Custer and His Men Pay the Ultimate Price
Command cohesion and morale continued to gradually break down among Custer’s men along with overall combat capabilities, which best can be explained by Custer’s being wounded at the ford.1 With contempt because he and his comrades now fought a foe who was “similar to the guerrillas in our Civil War,” in Sergeant John Ryan’s words, White Bull summarized the fighting qualities of his opponent, who was exposed on the open ground and vulnerable targets to be systematically picked off, after the repulse at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford: “They don’t know how to fight.”2
Without realizing the success of the Cheyenne and Sioux last stand in defending the ford, one Sioux warrior, Brave Bear, who had fought Crook on June 17, could never understand “why all of them [Custer and his men] didn’t cross over [the Little Bighorn] and fight in the village … Custer would have been better off if he had got in the villages and made his stand there among them….”3 Of course, this was exactly Custer’s battle plan of delivering a flank attack, which had been thwarted to his shock at the ford by the “tremendous fire.”4
As could be expected, the best tactical situation to have achieved decisive victory, as emphasized by Brave Bear, had called for Custer leading the charge at the ford in a maximum offensive effort. As mentioned, therefore, the lengthy contest for possession of the ford was the battle’s turning point, especially because Custer was hit in leading the last attack of his illustrious career. In the insightful words of historian Nathaniel Philbrick: the early “wounding, if not death, of Custer at the early stages of the battle would explain much. Suddenly leaderless, the battalion” was now in serious trouble and doomed to destruction.5
Philbrick’s on-target views were echoed by Tall Bull. This warrior emphasized the decisive turning point far below Custer Hill, when the “Soldiers fell back from [the] river [and] not in very good order.”6 A warrior of few words, Two Moons briefly summarized the repulse at the ford that set the stage for the annihilation of all five companies like no other single event on the afternoon of June 25: “Custer and his men rode up nearly to the river on their horses and were being fired upon by the Sioux [and Cheyenne] on the west bank. Here, Custer stopped momentarily” in what was his first tactical setback, from which he and his troopers never recovered, and what decided the day.7
As mentioned, time had been of the essence in the struggle at the ford and absolutely crucial, as Custer had fully realized, forcing him to go for broke. Therefore, he had realized that no time could be wasted for delivering his daring flank attack and crossing the river to hit the undefended northern end of the massive village, because only a narrow window opportunity existed to score a victory, after Reno had been repulsed: a golden tactical opportunity that entirely dissipated when repulsed at the ford.8
What other overlooked factors played a role in ensuring that the five companies never regained the initiative after the setback at the ford? What was most responsible for this development that doomed the five companies besides Custer’s wounding and the ford’s tenacious defense? Besides the initial repulse at the ford, what else contributed to the escalating loss of morale and combat capabilities of Custer’s command? One of the forgotten keys to reversing the tide was the swiftness with which a handful of warriors regained the momentum by taking the offensive, despite being very few in number. After the repulse at the ford, the initiative had been forfeited by the 7th Cavalry and would never be regained, presenting an opportunity for the Indians to swiftly exploit the tactical opportunity.
Significantly, the ford defenders continued to play a distinguished role on the river’s east side by almost immediately demonstrating initiative by taking the offensive when the pony soldiers first began to withdraw from the ford. After their successful defense of the ford, the first handful of warriors who crossed Medicine Tail Coulee Ford, upon the initial withdrawal of Custer’s men who headed up the high ground, fully exploited the tactical advantage, like when hunting a buffalo bull suddenly giving ground. Leading the way across the ford were the following: Roan Bear, Bobtail Horse, Buffalo Calf (all Cheyenne), and the handful of Sioux warriors (young and old), who had fought beside their Great Plains cousins in defending the ford with bows and arrows and repeating rifles, immediately switched from the defensive to offensive without any directives from tribal leaders and entirely on their own.9
Wooden Leg described the forgotten vanguard role of the ford defenders in leading the way by attacking across the river and applying the initial pressure on Custer’s troopers at the moment when they were reeling from the shock of having been repulsed at the ford: “Bobtail Horse, Roan Bear and Buffalo Calf, three Cheyennes, and four Sioux warriors [including White Cow Bull] with them, were … the first of our Indians to cross the river and go to meet the soldiers” on the river’s east side.10
As if hoping that these heroics of Sioux and his own Cheyenne warriors would not go unrecognized in meeting the greatest threat to their way of life and very existence, Wooden Leg emphasized: “The first Indians to go across the river and fire upon the Custer soldiers far out on the ridge were two Sioux and three Cheyennes.”11
Then, to deliver an offensive effort of their own, these resurgent warriors of the last stand at the slight rise in the bottoms were “joined soon afterward by other Indians from the valley camps and from the southward hills where the first soldiers [under Reno] had taken refuge.”12 A Sioux warrior named Red Feather described the permanent gaining of the initiative after the ford’s successful defense, when larger numbers of Sioux and Cheyenne, under Two Moons (who carried a repeater like many of his followers), arrived from having confronted Reno. He and his warriors then rode across the ford after the troopers had been hurled back by the stubborn band of defenders: “The Indians charged twice in the battle at the lower [Cheyenne] end of the camp. The first time the [Custer] soldiers were on foot. Then they retreated to their horses.”13 Clearly, like its glory days, the 7th Cavalry’s offensive capabilities were now a thing of the past.
After having vanquished Reno and, as mentioned, multitudes of Sioux then crossed at the Medicine Tail Coulee Ford and other points along the Little Bighorn. Boding ill for Custer’s men on an afternoon when everything had gone wrong, these warriors were now elated by their unexpected success at the village’s upper end against Reno, which combined with the recent Rosebud victory to fuel confidence and fighting spirit to new heights. Revealing the importance of the struggle for the ford’s possession and the high stakes involved, Wooden Leg, who had a brother in this fight, described: “We forded the river where all of the Indians were crossing it [at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford], at the broad shallows immediately in front of the little valley or wide coulee on the east side.”14
With plenty of fast-firing rifles, Winchester and Henry repeaters and newly captured Springfield carbines from Reno’s dead, ample ammunition gained from white traders, fresh scalps just ripped off the heads of unfortunate 7th Cavalry troopers now hanging from leather belts and “the power of victory in them,” the ever-growing number of Sioux and Cheyenne warriors crossing the river was now overwhelming.15 These fighting men were so highly motivated and incensed because they believed that the pony soldiers had been “coming to head off the women and children … so we turned around and went towards them.”16
In conclusion, “Jack” Lockwood correctly summarized the showdown not only at the ford but also in the overall battle of Little Bighorn with insightful words seldom emphasized by Anglos:
The battle has been referred to as the Custer ‘massacre.’ This was a battle—real war—between two well-armed and organized forces each looking at the other and ready to attack. The Indians had two very definite advantages. First, a great superiority in numbers which looked to me to be as much as fifteen or twenty to one … and second, in superior fire power. They had the very latest and best types of long-range Springfield and Sharps rifles, while the soldiers were equipped with shorter range carbines. It was commonly believed that the Indians got their rifles and ammunition from white Indian agents who violated the government’s orders against the sale of arms and ammunition to them. The agents appeared to grow prosperous in a surprisingly short time. … Five entire troops had been wiped out inside of twenty minutes.17
Again as mentioned, the torrent of bullets that poured from the repeating rifles had played a leading role in a successful defense of the ford, and in the overall battle’s outcome, because the retiring troopers then became vulnerable on the high, open ground above the river: an ideal killing ground.18 For good reason, consequently, Sergeant John Ryan, Company M, 7th Cavalry, had strongly condemned the systematic arming of the Indians by the corrupt Indian agents and money-hungry Indian traders, who had bestowed the already formidable Great Plains warriors with the best and most lethal weapons with the highest cutting-edge technology: “so that his men [Sitting Bull’s warriors] were better armed than the troops of the United States Government. Individually, the Indians were better soldiers than our troops, for every Indian was a perfect rider and a good shot.”19
Without an understanding of the harsh realities of the Indians’ massive amount of superior firepower, newspapers across America incorrectly emphasized that the showdown along the Little Bighorn was nothing more than a horrid “massacre,” as if this much-derided foe was entirely incapable of a legitimate and thorough victory over the 7th Cavalry. For generations, “the public perception was that a group of savages had inexplicably managed to wipe out the United States Army’s most elite group of soldiers. That perception remained uncontested for over a hundred years, finding its way into history books, novels, documentaries, and even feature films [while] the victors of the Little Bighorn have had scant opportunity to tell their story….”20 And this great silencing of the truth was especially the case with regard to the decisive turning point at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford, to long obscure what happened at along the Little Bighorn, and exactly why.
Like Sitting Bull’s Sun Dance vision along the Rosebud that had become a reality and the fulfillment of a beautiful dream, Box Elder, the aged Northern Cheyenne prophet, also had been right. He had seen the pony soldiers in blue uniforms falling into their villages in what was little more than a divine sacrifice and tribute to honor the Great Spirit. In the end, their pain-induced Sun Dance visions derived from the wisdom and blessings of the Great Spirit had come to pass with Custer’s last charge. In this sense, perhaps it had been the Great Spirit who had stopped Custer’s last charge, as the warriors believed.
An unprecedented victory had been won on the afternoon of June 25 in an amazing triumph that the warriors called “the Greasy Grass Fight.” The Cheyenne people now realized the truth of Box Elder’s June 24 words of the expected pony soldier attack because he had understood how:
the wolves had known of the danger. The four-legged ones had known of the danger [because] [t]hey had trailed the white-faced strangers with the loud voices all the way from the Elk River, and since the wolves understood their language, they had learned the intentions of the whites. The loud strangers were now moving towards the Goat River [Little Bighorn] to attack the prairie people camped along the banks. It was said that the wolves had raced ahead and, from the rimrocks overlooking the valley floor, they had howled their warnings of the impending danger. But not one of the two-legged beings below paid any attention to the howling, except an elderly blind Cheyenne named Old Brave Wolf [Box Elder] who understood their language. Yet, when he told his people of the terrible danger about to confront them, they doubted the wisdom of his words and ridiculed his pleas to heed the warning.21
Most of all, as the Cheyenne and Sioux believed, it had been the “Spirit Who Rules the Universe” that had brought the remarkable one-sided success at the Little Bighorn with the wiping out of Custer’s five companies and the defeat of Reno’s troopers. In consequence, they gave thanks to their God.22 As if the Great Spirit had directed the bullet, the fact that Custer was most likely hit, but not killed, in leading the attack at Medicine Tail Coulee ford [as elsewhere] paved the way for one of the greatest disasters in American military history.23
Custer’s defeat shocked America, and despite the endless sensationalism printed in hundreds of newspapers across the United States, one realistic-thinking newspaperman of the Chicago Times finally hit upon the undeniable truth of the battle of Little Bighorn on July 22, 1876, when he emphasized: how: “The country might as well reach a just conclusion … however, much it may reflect unfavorably upon the dead [because] There was no ‘massacre’ [as] Custer fell in a fair fight which he himself invited and inaugurated, and which resulted as it did wholly from his rashness, his desire to distinguish himself, to his personal and entirely unwarranted ambition.”24
In the end, the obscure buffalo ford opposite the Medicine Tail Coulee was the exact point where the legendary Custer’s Luck finally came to a bitter and dismal end: a lengthy winning streak that was bound to end, but no one had expected it to come at the hands of so few fighting men at an obscure ford on the Little Bighorn and in the middle of nowhere. Naturally, the thoroughness of this repulse at the ford came as an absolute shock to troopers (and of course Custer) who had long seen themselves as invincible and the elite of the United States military. Here at the old buffalo ford, like some dangerous game of musical chairs that he had played almost recklessly since the Civil War’s early days, it had been only a matter of time before the good fortune of America’s most famous cavalry commander ended in a disastrous manner. Indeed, not long after the battle, a Kansas newspaperman got it right, attributing the most shocking military defeat of his generation to a blind overreliance on and faith in Custer’s Luck to overcome any odds.25
Indeed, Custer’s Luck was shattered forever by the tenacious defense of the relatively few Cheyenne and Sioux warriors at the Medicine Tail Coulee Ford and, more than on any other place, on the sprawling battlefield on the afternoon of June 25. The tragic end of Custer and his command was thereafter cruelly ordained by fate, tactics, a divided regiment, and balking top lieutenants who refused to come to Custer’s aid. Agreeing with the tactical analysis of Benteen, Lieutenant Winfield Scott Edgerly described the inevitable fate of Custer’s five companies after the repulse at the ford, where Custer “attempted to cross and was attacked and driven back to where he was found dead. Dead bodies [of 7th Cavalry troopers] were found all the way from the ford to where Custer’s body was found.”26
In fact, the greatest and most forgotten cause of Custer’s swift elimination and the destruction of his five companies was the superior combat qualities of the Cheyenne and Sioux fighting men, which was demonstrated most decisively at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford, armed with their superior weaponry. In a surprise admission in the wake of the disaster, the editor of the New York Times on July 7, 1876, correctly placed credit (a definite minority position among white Americans) where it was due: “The Sioux [and Cheyenne] are a distinct race of men from the so-called Indians of the Southwest, among whom the army [and General Crook] found much easy work two or three years ago….”27
Obscuring the Importance of the Story of the Last Stand at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford
Of course, the most fundamental reason why the last stand of the Cheyenne and Sioux at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford has been overlooked for so long was the obvious fact that Custer’s five companies were destroyed, leaving no survivors to tell the tale. Ironically, even conflicting Indian oral accounts likewise doomed this all-important story of the ford’s defense to obscurity, thanks to the misunderstandings of interpreters and the vast cultural differences between the two people. Unlike Cheyenne words, the vast majority of Sioux oral accounts about the battle were guilty of having a marked tendency to deny any action at the ford or emphasized that it was a fight of no significance, because this was largely a Cheyenne victory: the establishment of a central foundation for the failure of later generations of white historians to fully understand the importance of the decisive showdown at the ford. This confused situation and lack of understanding led to an overreliance on Sioux oral testimony that dismissed the importance of the Cheyenne achievements at the ford, because of tribal rivalries and jealousies. The words of a Sioux warrior named He Dog helped to obscure what really happened at the ford and its supreme importance in the battle’s final outcome. Failing to mention the Cheyenne, he explained the battle in the following manner: “Those Santees and other [Sioux] Indians had come out to hunt buffalo and not to fight, and the Sioux only fought when attacked.”28
As presented by an interpreter, He Dog’s most misleading—or even misunderstood—words can be found in his conclusion: “Custer never got near the river.”29 However, one of Reno’s men, Massachusetts-born Private George W. Glenn, Company H, surveyed the battlefield shortly after the fight. He wrote: “We found [the] trail going down in the river, but it seems that Custer got repulsed before he got across the river [since] we never found any trail of him on the other side of the river.”30 He also penned about what happened to some troopers who fell at the ford, “Lieutenant [James “Jack” Garland] Sturgis’ trousers were found but we did not find the body at the time [but in the village] [w]e found two heads of men that were captured [and] we buried the two heads. …”31
Ireland-born Sergeant John Ryan, Company M, explained the terrible fate of men who were captured in the attack on the ford and paid a high price for that sharp setback, because fallen soldiers could not be taken rearward or saved by their withdrawing men: “I think the Indians took some of our men prisoners [because] we found what appeared to be human bones and parts of blue cloth uniforms where men had been tied to stakes or trees. Some of the bodies of our officers were not found. Among them were Lieutenant Harrington, Lieutenant Porter and Lieutenant Sturgis.”32
The ugly final fate (a traditional one against common enemies) of these unfortunate men also can be seen in the words of Wooden Leg, who fought at Little Bighorn. He described the customary and ritualistic treatment of a dead enemy. In this sense, it made no difference if this foe were red or white, negating the overemphasized racial factor as having engendered greater hatred than usual. After killing one Shoshone warrior, the members of a Cheyenne war party went about a ritualistic procedure to ensure that they would not have to face this same whole, able-bodied warrior in the afterlife: “We cut off his hands, his feet, his head [and] [w]e ripped open his breast and his belly,” and then threw the remains in a bonfire.33
Small wonder that the physical remains of Custer’s men who fell in and around Medicine Tail Coulee Ford were never found. Sergeant Ryan described what little was discovered among the missing men who had confidently followed their commander down the coulee and attacked the ford: “We also found three of our men’s heads suspended by wires through the back of the ears from a lodge pole with the hair singed off.”34 Clearly, this was a sad ending for some of the best and brightest of the 7th Cavalry officers and enlisted men, but this was nothing unusual. At the Washita, Major Elliott and his more than a dozen men likewise had been decapitated so that a burial detail was “unable to find them” (the missing heads).35
Such was the high price paid for valor, audacity, and their determination to follow Custer to hell and back if necessary. In the end, perhaps a Sioux fighter named Two Moons best summarized the battle of Little Bighorn, because of the unexpected repulse of Custer’s flank attack at the ford: “Custer was a brave man. I give him credit for attacking a people that vastly outnumbered his—but something was the matter with his men. They did not run or seek shelter, but stayed right out in the open where it was easy to shoot them down. Any ordinary bunch of men would have dropped into a watercourse, or a draw, where they could have fought for a long time.”36 What Two Moons and other Sioux warriors failed to reveal, or acknowledge, was that this tragic scenario for more than 200 men of five companies was only an inevitable fate that had been earlier ordained by the repulse of Custer’s last charge at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford.
Most of all, this decisive repulse and the subsequent disaster along the Little Bighorn was primarily due to the courage and determination of the band of warriors along the low, brushy rise in the river bottoms near the river’s west bank. Against the odds for success, they had defiantly stood their ground, and unleashed a “tremendous fire from the[ir] repeating rifles,” in Horned Horse’s words, that could not be overcome.37 In a description that applied to the ford’s spirited defense, Sitting Bull also emphasized how the blistering fire from so many Henry and Winchester rifles of these relatively few veteran warriors was so severe that Custer and his command had no chance for either success or survival on truly a day in hell for the troopers of the 7th Cavalry: “They could not stand up under such a fire.”38
Recent Archeology
As mentioned, one of the great myths of the battle of the Little Bighorn was that nothing of significance occurred at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford, and that Custer never launched a strong attack with all five companies, to force a crossing at this strategic point. Instead, Custer’s final offensive effort has been incorrectly viewed by generations of historians as nothing more than a mere tactical feint of little relative importance, especially with regard to determining the battle’s outcome.
Even modern archeology has played a role in fostering the erroneous popular belief that no heavy fighting or anything of importance occurred at the ford: ironically, the scene of Custer’s last attack. In the introductory words of Sandy Barnard’s 1998 book, entitled Digging Into Custer’s Last Stand: “In the 122 years since the battle, artifacts indicating an action of some kind have been found in the vicinity of the ford, though their relative paucity seems to indicate the fighting there was brief.”39
Therefore, based on limited evidence from a recent archaeological dig conducted more than a century after the battle, Barnard concluded: “In the Medicine Tail Coulee area, the archeological findings seem to support the present-day thinking of many who have studied the battle ‘that only a light action occurred at the ford’.”40 In another study of the Little Bighorn, three established historians and scholars concluded: “In the years since the battle, artifacts indicating an action of some kind have been found in the vicinity of the ford, though their relative paucity seems to indicate that the fighting there was brief.”41 Again, this has been a premature and erroneous evaluation based entirely upon too little evidence having been found more than a century after the battle: something that should have been fully expected. The romance and lore of what happened far from the river on the commanding heights of Last Stand Hill, or Custer Hill has continued to play a role in obscuring the more important story of the dramatic showdown of what happened at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford. Consequently, the general assumption that the fight at the ford was insignificant has become one of the greatest myths about the battle of Little Bighorn, enduring to this day.
A host of good reasons have existed to fully explain why so little battle relics were discovered around the ford by modern archaeologists. White relic hunters, who even collected skulls, and Indian scavengers looking for anything of use, scoured the battlefield. Sergeant John Ryan explained the situation of how large numbers of Indians, especially women and children, had scoured the battlefield for everything of possible use, including brass cartridges that could be reloaded for future use: “Strange to say, none of the saddle or horse equipment, not even a strap that I could see, nor cartridge shells, could be found on the field except five or six shells that were found under General Custer’s body [which were] afterwards sent to Mrs. Custer with a lock of the general’s hair….”42 Followed by hordes of latter-day tourists, white soldiers, including Scotland-born Private Peter Thompson, Company C, 7th Cavalry, searched the battlefield for “some trophy as a memento of this affair,” not long after the battle. They secured souvenirs, such as brass cartridges, from the scene of strife, including in the Cheyenne village.43
However, with regard to the scarcity of relics found by archaeologists, what has been most often overlooked was the fact that significant changes have altered the battlefield since June 25, 1876, to guarantee the lack of physical evidence of the struggle at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford. For more than a century after the battle, overgrazing by herds of domestic cattle and sheep denuded the native vegetation, especially its thick carpet of prairie grasses that covered the landscape when the battle raged with such fury. Without natural vegetation, especially a thick layer of native grasses, protecting the thin top soil, heavy erosion from the rains of more than a century washed many battle artifacts, especially lightweight rifle and revolver cartridges, into the river. Then, annual flooding of the Little Bighorn (especially the winter runoff and heavy spring rains) washed artifacts (including empty, lightweight metallic cartridges that have been long used as the ultimate barometer by modern archaeologists to designate tactics, troop positions, and locations of heavy combat) away from the site of the struggle at the ford and farther downstream or were covered in deeper layers of sediment.
Therefore, relatively few artifacts at the ford were found, unlike other portions of the battlefield that were on much higher ground, and less erosion prone, far from Medicine Tail Coulee Ford. What has been found by modern archeologists in the ford area has been only heavier (than a brass cartridge) objects, such as an 1874 pattern United States Amy mess knife, a bullet, a butcher knife (evidently Indian), and a cylinder retention pin from a Colt model 1873 six–shoot revolver. These artifacts were found near the mouth of Medicine Tail Coulee, where it entered the river, during archeological digs in 1994.44
Worst of all, since the battle’s end and for more than a century, large numbers of relic hunters and souvenir seekers have heavily scoured the mouth of the coulee and ford area, stripping these places of battle artifacts and relics. Members of the nearby Crow Agency on the north border of today’s Little Bighorn National Battlefield also took a toll on the physical reminders of the struggle, removing items at the ford and selling relics, especially brass cartridges, to tourists for generations. Such developments have caused recent archaeologists more than a century later to incorrectly conclude that no significant contest was waged at the ford because of the paucity of artifacts discovered during their meticulous archaeological projects. In addition, the ground around the ford has been disturbed by many years of the activities of man and beast, including even by camera crews in the filming of the battle of the Little Bighorn sequences for the popular 1971 Arthur Penn movie, Little Big Man.45
The notable lack of artifacts found in and around the ford can also be partly explained by the fact that, in the words of Sioux warrior Horned Horse, the river “is a stream filled with dangerous quicksand,” which allegedly “swallowed up” fallen troopers, including equipment and weapons.46 Some bodies of unlucky troopers and their gear at the ford almost certainly washed downstream to the north because the rushing waters from the melting snow of the Big Horn Mountains were more rapid at the ford’s shallow crossing than elsewhere along the river.
Ample evidence also exists that bodies of Custer’s fallen men (only several were found at the ford) were removed from the ford’s vicinity by the Indian women and taken into the village, because they were never found. Lieutenants Sturgis and Porter were among those officers who fell in the attack on the ford. After the battle, Taylor explained: “Some of the officers went galloping over the field looking at different bodies in the hope of recognizing the three missing Lieutenants; Harrington, Porter, and young ‘Jimmy” Sturgis. … But their search was fruitless [however] Some of the clothing of young Sturgis, bearing his name was found in the deserted Indian camp. But his body was never found, to be recognized. …”47
Civil War veteran Lieutenant Godfrey, who commanded Company K and hailed from Ohio, wrote how the “bodies of Dr. Lord and Lieutenants Porter, Harrington, and Sturgis were not found, at least not recognized.”48
Clearly, as Lieutenants Sturgis, Harrington, and Porter and so many others had discovered on bloody June 25, the 7th Cavalry troopers learned, in the sardonic words of Trooper Taylor, that in “seeking to deprive a strange and brave people of their birthright and all they held dear, was not altogether a picnic,” especially along the Little Bighorn. For such reasons, the head of a Company G corporal, with red hair, was found under an overturned kettle in the Cheyenne village.49
However, some meager recognition for the importance of what had happened at the ford has come belatedly, but this has remained entirely insufficient. Offering a more positive analysis than other digs in the past, a 1989 archeological study by Douglas D. Scott, Richard A. Fox, Jr., Melissa A. Connor, and Dick Harmon emphasized that “artifactual evidence (e.g., government cartridge cases, etc.) found over the years at the ford may suggest that Custer’s battalion, or parts of it, progressed to the river intent on crossing into the heart of the encampment.”50
The displacement and removal of troopers’ bodies in the alleged exact positions where they were supposedly killed, and hence buried, has also contributed to the misconception that nothing occurred of importance at the ford. For example, a total of fifty-two headstones stand today on Custer Hill. This is a misrepresentation that has helped to fuel the romantic imagery and fictions of the famous Last Stand” In truth, only forty-two bodies were first buried on Custer Hill. Even more, “about seventy markers now stand where no body was found” on the battlefield, representing “surplus” marble headstones that had been originally meant for proper placement on the Reno battlefield.51
The burial marker of reporter Mark Kellogg has provided a good representative example of the obscuring of proper positions of where bodies were actually found. The ill-fated newspaperman was killed near the river, but his white marble marker is located a good distance from where he was killed. In the words of Sandy Barnard, only “a few hundred yards from Custer Hill, [the Kellogg marker stands] but today we believe it represents Kellogg’s actual death or burial site. Instead, his death almost certainly occurred three quarters of a mile to the west on the flats close to the river, as traditional accounts, such a [Colonel John] Gibbon’s, suggest.”52
The case of Lieutenant James “Jack” Garland Sturgis, who was killed in the attack on the ford (as evidenced by his clothing and head that were found in the Cheyenne village), has provided an even better example of misplaced burials than Kellogg. However, no indication today can be found that Sturgis, who was leading Company E, Yates’s battalion, was cut down at the ford, additionally obscuring what happened at this strategic crossing point and its importance.53
Likewise, the marble marker of handsome Lieutenant Sturgis is nowhere near the ford where it rightfully belongs today. He was the promising son of the commander of the 7th Cavalry, Colonel Samuel Davis Sturgis, age fifty-four. As mentioned, the regimental commander had been conveniently ordered by headquarters to detached service at the Cavalry Depot in St. Louis to allow Custer to take charge of the regiment during his final campaign. For the colonel’s sensibilities, and those of his wife, the truth of the young lieutenant’s grisly demise in the Cheyenne village near the ford was deliberately obscured and falsified. When the lieutenant’s mother visited the battlefield in June 1878, she was shown an entirely “fictitious” grave of her son southwest of Custer Hill and far from Medicine Tail Coulee Ford, where he had been hit.54 Likewise and in the case of other 7th Cavalry troopers, Lieutenant Henry Moore Harrington’s headstone has no connection to where he was actually killed near the ford.55
Again, like service records, the tragic fate of Lieutenant Sturgis and other officers has provided evidence of a much larger fight at the ford than has been recognized by historians, but in accordance with an abundant number of Indian accounts, especially Cheyenne. Lieutenant Godfrey described: “The clothing of Porter and Sturgis I found in the [Cheyenne] village, and they showed that they had been killed.”56 As mentioned, Scout George B. Herendeen was less delicate than the diplomatic lieutenant of Company M, explaining how the “heads of four white soldiers were found in the Cheyenne village.”57 These unfortunate soldiers were almost certainly officers and men who fell in Custer’s attack on the ford. The distinct possibility existed that at least Lieutenants Porter and Sturgis and Dr. Lord, whose surgical box was found in the Cheyenne village, were unhorsed or even wounded to become captives, where they were later killed by their captors in the village—as seen by Reno and other officers.58
Ironically, one supposed eyewitness of the battle has been widely discredited, for good reason, as part of the fabricated post-battle stories from so many allegedly battle survivors and witnesses. In the September 8, 1876, issue, The Pioneer Press and Tribune of Minneapolis, Minnesota, presented an “interview with an old trapper” named Ridgely. Again, this account is false, but has corresponded with some existing evidence. D. H. Ridgely stated that he had been trapping in the Yellowstone country, when he was captured in March 1876.59 Barely two months after the battle, Ridgely presented a scenario that was actually surprisingly close to what actually happened, because toward “this ford Custer followed the trail down to the river’s edge. There were only twenty-five teepes [sic] visible behind the bluffs not visible [when] Custer attacked the small village [Cheyenne], and was immediately met” with resistance.60
He also emphasized how “Custer began the fight in the ravine [Medicine Tail Coulee] near the ford, and full half of his command seemed to be unhorsed at the first fire [and] [t]hen the soldiers retreated” up to the hills above the river.61 Of course, these losses were an exaggeration. Interestingly, however, Ridgely also stated how after the battle “the Indians returned to camp with six soldiers as prisoners [who were then] tied to stakes at a wood-pile in the village and were burned to death.”62
A comparable observation was made by Major Reno (Ridgely had almost certainly read the major’s accounts) from the top of the bluff where he found an ideal defensive position, after his command had been routed from the river valley. As mentioned, he actually saw that missing men were “burned at the stake, for while the great battle was going on I, and some other officers, looking through field glasses, saw the Indians miles away engaged in a war dance about three captives. They were tied to the stake and my impression was that [Lieutenant] Harrington was one of them.”63
Again, the Ridgely account is entirely false, but it has revealed that there was widespread knowledge and a common consensus about the importance of the struggle at the Medicine Tail Coulee Ford not long after the battle, and that some of Custer’s officers had been captured in the combat for the ford’s possession: ironically, realizations and conclusions of early observers of the field, including Benteen and Reno, immediately after the battle, which have been obscured by the fiction and romance of “Custer’s Last Stand.”64
Symbolically, after the battle, reports circulated that several open graves of 7th Cavalry troopers were found near the ford, where the fighting had raged in the battle’s forgotten turning point. Indeed, to coincide with warrior oral testimony, the bodies of at least several troopers were found at the ford and others in the village.65 Nevertheless, one of the greatest myths of the battle of Little Bighorn has doggedly persisted even among leading historians to this day: that nothing of any importance occurred at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford, when it was actually the scene of Custer’s last—and most desperate—charge and the turning point of the battle.