little Bighorn.118

At the head of thirty-four enlisted men of Company C, now that Tom Custer continued to serve on the commander’s staff and at his company’s head, acting company commander Lieutenant Henry Moore Harrington looked the part of a dashing leader in his light buckskin shirt. He led Company C’s troopers in his first combat as company commander. Meanwhile, the buglers continued to blow the charge for Company C. Trumpeter William Kramer was in his late twenties, married to wife Elnora, and proud of his infant son, Orren. No doubt having briefly admired the picturesque landscape of the high plains around him before the attack, Kramer had been an idealistic painter—before enlisting in the 7th Cavalry in October 1875 to learn about a cruel world from which he would never return. At age twenty-seven and a Michigan man like the Custer brothers, Harrington was a West Point graduate (number seventeen out of fifty-eight members of the Class of 1872) when he was age twenty-three. He had been married to the granddaughter of a respected West Point professor since November 1872, Grace Berard, after he graduated from the America’s top military academy on the Hudson.

Despite leading the company for the first time, Harrington possessed solid leadership experience on the Yellowstone Campaign of 1873 and Custer’s 1874 expedition to the Black Hills. He had been at home on leave with his wife and children (Grace and Harry) in the community of Coldwater, in south-central Michigan, when he learned that Custer had been reinstated to lead the regiment on the 1876 expedition. Despite a month remaining on his long-awaited furlough, the call was simply overwhelming for this duty-minded second lieutenant, and the conscientious Harrington had immediately telegraphed Custer. Despite being saddled with familial responsibilities, he requested to be allowed to rejoin the 7th Cavalry. Custer, of course, was delighted to have another capable Michigan officer by his side. Harrington, verifying Custer’s trust in him, led Company C’s charge on the ford to the sound of bugles blaring in the afternoon.

With the cherished Christian medal that he now wore providing no protection against the bullets from Indian rifles, Second Lieutenant Harrington was struck in the upper left side of his forehead just above his left eye. A large-caliber bullet smashed through his head. The massive bone structure damage revealed that the young lieutenant’s death was almost instantaneous. The fall of Harrington, who had long idolized Custer as Michigan’s greatest Civil War hero, also revealed that Company C advanced immediately behind Company E during the attack.

Yates’s battalion (Companies E, C, and F in this order of advance) surged forward close behind Custer and his headquarters staff during the charge on the ford. An Indian revealed that Harrington was “among the first killed in Custer’s [five companies in the] attack of the Indian village.”119 Reno believed that Harrington was only wounded and was then held captive in the valley, because he was hit so close to it. In fact, the lieutenant’s massive wounds proved otherwise. His grieving wife, Grace, was later presented contrary information by the 7th Cavalry’s regimental surgeon, Dr. John W. Williams, about her husband that convinced her that he remained a prisoner even long after the battle. However, all of this collaborating evidence is still another indication that the promising lieutenant was cut down in Custer’s attack at the ford.120 Like Company E, Company C was also swept by the fire from repeating rifles which roared from the brush-covered rise that could not be overcome by inferior single-shot firepower.121

Like other officers and enlisted men who were in the forefront of Custer’s final offensive effort of the day at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford, additional evidence (besides Reno’s account) that Harrington was killed at the ford and near the village was verified because of the fact that his body was never found after the battle. Evidence exists, including a dead trooper and his horse later found in the village, that some attackers crossed the ford and rode into the village. In addition, enraged Indian women later dragged wounded cavalrymen (tragic trophies of an angry people), who had fallen around the ford into the village that night during the victory celebration in which decapitation occurred. With field glasses from the bluffs above the river after his retreat from the river valley, and after the warriors had streamed north to face Custer’s threat, some 7th Cavalry officers, including Reno, saw three captives tied up “to the stake.” Here, their remains were eventually consumed by the flames. In looking northwest up the river valley, this horrifying sight provided additional evidence that Custer’s last charge on the ford was a greater attack and succeeded in making a far greater westward penetration than has been generally recognized by historians.122

In Reno’s words: “I [am] strongly of the opinion that [Harrington] was burned at the stake [because] while the great battle was going on I, and some officers looking through field glasses, saw the Indians miles away [in Cheyenne village] engaged in a war dance about three captives. They were tied to the stake and my impression was that Harrington was one of them.”123 What was significant about Reno’s observations was that these captives were taken prisoner very early and tied to the stake while Custer’s five companies were under attack on the high ground, after the repulse at the ford: additional proof that these men were captured in the attack on the ford.124

As could be expected among a thoroughly vanquished people, almost every Indian later denied (during careful oral testimony to white interviewers when they and their families were vulnerable after the tribes had been subjugated) the taking of 7th Cavalry captives (true MIAs, or Missing in Action, because their bodies were never found). They offered excuses to the point of explaining that quicksand was responsible for having “swallowed” up the bodies of troopers who fell into the river. Most revealing, Little Knife explained, “One prisoner was taken [who] had stripes on his arm. … He was bound hand and foot with a ‘shag a nappe’ (stripped buffalo hide), and left in a lodge [and later] A wild dance followed in the night after the battle, and a few men … sought out the lodge in which the captive was held and killed him with a knife….”125 Little Knife’s words corresponded with what Reno saw from the high ground perch above the river.126

The most accurate words of what happened to the dead and wounded at the ford was revealed by Two Moons, the minor chief of the Cheyenne Kit Fox Society. The son of an Arikara (or “Ree”) captive named Carries the Otter who became a fully accepted member of the Northern Cheyenne tribe, Two Moons emphasized how at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford “some soldiers were killed and were afterward dragged into the village, dismembered and burned at [the] big dance that night.”127 During the attack on the ford, amid the hail of lead from the slight rise, some men were unhorsed by a shot or a fall—the ultimate “ignominy for a [cavalry] officer of being dismounted” from a favorite horse.128

From reliable Indian oral accounts that coincided with what Sergeant Daniel Alexander Kanipe saw (i.e., the body) after the battle, it has been determined at least one 7th Cavalryman crossed the ford and charged straight into the Cheyenne village. Foolish Elk, a Sioux warrior at age twenty-one, related that “one soldier did ride his horse across [Medicine Tail Coulee Ford and then] into the village and was killed….”129 In fact, at least two recent recruits and “green troopers on scared horses broke loose from the company [C] and rode right through” the swift-moving waters of the ford and into the Cheyenne village. Coinciding with existing other evidence, Curley also saw a noncommissioned officer (Ireland-born Sergeant James Bustard of Company I who had experience, unlike the recruits), not only cross the river but also enter the village. However, Bustard’s marble burial marker has been misplaced far from the river as part of the overall blundering and errors that resulted in the erection of 252 markers for the around 210 who were killed.130

Indeed, ample evidence exists that more 7th Cavalry attackers gained the west bank, contrary to what has been generally assumed by historians. In fact, from what they saw at and around the ford, both Reno and Benteen were convinced that part of Custer’s command penetrated into the village. According to The Custer Myth, Benteen emphasized in a Fourth of July 1876 letter to his wife: “I am of the opinion that nearly—if not all of the five companies got into the village—but were driven out immediately.” After studying the field immediately after the battle, Major Reno, the regiment’s most senior officer next to Custer and a Civil War veteran, concluded in his official report on July 5, 1876: “Company C and I, and perhaps part of Company E, crossed to the village, or attempted it at the charge ….”131

Another trooper of unknown name was shot and fell off his horse, but was saved by fast-thinking comrades. In a courageous act under heavy fire from the brushy rise in the bottoms, nearby troopers dragged their wounded comrade back to the relative safety of the east bank, before he drowned or was left to be later captured.132

Other 7th Cavalrymen were killed and wounded besides officers in a full-fledged attack, which fully confirmed Reno’s evaluation (coinciding with Indian accounts) based upon surveying the battlefield not long after the combat. As mentioned because his surgical case was later found in the Cheyenne village, sickly Dr. Lord (of Custer’s staff), who wore eyeglasses, also might have well fallen at or near this point. The surgeon’s body, like Harrington’s remains (either killed or captured at or near the ford), was never found. After all, Custer’s staff had been the first contingent swept by the fire from the slight rise covered in underbrush.133 Assistant Lord’s fall near the river corresponds with the high casualties among Custer’s staff and the foremost companies, and agrees with an ample amount of Indian collaborating oral testimony of how the column’s front was hard hit by ford defenders’ fire.134

Chief Trumpeter Henry Voss did not escape the hail of bullets, unlike other staff members, which seems to indicate that the Indians were selective in choosing targets. This coincides with White Cow Bull’s testimony of deliberate targeting and firing at officers, including Custer, and flag-bearers in front. At five feet eight inches tall, the talented musician of German descent was conspicuous atop his horse while blowing his bugle, when his sharp notes slanted over the Little Bighorn’s valley to mix with the sound of crackling gunfire.135 Later, in looking over the field, it was discovered by white soldiers that “the body nearest the river was that of chief trumpeter Voss….”136

Near the front of the attack column, the other trumpeter on Custer’s staff was also unfortunate during the attack on the ford. Like Voss, he offered an easy target to the ford defenders. Born in Germany and riding a gray horse during the attack, Trumpeter Henry C. Dose was “[k]illed near Medicine Tail Coulee.”137 Clearly, in leading the way, Custer’s headquarters staff was hit hard by the blistering fire that spat from the rise, as revealed by Indian testimony and official service records. White Cow Bull revealed as much after shooting the “soldier chief,” and then targeting other bluecoats in the forefront of the attack.138

Also advancing at the head of Custer’s headquarters staff and riding near Assistant Surgeon Lord (before hit) and Chief Trumpeter Voss, Sergeant Robert H. Hughes now carried “Custer’s battle flag,” or “personal guidon.” Highly respected as the “Regimental Color Sergeant,” he was likewise killed in the charge on the ford. According to Pretty Shield, Custer was hit beside a color-bearer, which was most likely Hughes, while in the ford’s swift waters. With the colorful flag so prominent near the column’s head and at five feet nine inches tall, Hughes presented a most inviting target to the concealed Cheyenne and Sioux along the slight rise covered in underbrush.139

Once again, the fast and accurate firing of White Cow Bull, who blazed away with “my repeater,” proved devastating, especially to those troopers at the front. As if shooting at a flock of turkey gobblers roosting high in a tall cottonwood by aiming at the lead bird in the full plumage of spring mating season, White Cow Bull shot Sergeant Hughes, who was beside Custer in the ford’s waters. Destined to never again see the serene Liffey River that ran gracefully through his native Dublin, the devoted Irishman was hit on horseback and nearly dropped his banner of silk. Like others, Sergeant Hughes also “tumbled into the river.” As White Cow Bull described the hot fire streaming from his reaping rifle: “I fired again, aiming this time at the soldier with the flag [and] I saw him go down as another soldier grabbed the flag out of his hands.”140

White Cow Bull’s words coincided with other reliable Indian oral accounts that were collected by historian Miller. Therefore, this careful and dedicated researcher Miller, who obtained a large number of Indian interviews over a lengthy period, wrote how “the orderly [near Custer and part of his staff] with the flag crumpled from his saddle [but] a trooper grabbed at the flag and kept it from falling” in the river.141 The fact that Sergeant Hughes (who left behind a widow, Annie) fell at the ford was additionally verified by the later discovery of the bloodstained waistband of the Irishman’s light blue trousers in the Cheyenne village.142

With his fast-firing Winchester or Henry rifle, White Cow Bull toppled a number of troopers. By all accounts, he was the best marksmen among the ford defenders, tabulating a number of hits with his well-aimed fire. After shooting the buckskin-clad officer who fell off his horse and into the river with a splash, as mentioned, White Cow Bull then “shot another soldier [Sergeant Hughes] who was carrying a flag [and] [t]hey all fell from their saddles and hit the water.”143

Despite the lack of artifacts recovered at the ford more than a century after the battle, Sandy Bernard and other top Little Bighorn historians concluded, but underestimated, that “at least a few individuals, possibly some Army privates or newspaper reporter Mark Kellogg [indeed] made it to the vicinity of the river.”144

A sufficient amount of evidence caused one modern archeologist, Doug Scott, to conclude: “I can see Kellogg or someone else got popped down there” at the ford.145 Scott’s opinion corresponded with the Indian accounts, and even what Lockwood allegedly saw with regard to the decimation of the head of Custer’s column (headquarters staff), after having been swept with the initial volley of a destructive fire. These accounts are additionally reinforced by data in individual 7th Cavalry service records in the National Archives, Washington, DC, to reveal what really happened at the ford.146 Indeed, while riding with the headquarters staff near the column’s head, Mark Kellogg was “killed on flat near the river below Custer Hill.”147 The fact that Kellogg fell close near the river and close to Medicine Tail Coulee Ford was later confirmed when it was discovered that “the body nearest the river was that of chief trumpeter Voss, and near to it was that of Kellogg [and] [b]oth of these bodies were within a stone’s throw of the river.”148

In the words of respected historian Sandy Barnard, who relied upon available existing evidence: “One must conclude that during the decisive phases of the battle Kellogg remained close to Custer, probably with the headquarters element of the regiment [and] [h]is clothed body [found afterward] strongly suggests he was an early casualty of the battle.”149 Barnard’s expert analysis was also in keeping with an abundant amount of Indian testimony, and even what Lockwood and others (including Indian accounts and military service records) allegedly saw in the first Indian fire taking a high toll on the forefront headquarters contingent.150

These losses among Custer’s headquarters staff that came so very near the Cheyenne village (at the ford) ensured that the bodies of a number of men were never found: additional convincing evidence that they fell either in the river or around the ford, and that their bodies were later then dragged into the village by young boys and women to be desecrated in a ritualistic manner so that these enemies would never be faced in the afterlife.151

North Carolina–born Sergeant Daniel Alexander Kanipe, allegedly the second-to-last messenger to secure assistance (before Martin) was a tall, twenty-three-year-old ex–farmer and noncommissioned officer of German descent from Company C, 7th Cavalry. He explained what happened to the most unfortunate 7th Cavalry soldiers: “There were 14 men and two officers, Lieutenants Harrington and Lieutenant Sturgis, that never were found. It was said that the Indians cut off their heads and dragged them around as they pow-wowed during the night.”152

This ultimate horror for a number of 7th Cavalry troopers—more officers than enlisted men, which indicated that they were at the head of the charge when either wounded or dehorsed—was also the tragic fate of young Lieutenant James Garland Sturgis. He was at the forefront of the attack because he was second in command of Company E, the “Gray Horse Company.” The popular “Jack” Sturgis evidently took charge of the company after Lieutenant Smith was either killed or wounded, if he himself had not fallen before that time. Born in Albuquerque, in the upper Rio Grande country of New Mexico, Sturgis was the twenty-two-year-old son of the 7th Cavalry’s commander, Colonel Samuel Davis Sturgis, who was now on detached service. The seasoned colonel was a Mexican–American War and Civil War veteran and West Pointer (Class of 1846) of proven ability. Despite his commander father officially commanding the 7th Cavalry, the amiable “Jack” was modest and unpretentious.

As could be expected from a courageous officer leading his company into the teeth of the defenders’ hot fire, the fate of the youngest 7th Cavalry officer was a tragic one. Of course, Lieutenant Sturgis would never have charged the ford with Company E if his father had been killed instead of captured by the Mexicans during a risky mounted reconnaissance just before the bloody showdown at Buena Vista between an outnumbered American Army and Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna’s Army in northern Mexico on February 23, 1847. Only because the colonel now served on detached duty, Custer led the command in his final charge toward the old buffalo ford. Young Sturgis, distinguished by a thick mane of wavy, dark hair like his father, which graced his face that revealed youthful innocence, was hit before his charging Company E troopers. He was not only cut down, his body was also lost at the ford and never recovered, because he fell so close to the village. Lieutenant Sturgis was another promising young officer, a graduate (twenty-nine in a class of forty-three cadets) of the West Point Class of 1875. As listed officially on the muster roll and in the military service records, “he was missing [in action during the attack on the ford] and presumed killed.”153

Like other officers who led their troopers in attacking the ford, Lieutenant Sturgis’s body was never found. Additional evidence of the severity of the fighting at the ford and the fact that Sturgis fell in this struggle (quite possibly either in or near the water), was that his blood stained clothing was later found in the Cheyenne village. The young lieutenant’s body had been dragged into the village by women and children for the purpose of what one historian has called “special attention”: systematic dismemberment and ritualistic burning (as Reno saw) of an opponent rooted in spiritual beliefs and the hope that the victim would never attack the people in the afterlife.154

Like the gory remains of other unfortunate men cut down at the ford and its vicinity, Sturgis’s head (distinguished by a shock of black hair and handsome face), bloodstained shirt, and undergarments were later found in the village.155 Colonel Sturgis had advised his son in a pleading May 1875 letter, when about to graduate from West Point, to make a much wiser career choice by serving in the artillery instead of the cavalry. Prophetically, the father had warned his headstrong son that the cavalry was the worst possible choice. Attempting to convince his son to forsake all romantic notions about the grandeur of cavalry service, he mocked the “boyish notion … of being mounted and dashing about on their horses, I hope will find no place in your mind in making up your choice. An Indian, for that matter, is mounted also and does a great deal of dashing around, but for all that, he is an Indian still. You I hope will take a higher view of your future than all that.”156 Clearly, young Lieutenant Sturgis should have listened to his father’s wise words. In this sense, a strange and tragic fate had brought “Jack” Sturgis to this obscure ford.

As mentioned, Major Reno and fellow officers from the high ground above the river later saw three 7th Cavalry prisoners tied to the stake in the village. Therefore, it is quite likely that what Reno and other 7th Cavalry officers saw were “Lieutenants Porter and Sturgis and possibly Assistant Surgeon Lord.”157 As previously mentioned, Major Reno fully believed one of these individuals might have been Lieutenant Harrington.158 Revealing what was acted out in gory fashion on the night of June 25, Reno and his men later found the remains of 7th Cavalry comrades, who had been burned in bonfires until nothing more remained but ashes and pieces of bone.159 Ironically, these unfortunately captives very likely had been cut to pieces by axes and hatchets marked “Dept. of the Interior.”160 Sergeant John Ryan was later horrified by the sight of the “bodies cut up in a most brutal and fiendish manner [which] was done by squaws….”161

Revealing the penetrating depth (long minimized or entirely overlooked by historians) of Custer’s last charge as ascertained by Reno and the 7th Cavalry’s surgeon with regard to the tragic fate of captives (Lieutenant Harrington, in the case of Surgeon John W. Williams), these prisoners had been captured after having been wounded, had their mounts shot from under them, or had fallen off their horses during the attack on the ford. Lieutenant Harrington’s skull was eventually “found near the Cheyenne camp” at the village’s northern end and near the ford, providing additional evidence.162 Scout George B. Herendeen also discovered to his horror that “some of our men were captured alive and tortured [and] [t]he heads of four white heads were found [in the village] that had been severed from their trunks….”163 One of these almost certainly belonged to the trooper, perhaps the red-haired corporal, who charged into the village. Grace, the wife of Lieutenant Harrington, was eventually not only informed of her husband’s death, but also that he had been captured and tortured in the Cheyenne village on the night after the battle.164

Corresponding with individual service records housed in the National Archives and contrary to traditional views of historians, Indian accounts revealed that a larger number of Custer’s men than generally recognized were in fact cut down at the ford, including those who fell in the water, or had been left behind, after having been unmercifully swept with a “tremendous fire” at the ford that even Sitting Bull later marveled at with regard to its intensity.165

In striking contrast and most significant, the words of the modern white historians do not correspond with the views presented in the dependable Indian oral accounts, especially those of the Cheyenne, whose testimonies have been long ignored and dismissed. Most importantly, these accounts have verified that Custer and other troopers were hit by a hail of bullets from a blistering fire, including repeating rifles, while riding through the river’s waters and so far west in attempting to cross the ford in Custer’s first and last attack on June 25.166

The ability to explain why a number of officers’ gory remains were found in the village has given solid credence that Custer’s last charge went farther than generally assumed by historians. Again, from his analysis of the battlefield not long after the fighting concluded, Major Reno even believed that the charging troopers of three companies “crossed to the village,” including fording of the Little Bighorn in a deep westward penetration.167

The Crucial Time Factor

Besides having been nothing more than an insignificant showdown at the ford according to the traditional view of so many modern historians, another myth of the struggle at the ford was that it was of only brief duration, and hence its unimportance. Most of all, historians have failed to appreciate that Custer attempted a crossing with all five companies, and that this was a full-fledged flank attack and not a mere feint, because he knew that everything was at stake. Again, this dismissal of ample evidence by historians simply does not conform with the most reliable and best Cheyenne and Sioux accounts, white accounts (including Lieutenant Charles Camilus DeRudio) or the data found in military service records: a key collaboration of white and red accounts. According to Brave Wolf, the troopers “had got down toward the mouth of the little, dry creek and were near the level of the bottom [where] they began fighting, and for quite a long time fought near the river, with neither party giving back.”168 Cheyenne and Sioux oral testimony have revealed that this dramatic showdown along the river was a lengthy and hard-fought contest for possession of the battlefield’s most strategic position (Medicine Tail Coulee Ford), in which all five companies played a leading role in attempting to force a passage across the river in consequence.169

However, in American Horse’s words that described after Custer’s attackers reached the river, the “troops fought in line of battle, and there they fought for some little time.” American Horse arrived at the latter stage of the fight at the ford, but still emphasized a fight of lengthy duration.170 A Cheyenne warrior, born about 1820 and formerly the husband of Corn Woman (Chief Crazy Head’s sister, who had left him because of his infidelity), Brave Wolf was another Cheyenne late arrival to the ford fight. Proving that a lengthy struggle for possession of the strategic ford was played out in full, he described: “When I got to the Cheyenne camp, the fighting had been going on for some time. The soldiers [Custer’s] were right down close to the stream.”171

Entirely contrary to these collaborating Cheyenne and Sioux accounts, which have been long ignored, the overall consensus of historians and archeologists has been that the struggle at the ford was inconsequential and so brief as to have been nothing more than a light skirmish hardly worthy of a footnote.172 This striking paradox has represented one of the great myths about the battle of Little Bighorn, obscuring of the significance of what happened at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford, which was the battle’s forgotten turning point.173

Quite simply, these long-accepted views of modern historians simply fail to correspond with some of the most reliable Cheyenne oral testimony—which has been long erroneously considered less valid than Sioux accounts, when the opposite was actually the case. Presenting the collected testimony of the Cheyenne warriors, knowledgeable historian George Grinnell summarized: “according to Brave Wolf—a part of Custer’s troops had got down toward the mouth of the little, dry creek and were near the level of the bottom [and] [t]here they began fighting and for quite a long time fought near the river, neither party giving back.”174 Again, what was most significant about Grinnell’s summarization was the verification of a lengthy struggle for the possession of Medicine Tail Coulee Ford.

However, in part because of their single-shot carbines, the return fire of the 7th Cavalry’s five companies proved largely ineffective, going too high and over the defenders’ heads on the lower ground behind the low rise. The fact that the warriors were well hidden in the underbrush, willows, and saplings also kept them secure from return fire, because quite simply the troopers could not hit what they could not see. Relatively few 7th Cavalry troopers could see the ford defenders concealed in the thick underbrush and behind the slight rise.175 Nevertheless, the fire of Keogh’s cavalrymen of Companies I and L helped to cover the withdrawal of the foremost of Yates’ troopers (Companies E, C and F), who had been so hard hit that they retired, playing a role in restoring much-needed stability under the hot fire, after the decisive repulse.176 This was especially the case with regard to the fire’s destructiveness because Indian accounts emphasized how: “One company [E] started to run when Custer was near and the rest fired … and made them come back.” Of course, this was the Gray Horse Company.177

Soldier Wolf, a teenage Cheyenne warrior, provided some of the best testimony of the contest’s length at the ford: “By this time, Custer had gotten down to the mouth of the dry creek and was on the level flat of the bottom. They began firing and for quite a time fought in the bottom, neither party giving back.”178 Likewise, White Shield described how the exchange of fire across the river continued for an extended period. He emphasized how the “shooting [lasted for] some time….”179

Like Lieutenant DeRudio and others, Sergeant John Ryan saw ample evidence of a larger fight at the ford than has been not emphasized by modern historians. Investigating the ground in the Cheyenne village near the ford, this tough Ireland-born sergeant wrote with insight, “We found quite a number of dead horses and ponies lying around the camp [and] I heard there were some” Indians dead in camp.180 Most significant, Ryan’s words that described the large number of dead horses in the Cheyenne encampment coincided with Cheyenne warrior Soldier Wolf’s words. Soldier Wolf described how during the attack on the ford, the troopers’ heavy firing “killed quite a good many horses” in the bottoms and in the Cheyenne village, where “the ground was covered with the horses of the Cheyennes, the Sioux….”181 All of this evidence has revealed a significant clash of arms at the ford.

In addition, to verify Custer’s determination to charge across the ford, other warriors emphasized how the pony soldiers attacking the ford were “shooting into the camp.”182 From what he had seen in surveying the battlefield, Major Reno also believed that Custer’s last charge spilled over to the west bank and into the village.183 Clearly, this was no contest of short duration or insignificance, as long assumed by generations of historians. The hard-hit 7th Cavalry troopers in the forefront evidently believed that the fire was coming from the village instead of the concealed rise. All in all, such dependable testimony and time considerations have provided additional evidence that Custer attacked with all five of his companies, which unleashed a sufficient amount of firepower, as revealed by Soldier Wolf, that thoroughly swept the bottoms and Cheyenne camp to kill larger numbers of horses, but not the hidden warriors.184 In addition, some warriors, evidently coming to the assistance of the ford defenders in the village’s eastern edge, were hit by the bullets pouring from the five companies. Consequently, one of the luckiest men in the 7th Cavalry (because his messenger mission saved his life), Trumpeter Martin later “saw the dead Indians in the brush on [the] river bank in [the Cheyenne] village….”185

Most importantly in overall tactical terms, the precious time bought by the ford defenders in preventing a crossing not only succeeded in thwarting Custer, but also decided the battle’s course, as Sitting Bull later appreciated after learning the truth from warriors. The precious time purchased by the well-aimed fire of the ford defenders ensured the arrival of the first few warrior reinforcements from Reno’s sector. Down river, the cry had been early raised among the warriors: “Look! Yonder are other soldiers!” This alarm about the sudden appearance of Custer’s threat had electrified hundreds of Sioux and Cheyenne warriors who were battling Reno. In Wooden Leg’s words: “The news of them spread quickly among us [and] Indians began to ride in that direction.”186

It was the rapid fire pouring from the repeating rifles that had bought precious time to ensure the arrival of the first additional warriors from Reno’s sector. Thanks to the intensity of the fire from the Indians’ repeating rifles and other weapons, not only Company E but also Company C (both of Yates’s battalion), immediately to the rear, was thrown into some confusion. Indeed, because of the intense fire from the “Winchesters and Henrys” proved devastating, and “Company C balked.”187 Indeed, the “size of the village and the rapid gunfire from the Indians [had] left the men [of Company C and like those of Company E] dumbfounded.”188

Second Wave Attack of Keogh’s Two Companies after Yates’s Repulse

It was now the turn of the second wave of the battalion’s staggered attack, as first envisioned by Custer, who was going for broke. Yates’s repulse now called for Keogh and his battalion of Companies I and L to strike a blow: a one-two offensive punch envisioned by Custer. As mentioned, Curley had already seen all five companies descend to the coulee’s mouth (which was later verified by officers and troopers after the battle), and they were all part of Custer’s last charge. After the front ranks of Yates’s battalion—especially Companies E and C—also had been hard hit by fire, perhaps even after gaining the village itself (as Reno fully believed after studying the ground not long after the fight), and especially if Custer was hit, then senior battalion commander Captain Myles Walter Keogh now took charge of the five companies. Amid the heat of combat, the transition to a new commander was more difficult because of losses among the headquarters staff. Keogh called his senior commanders together in an ad hoc conference to discuss the vexing tactical situation and brainstorm about their next move, after the failure to cross the ford and Custer’s wounding, which was almost certainly was the case.

Captain Keogh was experienced and cool in a crisis situation, ensuring that the command in good hands. The seasoned Ireland-born senior captain wore a Catholic medal on a gold chain around his neck as a protective charm, much like the warriors viewed the spiritual power of buffalo tails and eagle feathers. He was a capable replacement if Custer was indeed knocked out of action, which was most likely the case. The handsome Irishman, age thirty-six, was a dashing ladies’ man who had never married. An adventurer in and outside of the bedroom to flaunt society’s conventions, Keogh’s charisma and good looks were sufficient to have caused concern among his fellow officers. The gallant Irishman’s effortless ability to catch female hearts even made Benteen worry about the effect of Keogh’s boundless charm on his own wife’s heart. To be fair, Benteen had good reason for worry about Keogh’s charm affecting his wife. Keogh’s sexual transgressions were well known, including the taking of a captive Indian woman to bed, as he revealed in a boastful letter to his brother, Tom. Like so many other world-weary officers who were sick of war’s horrors, Keogh was inclined toward heavy drinking when off duty. Nevertheless, this true Irish soldier of fortune was one of the regiment’s finest officers.

In keeping with Custer’s original tactical plan, Keogh launched an attack with his battalion (or, more properly, his wing) of Companies I and L in an attempt to force a passage of the ford, after the offensive effort of Yates’s battalion faltered. The troopers of Keogh’s companies rode light bays, which fueled an esprit de corps. One of Keogh’s attackers was Company I’s Private Charles Banks, born in Dublin, Ireland, in April 1845. He was former waiter from a New York City restaurant before casting his fate with the 7th Cavalry. However, Banks’s Company I comrade, a native New York City boy named Private William J. Logue, was made of tougher and more volatile stuff. He had been charged with verbally abusing two laundresses and then threatened to end the life of a fellow private in early 1871.

After later analyzing the battlefield, Reno later found ample evidence that Company I (Keogh’s old company, now led by acting commander First Lieutenant James Ezekiel Porter) charged as far as Yates’s Companies C and E, perhaps even into the village itself. Contrary to the traditional assumption and generally accepted version of events that Keogh’s battalion remained impotently on the high ground far above the ford and a good distance from the initial fighting, as if nothing of importance was at stake, the battalion’s offensive effort at the ford was verified by the fact that a number of its members were killed at the ford, and what was later seen by troopers in analyzing the battlefield. Again, in a key tactical situation of the battle’s turning point—at a time when he had known that Reno had been hurled back from the village’s southern end—Custer had early realized that he had to make the maximum effort (as Keogh would have realized as well if now in charge after Custer’s wounding or death in leading the attack, which was most likely the case) to cross the ford and charge into the village: the other arm of the pincer and the only tactical movement (flank attack) that could possibly bring success at this point in time and place.

After all, there was no other realistic tactical option for Custer and his five companies at this stage of a true crisis situation. Quite simply, the charge across the ford was the last bid to reap a success in accordance with Custer’s original plan. The challenges were most formidable and entirely new (including their not having been part of his Civil War experience) to Custer in their entirety, presenting a daunting tactical quandary: crossing a river under fire, facing a strong natural defensive position manned by determined enemies armed with repeating rifles, attacking in the middle of the afternoon, unfamiliar terrain, charging across an old buffalo ford, etc. Most significantly, all of these diverse factors at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford were the antithesis of Custer’s attack on the Washita village. The longtime common view that Keogh and his battalion were non-players and stood idly by (like allegedly Custer himself!) to passively watch Yates’s offensive effort at this critical moment, when aggressive action was desperately needed to reverse the day’s fortunes, makes no tactical sense. It would be illogical, especially when the ever-aggressive Custer was in command of an offensive movement that was calculated to save the day.189

In this desperate situation and as mentioned, Sergeant James Bustard was in the forefront of Keogh’s attack on the ford to yet force a crossing at any cost. He was a seasoned member of Company I, Keogh’s old company, and now part of his battalion. Born in County Donegal, Ulster Province, northern Ireland, in 1846, and having enlisted in July 1870, Sergeant Bustard was one of Company I’s best noncommissioned officers. In leading the way for Company I during the attack’s second wave (as Reno and DeRudio verified with their analyses of the battlefield after the fight), the light-haired, fair-skinned Bustard was still another trooper who was “killed near Miniconjou [Medicine Tail Coulee] Ford.”190

With Captain Keogh, the confirmed bachelor from County Carlow, Ireland, now commanding the battalion, a reliable lieutenant had taken command in leading the charge of his thirty-six Company I troopers. Ahead of his men as usual, First Lieutenant James Ezekiel Porter led the way in Custer’s staggered attack, wearing his trademark buckskin shirt. Born in Maine in 1847 and a West Point graduate (sixteenth of thirty-nine graduates in the Class of 1869), the dark-haired Porter was also almost certainly killed at an advanced point near the ford. As mentioned, he was reported “missing” (like Harrington, another young lieutenant who was in his first battle like Porter) because he fell so close to the Cheyenne village.

Young Porter enjoyed a fulfilling personal life before meeting his end in a cruel rendezvous with disaster at the Little Bighorn. Married to Rhode Island–born Eliza Frances Westcott since late July 1869 and the father of two sons, the ruggedly handsome and square-jawed Porter was a most promising young officer. Porter’s wife had given birth to their second son (James Francis), named after him, on March 25, 1876, at Fort Abraham Lincoln. Clearly, young Porter had everything to live for, especially after James’s birth had brought him additional personal joy. Therefore, Lieutenant Porter, who possessed the distinguished look of a wealthy English aristocrat, had officially requested less-hazardous duty (a general staff position that guaranteed faster advancement while enjoying a safe job far from the often-nightmarish frontier duty) and healthier environment to raise his new family

Cruel fate had deemed otherwise for the Porter family, including his infant son’s death before the year’s end. Porter’s request for reassignment and his eagerly anticipated dream job had already been approved at the highest levels at headquarters. However, this process had taken too much time in a typical army bureaucracy. Indeed, the necessary paperwork at headquarters for the coveted transfer had slowed the official confirmation process down to a crawl. Lieutenant Porter led his troopers in this charge to meet a grim end, not only because of an Indian bullet, but also thanks to the red tape of a cumbersome bureaucracy. Porter was hit with a well-placed shot that revealed the nature of the close-range fighting for the ford’s possession. He fell with a bullet through the chest, which entered his body near the heart. Like Lieutenant Harrington, whose body was never discovered, Porter’s fall so near the ford ensured that his body was later taken to the village by Indian women and hence never found.191

Later, after investigating the battlefield, Lieutenant Edward Settle Godfrey described the horror of Porter’s sad fate. He wrote, “I found Porter’s buckskin blue in the village … and from the shot holes in it, he must have had it on” when “shot from the rear, left side, the bullet coming out on the left breast near the heart.”192 Again, and most significantly, Major Reno saw ample first–hand evidence that Company I’s troopers had in fact made a deep penetration, charging across the ford and making it all the way to the west bank, and perhaps into the village itself. Providing additional evidence of the attack across the river, Company F’s Private William A. Brown, a blue-eyed trooper with more than three years of service in the 7th Cavalry, was killed near the ford, and his body was likewise later found in the Cheyenne village. 193

Albany, New York–born First Sergeant James Butler, of Keogh’s battalion, was still another good fighting man who was cut down in the attack on the ford. At age thirty-three, the dark-haired Butler had been reenlisted at Fort Abraham Lincoln by Tom Custer on the last day of May 1875. He had married a woman of Irish descent and the same socio-economic status as himself, Mary Elizabeth C. Murray, on July 7, 1875. The fact that this capable Company L sergeant’ fell near the ford was confirmed by Lieutenant Edward Settle Godfrey, a West Pointer of Company K, 7th Cavalry. In walking the field after the battle, Godfrey wrote: “One of the first bodies I recognized and one of the neatest to the ford was that of Sergeant Butler of Tom Custer’s troop.”194

Additional evidence has revealed that Keogh’s battalion (Companies I and L) attacked the ford not long after Yates’ battalion struck: all part of Custer’s one-two punch of an all-out offensive effort to force their way across the old buffalo ford. A member of Keogh’s Company I now commanded by Keogh’s second-in-command First Lieutenant James Porter, Private Gustave Korn, born in Silesia in 1852 and perhaps of Jewish descent, had the wildest ride of his life. He nearly reached the river during the charge’s deep penetration: again a fact verified by Major Reno. Here, at the Little Bighorn’s east bank, Korn’s “horse bolted near the river” and raced south or upriver. Frightened by the gunfire, Korn’s mount was entirely out of control, taking its rider on a hair-raising dash.

However, in the end, Korn was fortunate. He eventually reached the safety of Reno’s defensive position atop the bluffs. Korn’s amazing good luck (which Custer had lost so suddenly in meeting the unexpected stubborn opposition at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford) was destined to finally run out at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in late December 1890. Here, he was killed in the attack on another Sioux village to officially end the Indian Wars.195

Private Marion E. Horn, age twenty-five and Indiana-born, also served in Company I’s ranks during the attack on the ford. Perhaps he was recalling his prophetic words recently written in his final letter back home to Richmond, Indiana, with some alarm that he and his comrades now realized was well–founded: “there is one of the greatest Indian war expected this year….”196

Again, Yates’ battalion of three companies and Keogh’s battalion of two companies had attacked at the ford with “the five companies moving in line,” which revealed that Custer had launched a full-fledged offensive effort.197 This fact corresponded with numerous Indian accounts (and later trooper evaluations of the field) that emphasized the might of Custer’s attack, which revealed that he was not holding back with regard to offensive capabilities as long assumed. Indeed, “many of the Indian participants … believed that both battalions fought as one group [at] Medicine Tail Ford” and later in retiring up the high ground.198

As mentioned, Custer’s fall at the ford has been disputed in part because a number of officers, especially those of Custer’s inner circle, wore buckskin coats, such as Lieutenant Harrington and Tom Custer.199 Horned Horse explained how he “did not recognize Custer, but supposed he was the officer who led the column that attempted to cross that stream.”200 Like other warriors, especially White Cow Bull, Horned Horse was convinced that “Custer perished” near the river, however.201 Two Eagles also told that “a few” troopers were killed in the attack on the ford and others were wounded.202 And significantly, at least one Indian account coincided with that of Sergeant Kanipe. Thunder Hawk explained why more officers and men were lost at the river than has been generally recognized: because the foremost troopers charged across the ford and all the way into the Cheyenne village. In relating that the attack was not only harder hitting but also more successful than has been generally recognized by historians, he emphasized “that Custer did cross the river and moved down the west side [of the river] firing into the tepees.”203

In one of the rare agreements in white and red testimonies, the words of Thunder Hawk coincided with those of Major Reno with regard to what he later saw around the ford, revealing that at least several companies “crossed to the village, or attempted it at the charge….”204

Again, the fighting at the ford continued for an extended period and longer than believed by today’s historians, who have mistakenly concluded that the struggle at the ford was insignificant and hardly worth mentioned. Making a later arrival at the ford, Brave Wolf revealed how “the fighting [at the ford] had been going on for some time [when] [t]he soldiers (Custer’s) were right down close to the stream….”205 Some historians have long condemned Custer’s so-called “fatal delay” (up to three-quarters of an hour) in having allegedly spent too much time either on the high ground above the ford or in Medicine Tail Coulee before launching his attack on the ford: an entirely erroneous view resulting from the mistake of following too closely the prejudicial and distorted testimonies of Reno, Benteen, and other self-serving officers who sought to demonstrate that no time existed to go to Custer’s rescue to excuse themselves of responsibility in the defeat.

Such dishonest testimony at the 1879 Reno Court of Inquiry in Chicago ensured that the 7th Cavalry’s officer corps and personal reputations were not stained forever, preserving the regiment’s honor. As the Indian accounts, like that of Brave Wolf, have clearly demonstrated, the far greatest amount of time was consumed by Custer not on the bluffs or in the coulee in the most un-Custer-like of all possibilities in a crucial situation (wasting precious time deliberately as if time was unimportant, when he knew that time was of the essence), but in attacking and attempting to force a crossing at the ford.206

After the repulse at the ford and another indication that Custer had been hit, Curley described how Captain Keogh ordered his men to dismount, form skirmish lines, and fight on foot, because Custer had lost the initiative: “Here a portion of the command were dismounted and thrown forward to the river, and returned fire with the Indians.”207 To Civil War-experienced officers like Keogh, this standard tactical theory of utilizing skirmish lines—a tactical legacy from the Civil War years—was considered the best way to fight Indians. This tactic was based upon the premise that troopers on foot were more effective in firing from cover and stationary defensive positions.

However, on the barren slopes of the high ground above the ford, the open terrain, patches of prairie grass, and sagebrush offered little cover for a lengthy line of dismounted cavalrymen, who were now sitting ducks. In overall tactical terms, what had been long taught at West Point and learned during the Civil War backfired for the men of the 7th Cavalry, paving the way to the annihilation of five companies at the Little Bighorn. Indian testimony has revealed their opinion that if the charge had been continued to cross the river, then a “great victory” would have been won.208

Was Custer Killed or Wounded at the Ford?

With regard to the repulse at the ford, only one possibility can explain the decisive setback at the ford, and then the tactical mistake of fighting as dismounted cavalry: Custer’s fall. Clearly, while advancing at the column’s head in the flank attack across the ford while leading his last charge from the front as usual, Custer had presented an ideal and most conspicuous target for warriors in concealed positions. Catching Custer by surprise in a day of many surprises, the hot fire that erupted from this ambush position under natural cover along the slight rise had proved most effective and lethal.

Again, these were no ordinary fighting men in ideal defensive positions. They had hunted game and enemies (mostly Indian enemies) for most of their lives. Mostly importantly, as experienced warriors, these fighting men had been able to easily recognize the obvious leader at the attack’s head. With his penchant for personally leading the charge, Custer was also most conspicuous because of his distinctive dress. Indian accounts described the leader of the charge on the ford in considerable detail, giving credence to Custer’s fall. Realizing Custer’s conspicuousness, especially in leading an attack, Lieutenant Godfrey, Company K, 7th Cavalry, described how Custer “wore a whitish gray hat, with broad brim and rather low crown, very similar to the Cowboy hat.”209

Combining extensive Indian testimony of what actually happened in the attack on Medicine Tail Coulee Ford—especially that of White Cow Bull who emphasized the distinctive “big hat” of the charge’s leader—to his own analysis, historian David Humphreys Miller concluded that Custer was shot through “his left breast [but] [n]o Indian, Crow, Sioux, or Cheyenne, could say whether he died at once or later….”210 Miller’s analysis matched that of historian Nathaniel Phibrick, who recently emphasized the “wounding, if not death, of Custer at the early state of the battle….”211

After interviewing Cheyenne and Sioux warriors, Lieutenant Oscar Long, 5th United States Infantry, learned that an “officer,” who carried a compass and binoculars [Custer had borrowed and wore Lieutenant DeRudio’s Austria–made field glasses, that were the most powerful in the regiment], had been killed at the ford. Custer carried a set of binoculars as verified by Trumpeter John Martin, and DeRudio was angry that his commander had borrowed his prized binoculars. Custer had long relied on a compass in navigating the open plains during campaigning. This reliance included the use of a compass during his snowy trek to attack the Washita village. At that time, he had guided the column to his objective like a sea captain sailing over the open seas, to which he compared to the prairie’s vast openness.212 The victors used a captured pair of binoculars—almost certainly Custer’s pair that had been borrowed from DeRudio—to spy the arrival of Terry’s column on the following day.213

The Northern Cheyenne grandmother of Sylvester Knows Gun emphasized that Custer was mortally wounded in attempting to cross the ford and that “he was dead by the time he reached Last Stand Hill.”214 As previously mentioned, Bobtail Horse and White Cow Bull both “claimed the man leading the troops [in the attack across the ford] was shot in the chest, and then fell in the river.”215

However, given ample evidence, the most likely scenario was that Custer was not killed or shot through the chest in leading the charge. He most likely suffered only a wound in the right forearm. This injury (minor if only a flesh wound, but a significant injury if bone was shattered) was later discovered on his body atop Custer Hill, or Last Stand Hill. Almost certainly and from the best existing evidence, Custer received this arm wound in the first initial volley from the brushy rise, where the repeating rifles roared at relatively close range from an ambush position, as emphasized by Sitting Bull (oral testimony) and others.216

Custer’s wounding decisively dictated the course of events, including the struggle at the ford, and especially the battle’s ultimate outcome. As White Cow Bull emphasized, the fact that Custer was hit naturally sapped the momentum of the offensive thrust across the ford, while also effectively eroding overall combat capabilities of the five companies. In fact, Custer’s wounding had been largely responsible for the failure of the attack across the ford. If only slightly wounded on in the forearm, Custer would have then continued to lead his troopers in his withdrawal back up the high ground from the ill-fated river bottoms.

After most likely having perhaps received medical attention from Assistant Surgeon Lord, if only a minor forearm wound, Custer then could have continued to lead right up to the bitter end atop Custer Hill, about three-quarters of a mile from Medicine Tail Coulee Ford. Therefore, the traditional image of Custer fighting heroically and falling atop Custer Hill was in fact very likely the actual reality.217 Custer dying heroically, battling to the end, was verified by brass shell casings from his “Remington Sporting rifle, octagonal barrel,” laying around and even under his body atop Custer Hill.218

However, if more seriously wounded by a shot in the lower left breast at the ford (which was less likely than a forearm wound, given available evidence), as was discovered after the battle, then he would have been carried by members of his staff, including no doubt brother Tom.219 Therefore and despite his reliance on Indian testimonies, Miller was most likely incorrect when he concluded that Custer’s wound at the ford “was mortal.”220

Custer’s wounding at the ford, which is almost certainly the case, was nevertheless a catastrophe at the highest leadership level, sending a wave of shock through the blue ranks. Such a disaster that so suddenly burst the lofty image of Custer’s invincibility so soon after the attack began has provided the best explanation for the rapid deterioration, and “panic” in Benteen’s words, of trooper morale and the overall resistance effort. Custer’s fall would not have been known to the defenders, because it was not known that he led the attack. As mentioned, the Cheyenne and Sioux had no idea that Custer was anywhere near the Little Bighorn.

Once again, Wooden Leg, known for his truthful words, described the true situation despite all later claims of seemingly countless Indians who bragged that they had killed Custer: “It was not then known to us who was the chief of these white soldiers [and] [i]t was not known to us where they had come from. We supposed them to be the same men [under Crook] we had fought on the Rosebud, eight days before.”221 However, these warriors knew Custer sufficiently well to have bestowed multiple names for him. As Custer penned to his amused wife two summers before: “The Indians have a new name for me, but I will not commit it to paper.”222 Clearly, this nickname was not at all flattering.

The nephew of the hard-fighting Roan Bear, a ford defender, concluded that one officer who was killed “was dressed in a buckskin suit, had short hair; and the Indians knew Custer as Long Hair, [therefore] they did not think the man with the buckskin suit was the General.”223 However, raising the possibility of a more serious wound, which was actually more remote than only a relatively slight wound, Crow scout White Man Runs Him emphasized that on this afternoon Custer “wore buckskin.”224 A warrior named Respects Nothing stated that he “saw Custer’s clothing which was buckskin, after Custer was killed.”225 In addition, Hollow Horn Bear learned from another warrior that “he saw a man with a red [traditional scarf of Custer’s Michigan men during the Civil War] and yellow handkerchief around his neck and a buckskin jacket on [and he believed that] it must be Long Yellow Hair.”226

However, the ample collaborating and reliable Indian accounts, especially that of White Cow Bull, of the shooting down of this dynamic officer in buckskin leading the charge at the ford have been dismissed by the overwhelming majority of white historians, largely because of the power of myth. Much of this dismissal has also resulted because of the assumption by historians that Custer did not wear his buckskin shirt or jacket because it was simply too hot: as mentioned, a view that does not conform with that of Crow scout White Man Runs Him and others. However, historians have conveniently overlooked the fact that a number of other officers also wore their buckskin shirts and coats—soft, durable, and ideal for campaigning—in the battle for protection against the clouds of rising dust from the parched ground in summertime, despite the day’s heat. However, this automatic assumption of Custer having not worn buckskin because of the day’s intense heat seemed verified when Custer’s body was found, but the garments of almost all victims had been stripped off by the jubilant victors.

In fact, some Indians put on these light and comfortable buckskin shirts and coats—quite likely Custer’s own garments among them—and were wearing them in the attack on Reno’s men on the following day, June 26. Lieutenant DeRudio, a darkly handsome officer with gray hair of Company M with Reno’s command, saw one Indian “with a buckskin jacket, pants, top boots and white hat and felt quite sure I recognized him as Capt. Tom Custer,” which of course was not the case. Clearly, if the buckskin shirts were not too hot to wear for the Indians to wear in battle and in the scorching heat, then they would not have been too hot for Custer. The misconception about Custer not having worn his buckskin coat was first created by Trumpeter Martin, who was known for relating contradictory information. For example, the Italian immigrant, born Martini, later described that Custer wore “a blue-gray flannel shirt” instead of a buckskin jacket.227

Therefore, this general assumption that it was too hot for Custer to have worn his favorite buckskin shirt, which had been fashioned by Ireland-born Sergeant Jeremiah Finley, who was a former tailor now serving in Company C, makes relatively little overall sense with regard to the usual rationales and assumptions made by historians. After all, many of Custer’s fellow officers, like Lieutenants Harrington and the Porter, wore their buckskin jackets on this afternoon under the same hot and dusty conditions.228 Indicating that Lieutenant Porter, dignified-looking with a stylish mustache, was killed in the charge at the ford, Lieutenant Godfrey penned: “I found Porter’s buckskin blouse in the village [with] shot holes in it….”229

Crow scout White Man Runs Him emphasized in no uncertain terms how Custer led the charge and went straight into harm’s way to get hit, while attempting to force his way across the ford: “I know for sure that Custer went right to the river bank. I saw him go that far [and] [t]he Sioux were right across the river.”230 White Cow Bull, the fastest-firing warrior who blasted away with either a Winchester or a Henry rifle, and almost certainly the most accurate marksman of the ford defenders, very likely hit Custer with a well-placed shot. As he explained, the “man in the buckskin jacket seemed to be the leader of these soldiers … I aimed my repeater at him and fired [and then] I saw him fall out of his saddle and hit the water” of Little Bighorn. Additional evidence of Custer’s fall can be seen in White Cow Bull’s words that described what happened after the leader of the charge was shot by him: “They all reigned up their horses and gathered around where he had fallen.”231

Significantly, White Cow Bull also related that he cut down the “soldier chief,” who was leading the charge across the ford. A good deal of evidence has revealed that this could only have been Custer (the physical description of both him and his horse matched), who always led the attack and never delegated such a leading offensive role in such a crucial situation to another officer during either the Civil War or the Indian Wars.232 If it was indeed Custer who was hit, which was most likely the case, then Libbie’s dark premonition she had felt when the confident 7th Cavalry rode out of Fort Abraham Lincoln had come true at the obscure buffalo ford along the Little Bighorn.233

Custer was very likely shot by White Cow Bull, although most defenders were Cheyenne, who reaped tribal revenge on the native Ohioan for his dawn attack on the Cheyenne village at the Washita. This would have been the most symbolic conclusion to what had become a private war long waged between Custer and the Cheyenne people, coming full circle along the Little Bighorn.234

Contrary to the seemingly endless number of books about the battle Little Bighorn, what Custer launched at Medicine Tail Coulee was not an insignificant feint as long assumed by historians, but in fact a full-fledged offensive effort with all five companies. This was Custer’s last-ditch bid to reverse the day’s fortunes, depending upon by his maximum manpower to fuel his desperate attack to cross the river at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford.235

Like Lieutenant DeRudio, this maximum offensive effort was also confirmed by Lieutenant Theodore W. Goldin, Company G, 7th Cavalry, who believed (like Captain Benteen) that Custer massed his manpower as much as possible for an offensive thrust across the ford, because the village’s size and the overall tactical situation (needed a successful flank attack) warranted a maximum offensive effort.236 Under the circumstances, it only made good tactical sense that Custer would have employed both Yates’s and Keogh’s battalions for an all-out offensive effort to reap what might have been one of the most impressive victories of his career: a powerful final flank attack to not only reverse the day’s fortunes but also to win it all, when time was of the essence. Even if Custer’s attack failed, then he at least would have saved the regiment’s remainder.

Tall Bull, born around 1853 to Crow parents who had been captured and spared by the Cheyenne, which was customary (to augment manpower) in Great Plains warfare, was one of the first warriors to arrive at the ford after battling Reno’s men to the south. In his words: “All rushed back on the west side of the camp, down to a small dry run that comes in from the east, and there, down close to the river, were the soldiers” under Custer who was going for broke.237

Custer’s Decisive Repulse at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford

In his final charge, Custer had met with the most decisive repulse of his career. Coinciding with Cheyenne and Sioux accounts, the words of white and Indian scouts also tell the overlooked story of the decisive repulse at the ford. White Man Runs Him, one of Custer’s most reliable Crow scouts, summarized the attack on the ford in only a few words: “Custer tried to cross the river at the mouth of Medicine Tail Creek, but was unable to do so.”238 Also only briefly describing the showdown at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford in the context of an ambush, Curley emphasized that, when the troopers reached the river, “the Indians, concealed in the undergrowth on the opposite side of the river, opened fire on the troops, which checked the advance.”239 These words agreed with Captain Benteen’s initial analysis of the battlefield immediately after the fight. In a letter to his wife on July 25, 1876, Benteen was entirely correct with regard to the battle’s forgotten turning point. He concluded how Custer received his “1st check” at the ford: a sharp setback that forever ordained not only the battle’s outcome but also the fate of Custer and his men.240

Historians, however, have long dismissed Benteen’s words because of his hatred of Custer. Agreeing with what Curley and others saw with their own eyes with regard to Custer’s last attack on the ford, Lockwood had no personal agenda about saying anything negative about his own 7th Cavalry, of which he became a member in late August 1876. In his memoir, he emphasized how Custer’s fall had a devastating effect on the troopers to alter the course of the battle: “The sudden attack [ambush] and the fall of General Custer and his staff checked the rest of the troops and seemed to demoralize them. The Indians kept up the firing. The troops soon dismounted and returned the fire.”241

From what he saw, Curley echoed this view. He concluded how the 7th Cavalry troopers “fought splendidly until the Big Chief (Custer) fell, and then they became somewhat demoralized.”242 Curley’s words even hinted that he witnessed Custer fall at the ford after having seen the beginning of the struggle for possession of the ford, before riding off the field to give General Terry the news of disaster. Curley was sufficiently close to the struggle at the ford that he even “saw two of Custer’s men killed who fell into the stream” at the ford.243

In concurrence with Curley’s account and others, Lockwood’s words conformed to Indian accounts, both Cheyenne and Sioux. Tall Bull noticed the lack of “very good order” of the troopers at the ford, after the initial fire from the rise had taken affect.244 These views are in agreement with Captain Benteen, a Civil War and Indian Wars veteran, who closely analyzed the battlefield immediately after the fight. He concluded during the attack on the ford how “the cavalry was probably thrown into a panic at the 1st check [at the ford] received.”245

With regard to suppling collaborating evidence, the Indian accounts, the post-battle analysis of 7th Cavalry officers, and even Lockwood’s memoir are in agreement with Richard Allen Fox, Jr.’s highly detailed analysis obtained from his archaeological survey of the Little Bighorn battlefield. This analysis revealed the decisiveness of Indian firepower from repeating rifles, including at the ford, which conformed with Indian oral accounts: “Thus, the repeater as an instrument of shock, coupled with the liability of the single-shot carbine in close-in fighting, probably contributed significantly to demoralization” among Custer’s troopers: a process that began with Custer’s repulse at the ford.246 Indeed, Fox’s keen 1993 analysis corresponded directly to the words of Horned Horse and White Cow Bull. As mentioned, Horned Horse emphasized how Custer’s attack at the ford was entirely thwarted because the troopers were “met by such a tremendous fire from the repeating rifles….”247

Watching the effects of the gunfire pouring from the brushy rise to thwart Custer’s last charge, White Shield likewise described how when “the Gray Horse Company [E] got pretty close to the river, they dismounted, and all the soldiers back as far as I could see stopped and dismounted also.”248

Revered Cheyenne shaman White Bull, known as Ice Bear and born around 1834, also saw Custer’s repulse at the ford. A father and husband of Wood Woman, he spoke truthful words. Respected for his prophetic visions and healing powers, he revealed, “Custer rode down to the river bank and formed a line of battle. But then he stopped and fell back up the hill,” after having been repulsed at the ford.249

In addition, Tall Bull, a Cheyenne veteran who was confident from the recent fight on the Rosebud with Crook, described how “Custer got onto the flat [river bottom] near [Medicine Tail Coulee Ford] within easy gunshot of the village….”250 After Custer’s repulse at the ford and before his troops dismounted to fight on foot, Foolish Elk, the young Sioux warrior, described how the “bluecoats sat on their horses and fired across the river into the village,” and at the defenders along the slight rise covered in the thick “undergrowth,” in Curley’s word, blasting away as if angry that they had been repulsed (a greater shock than Reno’s defeat) and Custer’s tactical dream had been thwarted.251

Wooden Leg confirmed Custer’s decisive repulse at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford: “None of the Custer soldiers came any closer to the river than they were at the time they died.”252 What Custer and his men learned in their attack at the ford was a very hard lessons about not underestimating their opponent, especially when combined with the devastating effect of superior weaponry: a combination that all but ensured defeat. Perhaps Two Moons, the minor chief of the Kit Fox Society, said it best: “Every brave in this great camp was a veteran, as all the faint-hearts in both tribes had been left on the reservations, content to draw their rations and abide by the peace treaty. The allied fighters represented the determined spirits among the plains tribes-men who preferred the hardships and dangers of the warpath to a life of ease under the white man’s dominion.”253

Exhausted, Thirsty, and Unruly Horses

Since the hard-fought struggle at the ford evolved into the decisive turning point of the battle, what other forgotten factors also played a role in Custer’s decisive repulse—besides the defenders’ blazing repeating rifles and sheer determination to hold firm at any cost, especially when they were so few in numbers? Horned Horse revealed that the Medicine Tail Coulee Ford was so shallow that it could be easily crossed by all five companies. Therefore, with regard to the river’s water level, the river itself posed no obstacle for the crossing by Custer’s troopers, who should have easily crossed as envisioned by their commander. This was an ancient buffalo crossing and watering spot that had been currently used by these migratory animals, which needed fresh water on the arid high plains during hot summer weather. Revealing how close Custer came to reaping a success because the river was not a formidable obstacle, Horned Horse emphasized that the river at this point was only “about eighteen inches deep….”254

Clearly, contrary to the views of previous studies, this low water level was not a factor as an effective obstacle that played a role in stopping Custer’s flank attack. If the water depth of the Little Bighorn at the ford was not a factor, then what other forgotten considerations played a role in the decisive repulse of Custer’s last attack?

A forgotten factor that almost certainly played a role in Custer’s repulse at the ford was the poor shape and thirstiness of the troopers’ horses, including the fact that many mounts were “untrained” like a good many members of the 7th Cavalry: a most disadvantageous situation that helped to sabotage the final charge. As early as June 21, Captain Yates, who led the advance with his battalion down Medicine Tail Coulee just behind Custer and his headquarters staff, complained in a letter: “My company [F] horses are about played” out from the hard riding of this arduous campaign.255 Ending on a hot June 18, after riding nearly 250 miles over rough terrain while pushing deep in Indian country, Reno’s lengthy scout all the way to Rosebud Creek had taken a severe toll on men as well as horses. Unfortunately for Custer, the five companies that launched their attack on Medicine Tail Coulee Ford had been part of Reno’s exhaustive scout and were in relatively poor shape.256

Four days after Yates’s serious June 21 complaint (that went unanswered, as if it made no difference because of excessive optimism), the horses of Custer’s command were even far more jaded, after having been ridden nearly 350 miles since leaving Fort Abraham Lincoln. In fact, the horses were already in relatively poor condition even before Custer’s led his regiment from the fort on May 17, more than five weeks before the showdown at the Little Bighorn. Nevertheless, the energetic Custer always drove his men and horses exceptionally hard, and never more so than during this most grueling of campaigns in his relentless push to the Little Bighorn and to catch his opponents before they fled. In hoping to reach the village before the inhabitants escaped, Custer overlooked that fact that the horses needed more frequent watering, because the overexertion and hot summer weather had at least doubled normal water requirements.257

After learning the intimate details about the battle from his “young men,” who rode forth against Custer on their well-watered, fresh horses, Sitting Bull gave a fundamental reason for the 7th Cavalry’s defeat, including the setback at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford: “When they rode up their horses were tired and they were tired.”258 This was especially the case with regard to Custer’s five companies that attacked at the ford, sapping the attack’s momentum. Amid an arid landscape and scorching heat after the command’s dusty advance down Medicine Tail Coulee, the river of cold, clear water was like an oasis in the desert to weary men and horses who badly needed water. The ascent from Reno Creek to the top of the commanding bluffs on the Little Bighorn’s east side devastated the horses’ stamina and strength on one of the year’s hottest days. In the correct analysis of historian Larry Sklenar: “The ride uphill would certainly have fatigued already tired horses to the breaking point.”259

Clearly, serious liabilities existed for the horses of Custer’s troopers by the time of the charge at the ford, hindering the flank attack from the beginning. By comparison, Reno’s men had also just encountered the problem of thirsty horses not watered since the previous evening, and consequently becoming uncontrollable when crossing the Little Bighorn at an old Indian ford. Indeed, “into it [the river] our horses plunged without any urging, their thirst was great and also their riders,” wrote Trooper Taylor.260 Horses drank deeply and Reno’s dust-covered troopers filled canteens, resulting in a delay of from ten to fifteen minutes. Clearly, the Little Bighorn served as a significant obstacle (for both Reno and Custer) that had nothing to do with the water’s depths or currents, but because of thirsty horses. Indeed, Reno had been forced to water his horses in the river because “his horses were so desperately thirsty that they would not cross the river until after they had a drink.”261

Another one of Reno’s troopers wrote of the difficulty (almost certainly experienced by Custer’s men) resulting from the meeting of cold water and thirsty mounts under a searing Montana sun: “Our horses were scenting danger before we dismounted, and several at this point became unmanageable and headed straight for the opening among the Indians, carrying their helpless riders with them. One of the boys, a young fellow named [George E.] Smith [a former shoemaker born in Maine] of Boston, we never saw him again, dead or alive.”262 Some cavalrymen lost control of horses because they “smelled Indians.” Trooper inexperience also played a role. Before Reno’s tentative attack, Adjutant Cooke had been forced to admonish Reno’s troopers about conserving their horses’ stamina, yelling out in desperation: “For God’s sake men, don’t run those horses like that; you will need them in a few minutes.”263

Likewise, Captain Benteen wrote of the effect that the smell and sight of water had on hot and worn animals, whose thirst was maddening amid the high heat and humidity. He described how the pack train’s mules suddenly became “hell-bent on getting to the blue water [of the river] which was so plainly in sight.”264 Again, such factors reduced the effectiveness of Custer’s last attack at the ford. However, more than water, according to the cavalrymen, the smell of Indians caused horses to become unruly when at the edge of the large Cheyenne village. In the words of Sergeant John Ryan: “It was pretty hard to get one of our American horses to go near an Indian,” especially a village.265

A Sioux warrior named Little Knife emphasized the early confusion and panic for the 7th Cavalry, and how “horses and men appeared to be unmanageable from the outset,” and this included at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford.266 Company C, to Company E’s rear, has provided a good representative example of trouble with horses during the attack on Medicine Tail Coulee Ford. As mentioned, at least two unfortunate Company C troopers (new 7th Cavalry recruits without adequate equestrian skills) lost control of their horses that then galloped with their terrified riders across the ford and into the Cheyenne village.267

Defending the slight rise in the river bottoms, Bobtail Horse even caught one trooper’s uncontrollable horse that had raced across the ford to gain the river’s west side.268 This was most likely a horse whose rider had been shot off. A member of the Sioux tribe, Moving Robe Woman, explained why Custer’s horses were also unmanageable after the initial repulse at the ford, because the “soldiers dismounted and fired [but then the] soldiers’ horses got loose and ran to the river [out of thirst and] [t]heir packs got loose and floated down the river [because the] horses wanted water.”269

What is clear was that when Custer’s attackers were very close to the ford, thirsty horses, such as at least two (and most likely more animals) mounts of Company C, became unmanageable. Such factors almost certainly played a factor in disrupting the advancing formations, helping to sabotage Custer’s overall offensive effort to force a passage across the river. As mentioned, the tragic fate of Private Gustave Korn, Company I (which had been led down the coulee by First Lieutenant Porter) of Keogh’s battalion, has provided the best example of the loss of control of horses during the attack. Korn’s “horse ran away with him” so far that he eventually reached Reno’s command on the bluff. As if protected by Providence, the private’s “unmanageable horse carried him to safety.”270

Of course, trooper horses also became unmanageable when their riders were hit, especially when wounds were inflicted on cavalrymen’s arms that held the reins. Sergeant Frank Finkel (George August Finckle), over six feet tall and German-born, was aiming his Springfield carbine at a warrior near the river when hit by a bullet. He lost control of his horse, smelling and sighting water, and the animal then headed straight for the river at a frantic pace. Upon reaching the riverbank, Finkel’s horse, a high-spirited sorrel named “Ginger,” then turned left, or south, and galloped along the bank toward the Sioux village to the south.271

Clearly, upon nearing the river, a very real problem for Custer’s attack across the ford was the combination of the exhausted condition of the horses and their desperate thirst. This then was the situation that caused some horses to often ignore their rider’s digging spurs and best efforts to halt them when near the river. Again, the 7th Cavalry’s horses were in terrible shape: during one of the most arduous of campaigns, men and horses had been driven to their physical limits by Custer’s relentless pursuit to catch up to the Indians before they slipped away, or so he feared. Therefore, with victory seemingly within his grasp in a crisis situation that reduced tactical options, a single-minded Custer had given relatively little, if any, consideration about the condition of the horses (without proper rest or nourishment for an extended period) for a major engagement on one of the year’s hottest days.272

Paying a high price for having worn out his command’s horses in pursuing victory, Custer’s actions were in marked contrast to Sitting Bull’s wisdom with regard to what he knew would be the inevitable showdown. When breaking up the encampment on the Rosebud, he had recently sternly admonished his young warriors about the condition of their horses. Knowing that fresh horses in good shape would play a key role in the upcoming confrontation that was only a matter of time, Sitting Bull had wisely cautioned: “You are racing your horses now, but don’t race them too hard and play them out, for you all are going to have a big fight soon.”273

As could be expected under these circumstances, Custer’s troopers faced the same challenges as Reno’s men. Major Reno had similarly encountered difficulty with his battalion’s horses because of their worn and famished condition. Just before unleashing his attack after crossing the Little Bighorn, thirsty horses caused “some congestion and confusion” among Reno’s battalion during its crucial mission of striking the village’s southern end.274 A good number of Reno’s troopers were unable to control horses when near the river, because of the animals’ burning thirst under the searing summer sun. Verifying the words of White Cow Bull, who witnessed this “pause” of Custer’s attack upon reaching the river’s east bank, Second Lieutenant Charles A. Varnum, Custer’s Chief of Scouts, was correct when he emphasized that for any “column of troop[er]s getting across [the Little Bighorn] is necessarily [the cause of] some delay, they can’t keep closed up [in formation] in the water.”275

The greatest obstacle and most destructive element that thwarted Custer’s attack on the ford came from the hail of the bullets from the fast-firing repeaters along the slight rise in the river bottoms. These warriors (professional hunters) were better marksmen than the troopers, especially recruits from major urban areas, and their marksmanship skill rose to the fore. The defenders also employed the smart tactic of targeting horses, which provided easier (or larger) targets to hit than the troopers on horseback. Dropping horses was actually more effective in disrupting the attack, especially attack alignment, than shooting troopers out of saddles, especially in the van. Soldier Wolf, a Cheyenne who was part of the ford’s defense, emphasized the carnage among the horses that revealed how this contest was as lengthy as it was intense. He described how the struggle for possession of the strategic ford went on “for quite a time.” Soldier Wolf explained the fire’s destructiveness for an extended period and longer than generally assumed by historians: “There they killed quite a good many horses, and the ground was covered with the horses of the Cheyennes, the Sioux and the white men, and two soldiers were killed and left there” at the ford.276

By striking in summer instead of winter as usual, Custer had already lost a key advantage, because the Indian horses were at their weakest and least durable in winter, which was in part why his Washita village attack had been so successful.277 Indeed, unfortunately for the 7th Cavalry and with regard to Indian ponies, the situation was now exactly the opposite along the Little Bighorn. While Custer’s horses were now exhausted from this lengthy campaign and most recently ascending the bluffs above the Little Bighorn and then during the dusty descent down Medicine Tail Coulee, the Indian horses were in excellent shape. They had grown strong (symbolically like the buffalo) on the luxurious new growth of spring grasses, before the summer heat turned them parched and brown. Earlier in the spring, Wooden Leg emphasized with delight how “our horses were growing stronger” as the prairie grasses grew higher.278 In fact, the fresh Indian ponies had only heightened the confidence among the warriors, believing that the bluecoats “now would be afraid to come [because] [o]n the benchlands [just west of the village]our horses found plenty of grass.”279

Most importantly, the fact that so many troopers had difficulty with their horses also gave credence to the words of Thunder Hawk, with regard to the attack having continued across the ford to gain the opposite shore. He maintained that Custer’s attack crossed the river, because troopers were riding “down the west side [of the river and] firing into the tepees.”280 Like so many Indian accounts, Thunder Hawk’s words have been long routinely dismissed by historians. In fact, Thunder Hawk’s oral testimony agreed with Reno’s first official report of the battle on July 5, 1876, after he had evaluated the battlefield: “Companies C and I, and perhaps part of Company E, crossed to the [Cheyenne] village, or attempted it at the charge….”281 Like others who closely inspected the battlefield not long after the fight, Major Reno revealed that Custer made a maximum offensive effort to cross at the ford and explained why troopers’ remains, including those of officers, were found in the village, because the attack had penetrated so far west, including into the Cheyenne village.282

Terrain Difficulties

The leader of an Oglala band named Horned Horse, whose two sons fought this day (including one who was killed in the early stages of battling Reno’s men), described how rough terrain had also played a role in Custer’s repulse at the ford. He believed that “owing to the abruptness and height of the river banks, Custer could not get down to the edge of the stream,” which was not the case.283

Indeed, the west bank, and the land immediately west of the ford, was several feet higher than the wide and level flat on the east side opposite the ford. Providing a far-less-credible explanation, Horned Horse was also convinced that quicksand played a role in thwarting Custer’s crossing of the ford: “The Little Big Horn is a stream filled with dangerous quicksand [and troopers shot off their horses] were swallowed up in the quicksand [and] [t]his is considered an explanation of the disappearance of Lieutenant Harrington and several men whose bodies were not found on the field of battle.”284 However, Sergeant John Ryan, Company M, 7th Cavalry, verified the truth of Horned Horse’s seemingly exaggerated words at first glance, with regard to the river’s treacherous bottom. He explained how the river’s waters were “as about three feet deep with quicksand” at the bottom.285

Horned Horse also revealed the most important reason why Custer’s last charge was thwarted at the ford, providing the most decisive catalyst in the ultimate outcome of the hard-fought contest for the ford’s possession: Custer “made a dash to get across, but was met by such a tremendous fire from the repeating rifles of the savages” that it was impossible to cross the Little Bighorn.286

The loss of so many officers, very likely including Custer himself and the son of the 7th Cavalry’s commander, Lieutenant Sturgis (two severe blows to leadership during an attack, including symbolic ones, and the loss of other top officers like Lieutenant Porter of Company I), at the ford played a key role in turning the tide at this crucial juncture. Due to the blistering fire exploding from the underbrush along the slight rise in the bottoms, the troopers retired farther away from the embattled ford and higher up the slope, where they dismounted. Any thought of crossing the ford and attacking the village was now over, along with Custer’s bold plan of delivering a flank attack to pull a victory out of the jaws of defeat. The fate of the five companies was now sealed.

After this repulse, no other offensive plan existed than simple survival, because the attack on the ford was the final tactical opportunity to reverse the day’s fortunes: quite literally, it was Custer’s last chance to save himself and his command. For all practical purposes, the battle was over and the five companies were doomed to annihilation, especially after they dismounted in skirmish lines on higher ground. However, Custer saved the rest of the 7th Cavalry, after having pulled the great mass of warriors to him. Thereafter, in the face of the hot fire and with no tactical options remaining, the 7th Cavalry was now entirely on the defensive. Gamely, the out-gunned troopers continued to fight dismounted in lengthy skirmish lines after the sharp setback at the ford: the loss of initiative and momentum never to return to Custer’s men to guarantee the most tragic day for the United States Cavalry. It was now only a matter of time before all five companies were eliminated on the deathtrap that was the open, high ground above Medicine Tail Coulee Ford. This annihilation was the inevitable result of the repulse of Custer’s last charge of his career at the ford.287

Horned Horse summarized the decisive turning point in the showdown at the ford in only a few words: “the head of the column reeled back toward the bluffs after losing several men who tumbled into the water” of the Little Bighorn.288 Moving Robe Woman also concluded this forgotten turning point of America’s most iconic battle: “Custer’s men got to the river above the beaver dam where the water was very deep [but they] got down to the river (at Medicine Tail Creek), but did not cross [and] Custer did not know where to cross” the Little Bighorn beyond the Medicine Tail Coulee Ford.289

Brave Wolf was one of the late-arriving Cheyenne to reinforce the band of ford defenders. He described the dramatic turning of the tide of battle: “Just as I got there [at the river], the soldiers began to retreat up the narrow gulch” known as Medicine Tail Coulee.290

The ford’s desperate defense was absolutely crucial with regard to buying precious time for not only saving the village, but also for the arrival of the warriors returning from Reno’s sector. Quite unlike the widely separated 7th Cavalry, the warriors possessed the advantage of interior lines, with the string of villages stretching for nearly three miles along the river bottoms: an easy, relatively open avenue by which hundreds of warriors (mostly Sioux) raced north from Reno’s sector for a timely concentration of force against a reeling opponent, after the repulse at the ford.

As mentioned, after holding the 7th Cavalry at bay for an extended period at the ford, the band of defenders rejoiced in the arrival of increasing numbers of Sioux and Cheyenne, who had hurled Reno rearward in panic during their first success of the afternoon. The arrival of the resurgent warriors at the ford completely altered the balance of the long-range standoff. Sioux warrior Red Feather described the early rallying cry that had galvanized the warriors before Reno: “The women and children shouted, ‘Another detachment coming!’ They were on the high [ground] place. There was another body of soldiers east of the Cheyennes. They left Reno and went as fast as possible to the other end, but the Cheyennes were already fighting. The Oglalas acted as reinforcements” to the relative handful of Cheyenne and Sioux warriors defending the ford.291

At first, these warriors reinforcing the ford had been only a mere trickle, and only later became a flood of Lakota warriors who streamed across the river. Revealing why the struggle for the ford was so important, the Sioux now possessed the ford for the easiest means for crossing the river and advancing up the high ground in pursuit of the reeling troopers: the elevated ground was now nothing more than a final resting place for the ill-fated troopers and their commander’s ambitions. Mounted warriors splashed across the river shouting “Hok–a–hey,” which was equivalent to one of Custer’s bugler’s blowing “Charge.” With plenty of firearms and a seemingly endless supply of ammunition, these warriors poured up Medicine Tail Coulee and Deep Coulee, just to the north, to close in on the bluecoats on the high ground.

After having been punished at the ford, Yates’s and Keogh’s battalions were in a desperate situation, although they were now united on the high ground, fighting together for a combined defense. Dismounted troopers deployed along the heights continued to blast away in the futile hope of keeping the Cheyenne and Sioux at bay. However, because Medicine Tail Coulee Ford was in possession of the Indians after Custer’s setback in attempting to cross, any chance of keeping so many warriors at bay was in vain, regardless of the amount of 7th Cavalry courage and determination.292

Indeed, nothing could now halt these warriors once they had gained the permanent possession of the ford and the momentum. One Lakota, Charles Corn, described this high-stakes contest in basic terms of survival of the fittest: “the soldiers wanted to kill us so we had to fight for our lives [and] tried to get our children and wives, so I was willing to die fighting for them. … The children and the women were crying so we tried to defend ourselves.”293

Distress Signals

If Custer was hit at the ford as White Cow Bull and other warriors believed (and was almost certainly the case), then Captain Myles Walter Keogh, the senior officer who originally hailed from County Carlow (Contae Cheatharlach in ancient Gaelic) in southeast Ireland, had his hands full in commanding all the five companies under mounting pressure. In a confused situation after the most unexpected repulse of the largest force of 7th Cavalry troopers in the regiment’s history, the Irishman found himself in a bad fix. With the crisis escalating with each passing minute, a desperate Captain Keogh almost certainly ordered the firing of volleys as signals in the hope of hastening the arrival of Benteen’s battalion and perhaps even what remained of Reno’s command, if sufficiently rallied. After all, without the timely arrival of reinforcements to bolster the five companies, the Indians were destined to succeed in using the classic military axiom of divide and conquer by keep the 7th Cavalry divided into manageable segments and widely separated.294

Again as verified by collaborating accounts, Custer’s fall at the ford paved the way to disaster. Believing that he had seen Custer hit with the first volley upon looking back, packer Lockwood (like so many Indians, especially White Cow Bull) was convinced that he “saw him fall at the head of his advancing troops and that he was ‘the first to fall’ before the real battle began.”295 In his memoir, Lockwood wrote how Custer and members of his staff were completely vulnerable to what was essentially an ambush, “when the Indians opened [fire] on them and that General [Brevet rank] Custer and his staff were the first to fall.”296 Significantly, these words (although that most of the staff fell was of course an exaggeration) agreed with a number of Indian oral accounts, especially White Cow Bull, who described how he shot Custer and a flag-bearer, and Horned Horse.297 What has to be remembered about the controversial Lockwood memoir—and why it should not be so easily dismissed as in the past—was the fact that “the testimony of the 7th’s survivors under Reno and Benteen together with that of their commanders is equally untrustworthy” like so many other Anglo written accounts.298

Contrary to traditional battle of Little Bighorn historiography, but as confirmed by numerous Sioux and Cheyenne oral accounts, the turning point of the struggle actually took place at the ford known as Minneconjou (Medicine Tail Coulee Ford), because of the tenacious defense and especially because Custer, staff members, and a number of leading officers were hit by a hail of gunfire, including from fast-firing repeating rifles, the 16-shot Winchester and Henry rifles: essentially a deadly ambush that caught the regimental commander by surprise and wreaked havoc on Custer’s last charge and final hope for securing victory. In addition, some circumstantial evidence that Custer was hit at the ford was the systematic firing of what were distress signals to Reno’s and Benteen’s command, as both white and Indian (Curley) accounts verified.

These successive volleys were unleashed inordinately close together and in rapid fashion to inform Reno and Benteen that something entirely unforeseen and disastrous had happened during the attack on the ford: clear signals fired by Custer’s command in a disciplined manner at a time (a short lull after the repulse from the ford) before the five companies were even threatened by ever-increasing numbers of warriors crossing the ford, after the repulse. These volleys were not directed at attackers. Instead, they were fired in desperate attempts to warn of the increasingly perilous situation of Custer’s five companies in the hope of garnering reinforcements, especially from Benteen, whose troopers were fresh. Quite simply, these were distress signals: Custer’s greatest opportunity to reap a decisive result had just slipped away forever and Custer had been hit, after all initiative and momentum had been lost in the most unexpected and entirely unprecedented manner. After all, this was the first repulse of a 7th Cavalry charge in the regiment’s history—and with Custer leading the way.

After having withdrawn from the ford and then up the grassy slope to the Nye–Cartwright Ridge that divided the South Medicine Tail Coulee (by which Custer had descended upon the ford) and the North Medicine Tail Coulee (Deep Coulee), the troopers continued to fire from skirmish line positions, after maneuvering into good firing positions. Keeping their single-shot Colt .45 revolvers in leather holsters, the cavalrymen blasted away with their .45-.55 caliber model 1873 Springfield carbines, while dismounted on the high ground above the river. Again, another indication of Custer’s fall, the withdrawal from the ford vicinity had been conducted in some confusion, because of the ambush’s effectiveness, the shock of a decisive repulse, and key losses, including among the staff.

As during the showdown at the ford and then in the gradually escalating level of combat on the high ground after the repulse, trooper firearms, the single-shot Springfield carbine, were simply no match for the faster-firing Winchester and Henry rifles. Like other troopers with Major Reno, who understood the strange uniformity of the successive volleys that sounded so unlike the usual pattern of infantry fighting (regular volleys that were more a feature of Napoleonic and Civil War warfare), an alarmed Lieutenant Winfield Scott Edgerly, Company D, 7th Cavalry, listened to the “heavy firing by volleys down the creek.”299 Now part of Benteen’s command after he had departed Custer’s column when it descended down Medicine Tail Coulee, Trumpeter Martin described how “we heard volleys, and Captain [Thomas Benton] Weir [answered the distress signal and] jumped on his horse and started down the river all alone [until] his troop [Company D] followed him right away.”300

In order to justify their lack of action and failure to come to the aid of Custer’s five hard-pressed companies, Reno and Benteen later falsely denied (which was part of the process of blaming Custer—the perfect scapegoat—for the disaster and to make themselves look blameless and still responsible officers) that they had heard the distinct succession of volleys during the 1879 Reno Court of Inquiry.301

In fact, Lieutenant Edgerly, a blue-eyed West Pointer, was incorrect about the number of distress volleys that had been evidently ordered by second-in-command Captain Keogh to communicate the disastrous news of Custer’s wounding to Benteen’s and Reno’s men in order to hasten assistance before it was too late. Scout George B. Herendeen, born in Ohio and a Civil War veteran, wrote how he knew exactly what Custer’s five companies had delivered because this was a crisis situation: “There were about nine volleys at intervals” in Custer’s sector. The fact that these volleys were so mechanical, successive, and regularly spaced indicated that they were fired to send an urgent and desperate message to Benteen and Reno and not part of a typical combat situation.302 Tall Bull also heard these regular volleys, after Custer’s troopers had been repulsed at the ford and then “fell back from [the] river” and in poor “order.” He emphasized how he “[h]eard the volleys” that were distress signals.303

Commanding Company K, 7th Cavalry, Lieutenant Edward S. Godfrey correctly concluded as to the true source of these regular volleys before Custer’s men ever faced large numbers of warriors. Only a belated and gradual buildup of massive Indian strength developing would warrant the firing of so many massed volleys that were reminiscent of conventional combat, rather than those of facing an opponent who fought guerrilla-style in moving stealthy up the slope, covered in high, luxurious grass: “I have but little doubt now that these volleys were fired by Custer’s orders as signals of distress and to indicate where he was.”304

Indeed, these volleys unleashed by the 7th Cavalry troopers were fired at a time when “there was no mass of Indians at this point opposite any part of the command.” Clearly, this series of rolling volleys that echoed down the Little Bighorn Valley were “distress signals” as Lieutenant Godfrey correctly deduced with the insight of a Civil War and Indian War veteran.305

As mentioned, this systemic firing of volleys came at a time when the immediate threat before Custer’s men was still not of a magnitude (which only came later) that warranted the unleashing of such a large number of closely spaced successive volleys, because this was before the gradual buildup of warriors: the actual case even if the number total of Herendeen’s nine volleys was mistaken and fewer. Indeed, at this time, the great number of Sioux and Cheyenne who rode north from the Reno fight had still not poured across the ford at this time.

After repulsing Custer’s last charge and regaining the initiative (but only just in time), the Cheyenne and Sioux then advanced on foot after dismounting and fought as individuals on the river’s east side, while taking advantage of the terrain and moving slowly up the slope. Like hunting deer, antelope, and buffalo on the plains, they steadily fired at Custer’s men, poised on higher ground, while pushing up the slope in a stealthy manner under the cover of the high prairie grass that provided for ideal concealment.

Again, there was no massive onslaught to justify so many heavy volleys fired in such rapid succession, because the threat was only minimal at that time. In addition, archeological evidence has revealed that these volleys (fired into the air so that Reno and Benteen could plainly hear them as an obvious distress signal) were not fired in heated combat while facing a mounted horde of attackers, as envisioned by imaginative writers and historians. After all, only a very few bodies were found where the piles of cartridges were discovered by modern archeologists along the later-named Nye–Cartwright Ridge. This open ridge stood on the high ground situated between Deep Coulee to the north and Medicine Tail Coulee to the south. Here, the dismounted troopers fired from defensive positions on the high ground above the ford below, while Indian numbers only slowly increased over time.306

Cheyenne warrior Brave Wolf described how after the troopers retreated from the ford and up Medicine Tail Coulee: “They were all draw up in line of battle.”307 Brave Wolf’s words also indicated that the five companies fought together in a defensive action on the Nye–Cartwright Ridge above the river of blue snaked through among the stands of cottonwoods.308

Providing additional evidence that the regular volley firing had been distress signals to alert Benteen and Reno of the crisis situation (Custer’s fall) and to hurry up reinforcements before it was too late, Indian testimony has also revealed how the later fighting above the ford was not at all distinguished by regular volley firing. In the words of a Sioux warrior named Shoots Walking that corresponded with other Indian accounts: “They did not fire their guns together and they fought without system whatsoever.”309

Clearly, after Custer’s repulse at the ford, and after the lieutenant colonel had been hit, the reeling troopers lost far more than simply their comrades in attacking the ford, morale also gradually eroded, especially with their commander’s fall. Most of all, these distress signals stemmed from the fact that, in the words of historian Pennington, “Custer must have been shot at the ford which stopped the attack, considering that with the number of warriors at the ford and the state of the village, Custer should and would have charged into the village.”310 Of course like most historians, Pennington overlooked the “tremendous fire,” in Horned Horse’s words, unleashed by the ford defenders that had turned the tide of battle and then set the stage for the annihilation of five full companies of America’s most famous cavalry regiment and the former “boy general,” who was expected by the American people to win a great victory in time for the Centennial celebration in Philadelphia.311