A photographer named Stanley J. Morrow took a series of photographs of the Custer battlefield in the early spring of 1879. Not surprisingly, in realizing the importance of this remote place about three-quarters of a mile from the famous “Custer Hill,” he made sure that he took a photograph of Medicine Tail Coulee Ford. Most significantly, Morrow correctly labeled the photograph, “Ford on the Little [Big] Horn where Custer met his first reverse. … The ford, where Custer attempted to cross to attack the Indian village.”1
Morrow was entirely correct, after having learned first–hand from reliable sources about what had happened at the ford on June 25. This was indeed a significant and historic site as Morrow fully realized: the location of Custer’s last attack, and one of the few times, from the Civil War to the Indian Wars, when one of his trademark hard-hitting charges had failed to garner victory. This same tactical evaluation was early voiced by Curley, who was one of the very few who saw Custer’s last attack when he went for broke: “Several times Curley described an attempt by Custer’s forces to charge across the ford at the mouth of Medicine Tail Coulee. …”2
Coinciding with Morrow’s views, Crow scout Little Man Runs Him also emphasized how “Custer had come down Medicine Tail Creek [with all five companies] and was moving toward the river [and then] Custer tried to cross the river at the mouth of Medicine Tail Creek, but was unable to do so.”3 However, because of the enduring romance and popular mythology of what happened on Custer Hill, generations of historians have casually overlooked or dismissed what Morrow first got right less than three years after the battle: the supreme importance of this dramatic showdown at the ford, where the battle of the Little Bighorn was ultimately decided, and not on the much-celebrated “Custer Hill.”
Equally significant (although he was not referring specifically to the ford’s defense, which nevertheless applied in this case), archaeologist and historian Richard Allen Fox, Jr., summarized: “Cartridge cases, primarily from repeating rifles, suggest that warriors at least took advantage of the shock effects of rapid fire massed against enemy positions.”4 Unfortunately for Custer, this was indeed the exact situation with regard to the ford’s defense that led to the most disastrous repulse of his lengthy professional career. Fox’s analysis coincided with Sitting Bull’s words. The revered Hunkpapa holy man told the secret of the remarkable success of only a handful of warriors successfully defending Medicine Tail Coulee Ford to make a dramatic contribution to the battle’s outcome far out of proportion of their numbers: “Our young men rained lead across the river and drove the white braves back.”5
In this regard, Fox’s insightful analysis was right on target, which was verified by not only Sitting Bull, but also the words of Horned Horse with regard to the tenacious defense of the ford, where Custer was “met by such a tremendous fire from the repeating rifles” that the five companies were repulsed and forced to withdrawal to seal the command’s fate.6 An Indian woman who saw the struggle at the ford also emphasized “the withering fire which greeted [Custer’s] approach” to the ford.7 From the heights of Bouyer’s Bluff that overlooked the ford, towering 170 feet above the river just to the south, Crow scout White Man Runs Him personally viewed the hard-fought contest. He later described the battle’s decisive turning point in only a few concise, but accurate words: “Custer tried to cross the river at the mouth of Medicine Tail Creek, but was unable to do so [and] This was the last we saw of Custer.”8
Despite the ample amount of available and reliable Indian (Cheyenne, Crow, and Sioux) testimony and even leading 7th Cavalry officers who analyzed the battlefield not long after the battle, white historians have continued to ignore the importance of what occurred at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford. This was a most ironic development with regard to the last charge of the boldest cavalry commander of his generation, and whose distinguished career was founded upon successful charges across America. It’s one of the great, if not inexplicable, paradoxes of Little Bighorn historiography. As mentioned, most historians have concluded that Custer’s final offensive effort was nothing more than a mere feint because it was inconceivable that his last attack could have been stopped by so few warriors: a complete dismissal of the importance of Custer’s final attack and the ample amount of existing reliable and collaborating Indian (especially Cheyenne) testimony that exists. All in all, this has been a most implausible conclusion with regard to the last attack of America’s most aggressive and dynamic cavalry officer. After all, Custer had almost always attacked with everything and anything that he had available during the Civil War and Indian Wars. The time-proven tactical concept of “the charge” meant victory in the mind of the native Michigander, whose reputation had been built on the aggressive offensive, even in impossible tactical situations and against the odds. In fact, the fallacy of Custer’s most fundamental axiom of a brilliant cavalry career had been revealed only once: the dramatic showdown at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford.
Indeed, this longtime common and traditional view that nothing of importance happened at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford has been a rather bizarre general consensus by generations of historians. After all, even an early article in The Sun (New York, New York) reported on February 26, 1876: “Custer struck the Indians at a ford … with the full belief that Reno was fighting in the bottom, and Benteen ‘coming on’ to join in the fight.”9 Even more importantly, General Terry’s first report, sent by telegraph to headquarters in Chicago, Illinois, on June 27 about the fight revealed a good deal of accurate information: Custer’s “trail … comes down to the bank of the river, but at once diverges from it as if he had unsuccessfully attempted to cross.”10 There was even a forgotten 7th Cavalry survivor of the struggle at the ford: Captain Keogh’s horse Comanche, a fourteen-year-old bay gelding. Scout Girard and Benteen found 7th Cavalry “horse, wounded, lying on its side in a pool of mud and water on the bank of a stream where it was supposed Custer and his men had attempted to cross in his attack on the Indian [Cheyenne] village” in the words of historian Ernst L. Reedstrom.11
Significantly, the contemporary accounts of those individuals who were actually at the battle revealed the truth in contrast to the outright speculation of latter-day armchair historians. After surveying the battlefield, veteran Sergeant John Ryan, 7th Cavalry, wrote how at “the end of this bluff there was a ford [Medicine Tail Coulee] and I think Custer attempted to cross at that point to the Indian [Cheyenne] camp, as we found some of the bodies of his men lying there. Those were the first bodies we found belonging to Custer’s command.”12 He also penned that at “the top of this bluff, we halted and at the foot was a ford, and it was where Custer first encountered the Indians, as we found some of the dead soldiers there two days afterward.”13
Clearly, the cavalrymen’s dead bodies later found, combined with those remains of prisoners taken by their captors into the Cheyenne village and whose bodies were never found after the battle—these numerous casualties revealed that a much larger engagement, in accordance with an ample number of reliable Indian accounts, took place at the ford than has been acknowledged by historians. This longtime denial has developed because it did not fit in the traditional tactical and romantic formula of the standard narrative of the famous last stand of Custer atop Custer Hill. The mystique and romantic legacy of Custer’s Last Stand atop the hill (abut three-quarters of a mile above the river) ensured that what occurred at the ford remained in the dark historical shadows to this day.14
Perhaps John Stands in Timber, whose grandfather Lame White Man was killed in the battle, best described what happened at the ford with regard to the battle’s true turning point: “The Custer men tried to cross the river [at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford but] Cheyennes [and Sioux] hidden in the brush on the south side of the ford drove the solders back and killed a couple of them in the brush by the river [and] [t]hen the Custer men retreated” to the high ground above the river where they were wiped out to a man.15
Contrary to the traditional narrative steeped in romance and lore, one of those attackers who was hit, but not killed, was Custer himself. Along with members of his headquarters staff (literally the regiment’s command and control center in the saddle) who were killed and wounded in the attack on the ford, Custer’s wounding not only played a key part in the repulse at the ford but also in the overall collapse of command cohesion and combat capabilities, which led to the ultimate destruction of the five companies on the high ground far from the ford. Custer’s early loss had provided the best explanation of the fatal catalyst that led to the ultimate disaster. Therefore, everything that happened after the repulse of Custer’s last attack on the ford was anti-climactic in overall tactical terms, because the true turning point of the battle had already been reached during the struggle for possession of the ford.16
Nevertheless, despite the ample existing, reliable evidence and primary documentation, the ford fight has been ignored almost out-of-hand by traditional historians as little more than a feint or an “ineffective bluff.” However, in striking contrast to these conventional views, the existing tactical situation that confronted Custer had called for an all-out offensive effort with all five companies, because this flank attack was his last chance to achieve success.
In many ways, the story of the ford’s defense and how so few Indian defenders (including boys and older men beyond prime fighting age) saved the day by thwarting Custer’s last offensive effort of his famed career, seems almost incomprehensible at first glance, especially for the general public and historians who have been unduly influenced by traditional historiography since childhood days. After all, from the Civil War to the Washita, no opponent had been able to withstand an all-out Custer cavalry charge until the afternoon showdown at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford: not a very memorable or glorious chapter for Custer enthusiasts, especially because America’s hero was cut down in the attack, guaranteeing that it was best to leave this most overlooked story to its undeserved obscurity.
Of course, because none of Custer’s men of five companies survived the battle, the only way to understand how the ford’s defense could have reversed the day’s fortunes against the odds can only be seen through warrior’s words. One veteran leader of the Cheyenne Kit Fox Society, Two Moons, perhaps said it best with regard to explaining how only a mere handful of determined warriors defended the Medicine Tail Coulee Ford with a stubbornness seldom seen among Great Plains warriors: “We wanted our revenge, and it came with Custer.”17
Nevertheless, the dramatic showdown for possession of this vital ford across the Little Bighorn—so suddenly made strategic, and the key to the success of the overall battle plan—has been the most overlooked and ignored chapter of the battle of Little Bighorn. In fact, this all–important fight at the Medicine Tail Coulee Ford has been often regulated to little more than a footnote by traditional historians, who have not deviated from the popular romanticized portrayal of the final clash. For them, the climactic showdown of the day was on Custer Hill and never at this obscure ford far below the hill’s crest.
To be entirely fair, this has been only a natural, if not inevitable, development because of the power of the modern media: popular films, dramatic paintings, and hundreds of books that have faithfully fueled the traditional romance and myth for generations. Popular culture and films have been most responsible for laying the central romantic foundations and creating the enduring myths of Custer’s Last Stand that have gone unquestioned for so long. These views have become so deeply ingrained in the popular memory and consciousness that no avenue has been left open for new interpretations and fresh views of one of the most iconic battles in American history, thus guaranteeing the silencing of the truth about the climactic showdown at the ford.
Even the most recent books about Custer’s Last Stand, like James Donovan’s popular book of 2008, A Terrible Glory (which presented the traditional view that predictably minimized the importance of the struggle at the Medicine Tail Coulee Ford)—and despite the publisher’s glowing claims of groundbreaking contributions—have basically offered very little truly new with regard to scholarship. Such popular works have only continued the same old, well-worn story that we have been long taught to us since childhood.
In a rather sad but only too true commentary, battle of the Little Bighorn historian Walt Cross, a distinguished combat veteran of the Vietnam War, correctly emphasized why the crucial confrontation (certainly one of the most forgotten—if not the most important—chapters of the battle of the Little Bighorn) at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford, has continued to be grossly minimized in terms of overall importance by today’s even most revered historians: “People tend to just go along with the prevailing attitude and that is what has happened to Medicine Tail Coulee. But if you listen to the Indian voices, they will understand that it was a very important reason why Custer was defeated.”18
Even a perplexed veteran cavalryman and former Confederate general, Thomas “Tom” Lawrence Rosser, who reflected the common white perspective with regard to not understanding how Custer could have been repulsed by mere “savages,” never seriously considered that such so-called barbarians could possibly have stopped the last charge of America’s greatest cavalryman: “Were the nature of the river banks such … where he approached the river, that he could have crossed without great difficulty? Did he approach at the point where these ‘cut banks’ … are met?”19
In a great paradox, Custer saw the last charge of his illustrious military career stopped by only a mere handful of warriors, who seldom fought together but now united as one, in a true emergency situation: a surprising development not previously experienced by the “boy general” in attacking the Confederacy’s finest troops, cavalry, and infantry, during the Civil War. However, perhaps in the end this most unexpected of possible setbacks for Custer’s last attack was entirely appropriate, because before June 25, 1876, Custer’s fame as an Indian fighter and postwar status as a “national hero” rested solely on “the sordid, hardly heroic reality of the Indian wars of the West, where torching a village of noncombatants [Black Kettle’s camp along the Washita] was considered a great victory….”20
An even more surreal irony of Custer’s Last Stand was that the cutting-edge technological weapon, the latest Winchester (model 1876) that had killed so many of Custer’s men on this bloody afternoon, was featured at the Centennial Exposition while the battle was being fought. Ironically, Custer had visited the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in April 1876, just before riding off to a rendezvous with disaster. Here at the Exposition, the 1876 campaign’s brain trust and architects, Generals Sherman and Sheridan, first heard the shocking news of the Custer fiasco. Like the 16-shot Henry rifle, the highly effective Winchester rifle was proudly displayed at the Exposition as part of the overall theme of “A Century of Progress,” to thousands of gawking visitors from around the world. Little could these visitors have realized that they were looking at the day’s most advanced small arms weaponry that had just sent so many of Custer’s men (perhaps Custer himself) to early graves on a remote Montana hill in the middle of nowhere.21
Sergeant John Ryan, Company M, 7th Cavalry and the son of Irish immigrants, was perplexed by the striking paradox, which made him angry at the America’s Indian policy had proved such a monumental folly: “It seemed a strange fact that the government was … equipping these Indians to go out and kill the soldiers who were doing all they could to protect the frontier.”22 A sickened Major Reno described how the “harrowing sight of the dead bodies [reminded him of the Indians had been] armed, clothed, and equipped” by government agencies. Reno’s and Ryan’s nagging concerns were proven entirely correct by the archaeological evidence (shell cartridges): large numbers of Winchester and Henry rifles were used to wipe out Custer’s five companies with a relative swiftness seldom seen on any battlefield, and certainly not during the Civil War years.23
Custer had never faced such a heavy volume of superior weaponry when he fought against Rebels, who were armed with single-shot rifled muskets. The first example of the devastating effect of heavy firepower in dramatically altering the battle’s course was demonstrated in the ford’s defense. Here, the 7th Cavalry troopers were “met by such a tremendous fire from repeating rifles,” in Horned Horse’s words, that revealed the most forgotten factor that had paved the way to Custer’s defeat.24
This book’s special focus on the decisiveness of the showdown at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford has revealed the fact that fresh views and interpretations can still be found even in one of the most written about fields in the annals of American military history. As revealed in this work, this new focus on the importance of the struggle at Medicine Tail Coulee has revealed the value of rethinking and reanalyzing some of the most fundamental assumptions and long-accepted axioms that have been so long embraced as gospel.
Imbedded deeply into the American consciousness, Custer’s defeat at the height of America’s Centennial celebration was one of the most traumatic experiences in American national life: a psychologically devastating defeat for the republic not unlike the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941. The romantic visual representations of Custer going down courageously fighting atop Custer Hill as a prime example of doomed heroism—from the first contemporary newspaper sketches to epic oil paintings that continue to be created well into the twentieth first century as opposed to uncomfortable truths found in the historical record, especially from Indian oral testimony—has become one of the most iconic images in American history.
However, this enduring image of Custer’s Last Stand is inaccurate and romanticized. The most popular and glorified presentation is the 1941 film starring Errol Flynn (who played Custer with the appropriate dash), They Died With Their Boots On. This influential film left its deep imprint on the American consciousness and memory to this day. Creating the story of a heroic martyrdom, talented scriptwriters of the Hollywood film-producing machine allowed their creative imaginations to soar to new heights. In timely fashion, Errol Flynn’s 1941 film was released to raise patriotism across the United States in preparation for America’s massive military effort in the Second World War.
Equally guilty in distorting the truth and creating the romantic myth, wildly distorted popular paintings were immensely popular across America. One of the most popular depictions of “the battle was “Custer’s Last Fight,” painted by Cassilly Adams in 1884, prepared as a lithograph by F. Otto Becker in 1889, and widely distributed by Anheuser-Busch to millions of Americans, which helped to permanently mold modern and popular memory using the power of advertising. The lithograph first appeared in 1896 just before the Spanish–American War and immediately caught the imagination of the American nation. Transforming one of the greatest disasters in American military history into a great moral victory and a shining example of noble sacrifice on the expansionist nation’s altar of Manifest Destiny, the fabled last stand was a manufactured creation now used as propaganda. Most significantly, all of the divergent promoters of romantic myth simply ignored the truth about what happened at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford, because the truth was a much less glorious, dramatic, and important story that failed to fit the popular romanticized narrative that was part of popular memory.
In the traditional scenario of Custer and the 7th Cavarly troopers standing firm in courageous defiance before waves of a great tide of charging mounted warriors, until ultimately overwhelmed, the heroic image of fighting to the bitter end bestowed a comforting national view of victory through defeat. This traditional nationalist and racist portrayal of western expansion influenced generations of Americans, including highly respected historians, regardless of their lofty academic status and number of prestigious degrees.25
In consequence, what has been most of all long ignored were some of the most reliable Indian accounts that have deviated so sharply from the traditional last stand portrayal of romance and myth, especially with regard to the defense of Medicine Tail Coulee Ford. As could be expected, even the most accurate and corroborating Indian accounts were not sufficient to even slightly counterbalance these glowing romantic images. The traditional requirements of a glorified history, based upon deep-seated racial and national priorities rooted in cultural perspectives, only made the situation worse with regard to the ignoring Indian accounts, which were too often deemed entirely unworthy because of their non-white source. To fuel the belief in the nobility of heroic sacrifice against the odds with the Second World War looming near, Hollywood steadily churned out a good many historical and war films. These films emphasized martial glory and moral redemption through defeat that disguised ugly realities and hard truths about America, thus masking the folly, errors, and betrayals that made the annihilation of Custer’s five companies inevitable.26
Consequently, the combined effect of the dominance of the influential modern media, popular images and paintings, and romantic-minded historians, the disproportionate power of the enduring image of Custer’s heroic death left no place for even the most reliable Cheyenne and Sioux oral accounts of the Medicine Tail Coulee Ford showdown. Some of the most revealing and dependable eyewitness Indian accounts of what really happened at the ford have continued to be routinely ignored and dismissed by historians primarily because of the power of myth. The Cheyenne oral accounts (more thoroughly ignored in general compared to Sioux oral accounts) are vitally important for any true understanding of the confrontation. However, Cheyenne oral accounts (the most important ones about the ford fight) have been always superseded by the far more numerous Sioux oral accounts by the relatively few historians who had relied upon them, because Cheyenne accounts have presented the most contrarian views that have questioned the deeply entrenched romance about Custer’s Last Stand. Ironically, in the end, even a degree of cultural prejudice, both white and Indian, existed with regard to the routine dismissal of Cheyenne testimonies.
Obvious and inevitable errors (similar to those in the Sioux accounts) of some oral accounts due to interpreters and wide differences in language and culture have meant that Cheyenne testimonies have been too often routinely dismissed by white historians far more the Sioux oral accounts. Unfortunately, and most importantly, these revealing Cheyenne accounts have been overwhelmingly ignored primarily because they presented views that have overturned some of the most romanticized interpretations of the glorified Last Stand.
This widespread dismissal of these invaluable accounts by white historians was especially the case because of the mere suggestion in Cheyenne accounts that Custer might have been one of the first to fall at the ford, so far from where the romantic legend had him dying atop Custer Hill. Therefore, almost universally, the crucial confrontation at the ford (primarily a Cheyenne defensive effort) has been viewed by traditional historians as simply not only of no importance, but also hardly even worthy of mention: dismissed as just another case of untrustworthy and lying Indians. Such an unorthodox view—that the contest at the ford was more tactically important than the much-embellished fight on Custer’s Hill—has been long viewed as little more than heresy in traditional battle of Little Bighorn historiography, and especially by respected historians with a vested interest in orthodoxy.
Therefore, for the first time, this present work has incorporated the most accurate and corroborating testimony of Cheyenne and Sioux oral accounts to reveal the unvarnished story of the ford’s defense in full. These Indian accounts have been interwoven into the overall mosaic of this book’s narrative to bring to life the forgotten story of the contest at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford, and present the fullest and most complete narrative today of that all-important struggle. Clearly, this is the most effective means of filling in the gaps with regard to the greatest omission, and most glaringly forgotten chapter, in the annals of battle of Little Bighorn historiography.27
Unfortunately, however, the sheer power of the mythical aspects of Custer’s Last Stand has left relatively little opportunity for the ready acceptance for the breaking of any new ground in a largely sterile field devoid of fresh, new ideas, regardless of the amount of evidence. No single aspect of the story of the Little Bighorn has suffered more extensively from this systematic neglect than the crucial struggle at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford, especially with regard to its overall importance.
Due to the dense shroud of romanticism and myth-making about Custer’s Last Stand, the distortion of the facts about the battle of Little Bighorn has been far more pervasive than Custer’s surprise attack on the peaceful Washita village, since the ugly realities “would not square with the portrait of heroic sacrifice required….”28
Indeed, to the Cheyenne people, Custer’s attack on the sleeping Washita village left a deep scar that was destined to last for generations, fueling a powerful motivation among the mostly Cheyenne defenders to stand firm at the old buffalo ford against the odds.29 To this day, therefore, some Indian people of the Great Plains still are “not inclined to look with favor on anyone whose name and appearance bear any resemblance to ‘Custer.’” 30
Indicative of its power to motivate, this feeling still exists among some Lakota people to this day. After all, the devastating attack at the Washita only made the Indians realize the truth of the prophetic vision of the benevolent spirit of Sweet Medicine, who warned that a light-skinned people would one day invade this pristine land, and that they would be bent on the Cheyenne’s destruction.31
Contrary to some of the most popular works about this iconic engagement, the truth of the actual, but forgotten, turning point of the battle of the Little Bighorn at the old buffalo ford was voiced by Cheyenne and Sioux warriors, including Sitting Bull, who learned as much from warriors, himself. With regard to a forgotten, but golden, opportunity for the 7th Cavalry to still win the day,
they agree[d] further that if Custer had continued his charge and gone to and through the villages, the Indians would have fled, and he would have killed many of them [and] ‘If the soldiers [at the ford] had not stopped, they would have killed lots of Indians,’ said one of their most famous chiefs. Anyone familiar with Indian ways, mode of thought, and war customs knows very well that as a rule the Indian avoids coming to close quarters with his enemy. If the enemy charges, the Indian runs away, but as soon as the vigor of the charge lessens or the enemy stops, the Indian becomes discouraged, turns about, and himself charges. This was characteristic of the old intertribal wars, which consisted largely of charges backward and forward by the two opposing forces.32
After succeeding in deciphering and then understanding the nuances of Custer’s tactics, an insightful George Bird Grinnell, who knew the Cheyenne people like no other white historian, concluded that
a part of Custer’s command did come nearly down to the ford, and if [the troopers of only two companies] had kept on and crossed the river, they would no doubt have been followed by the rest of the command [the other three companies], and a great victory might have followed. … If Custer had kept moving [and] crossed the river at the ford at the mouth of the dry gulch [Medicine Tail Coulee then], I have no doubt that the Indians would have run.33
If so, then Custer would have won his long-envisioned victory with his bold flank attack. Custer actually came closer to achieving an impressive tactical success than has been generally recognized by white historians: he was within only a relatively short distance of his target when he was stopped at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford. If Reno and Benteen had only played their parts in supporting their regimental commander as he fully anticipated, then Custer very likely would have emerged victorious.
Private William O. Taylor understood what really happened at the ford, which was in general agreement with the Indian accounts (both Cheyenne and Sioux) and Curley. In overall tactical terms, Taylor correctly emphasized the possibility that Custer could have done anything other than unleash his main offensive effort at the ford, which was exactly in keeping with Custer’s aggressive style, the secret of all his past successes: “My [main] reason is the statements made by the two messengers that Custer dispatched from near the crests of the bluffs, and my inability to believe that he would, after seeing the village close at hand, move his command nearly a mile away [on the ridges above the ford] from the foe he had so eagerly sought.”34
After carefully studying the field not long after the fight, Lieutenant Winfield Scott Edgerly, Company D, 7th Cavalry, summarized the battle’s course in basic, but realistic, terms. He concluded that Custer “found a ford, and the general belief was that he attempted to cross and was attacked and driven back to where he was found dead [because] [d]ead bodies were found all the way from the ford to where Custer’s body was found.”35
Revealing the supreme importance of the ford fight, and from what they had seen in analyzing the field not long after the guns ceased to roar at the Little Bighorn, surviving 7th Cavalry officers, including Benteen, “believed that the Custer fight had been nothing more than a panicked rout from Medicine Tail Coulee [because of the decisive repulse] to Custer Hill [because] [t]hat was the only explanation they could come up with for the disorganized appearance of the five companies….”36
Benteen was more accurate with regard to explaining why this tactical situation that led directly to the destruction of five companies developed. In a letter to his beloved wife, “My Trabbie Darling,” on July 25, 1876, Benteen wrote with tactical astuteness, based upon his many years of combat experience in the Civil War and the Indian Wars, to reveal the battle’s turning point: “Just one month ago—today—at just about this time of day, Genl. Custer and his command [of five companies] commenced the attack on the indian village [and were] probably thrown into a panic at the 1st check received” at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford.37
After closely surveying the field, Major Benteen described with insight what he saw in surveying the battlefield: Custer’s trail “shows that he moved rapidly down the river for three miles to the ford, at which he attempted to cross into their village, and with the conviction that he would strike a retreating enemy. … The [fleeing] Indians made him overconfident by appearing to be stampeded, and, undoubtedly, when he arrived at the ford, expecting to go with ease through their village, he rode into an ambuscade” of waiting warriors.38
Of course, not Benteen nor anyone else could have imagined how few warriors had defended the ford. Reno and Benteen, both veteran officers with Civil War experience, were correct in their early tactical analysis that emphasized the vital importance of the showdown at the ford: Custer’s final offensive effort of his career at Medicine Tail Coulee was in truth the battle’s decisive turning point.39 More importantly, Benteen’s and Reno’s on-target tactical analysis was confirmed by Indian accounts, both friendly and hostile. Once Custer was repulsed at the ford, the battle for all practical purposes was over, except for the grim process of killing every trooper of five companies. Tall Bull, a Cheyenne, described how the stage was set for systematic annihilation, after the repulse at the ford: “Soldiers fell back from [the] river, some mounted and some on foot and not in very good order.”40 Curley, the young Crow scout, indicated as much to reveal that friendly Indian and hostile Indian accounts were in general agreement with regard to the importance of the struggle at the ford.41
Like Benteen, Reno came very close to correctly analyzing what exactly happened at the ford: “The Indians made [Custer] overconfident by appearing to be stampeded, and, undoubtedly, when he arrived at the ford, expecting to go with ease through their village, he rode into an ambuscade” at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford that sealed his fate.42 Even more from what he deduced from looking over and studying the field immediately after the battle, Reno wrote that “his trail shows that [Custer] moved rapidly down the river for three miles to the ford, at which he attempted to cross into the village, and with the conviction that he would strike a retreating enemy.”43 The tenacious defense at the ford was the antithesis of this fatal assumption on Custer’s part, setting the tragic stage for Custer’s Last Stand.
Major Reno’s best description of what happened at the ford was revealed in his official report, July 5, 1876, to Terry’s adjutant general, years before the official court of inquiry when such views were amended. In his tactical analysis, which clearly shows he was more of a thinker than fighter (like his June 25 performance), Reno summarized the fight at the ford with keen tactical insight that revealed an extended battle:
After following over his trail it was evident to me that Custer intended to support me by moving farther down the stream and attacking the village in flank; that he found the distance greater to the ford than he anticipated; that he did charge, but his march had taken so long, although his trail shows he moved rapidly, that they were ready for him; that Companies C and I, and perhaps part of Company E, crossed to the village, or attempted it at the charge, and were met by a staggering fire, and that they fell back to secure a position from which to defend themselves….44
Clearly, Reno explained the turning point of the battle of the Little Bighorn.
To maintain the honor of the officer corps and the 7th Cavalry’s overall image at the Reno Court of Inquiry, and to save themselves, a self-serving Reno and Benteen conveniently reversed course after the battle to de-emphasize the importance of the ford fight. After all, an emphasis of the ford struggle would have given validity to Custer’s battle plan of delivering a flank attack (the correct winning tactical formula) in conjunction with the expected offensive efforts of his two lieutenants from the opposite direction, if they had obeyed their commander’s wishes and orders with regard to reinforcing him. Consequently, the showdown at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford had to be minimized to obscure Custer’s plan of the flank attack calculated to reverse the day’s fortunes: the most necessary requirement to shift all blame off the survivors, especially Reno and Benteen, for not assisting Custer’s flank attack, and so that it would all then fall upon one person, Custer. They failed Custer—with regard to Reno’s abortive attack at the village’s opposite end, and Benteen’s expected reinforcements never coming to exploit Custer’s success if he had crossed the river in force—and therefore had to deny any knowledge that Custer possessed a winning tactical plan to launch a flank attack. After all, to admit that Custer possessed a very good tactical plan, which might well have worked, would have implicated Reno and Benteen for their lack of assistance. Most of all, they provided the collaborating excuses for failing to come to Custer’s aid and leaving him on his own, and to his doom. Ironically, the truth spoken by Benteen and Reno immediately after the battle was not heard from them at the 1879 Court of Inquiry.45
The truth of what actually happened at the ford was found in the words of 7th Cavalry privates, as opposed to the official testimony of the self-serving officers, who together at the 1879 Court of Inquiry conveniently transformed Custer into the perfect scapegoat. Private William O. Taylor explained:
Custer, after seeing what he did from his position on the bluffs, must have realize at once that there was but one course of pursue, and that was to get into the fight at some effective point and as soon as possible. … A short distance to his right was a dry creek which ran into the river opposite the Indian camps, and [this was] a fording place [so] he followed the dry creek down trying to find a crossing place and when near the river was met with such an overwhelming fire that he had to fall back to the ridge which seemed to offer the best chance for a successful defence.46
The New York-born Taylor was correct. With regard to the strength of resistance at the ford, Taylor’s words corresponded with those of Horned Horse (and others) that in attempting to charge across the ford, Custer was repulsed because he “met by such a tremendous fire from the repeating rifles. …”47
In agreement with Indian testimony, Custer expert Sandy Barnard likewise correctly emphasized: “Some students of the battle concluded Custer was killed during the cavalry approach to the river crossing at Medicine Tail Coulee; if he remained alive, the disaster never would have occurred.”48 Indeed, this seldom stated view of white historians about the true cause of the disaster at the Little Bighorn was right on target, agreeing with Indian accounts. No other logical or rational tactical possibility can more adequately explain the relatively quick and systematic collapse of resistance among the five 7th Cavalry companies than the fact that Custer was hit (but most likely wounded and carried to the top of Custer Hill) in leading the attack across the ford. After all, Custer had been long viewed as invincible to the troopers, a talisman of sorts, especially in a crisis situation. As penned in a 1902 poem by John Hay, the most crucial “scorpion sting” that doomed five entire companies was when Custer was hit by gunfire and then repulsed at the ford: the fatal one-two punch that delivered the true knockout blow to nearly half of the 7th Cavalry during its last offensive effort. After analyzing the battlefield and in agreement with Indian accounts, one anonymous 6th Infantry sergeant correctly concluded that Custer “gave the order to charge [the ford], which was gallantly done, but no resistance was met… until they arrived at the other side of the village location, when they received a terrific volley which put an end to many a noble fellow’s existence….”49
By then crossing the ford and charging into the Cheyenne village, Custer would have snatched victory from the jaws of defeat to win the greatest and most improbable victory of his career, especially if adequately supported as ordered. For Custer and his troopers, the flank attack on the ford presented the day’s greatest tactical opportunity, although that fact has been generally unrecognized by dismissive historians, who had overlooked the Cheyenne testimony.
To this day, no memorial markers dedicated to any fallen 7th Cavalry trooper can be found around the Medicine Tail Coulee Ford, despite the fact that troopers were known to have fallen and the remains of soldier graves had been discovered in this area: the result partly from partisan politics and the power of Custer Hill romanticism. A diverse range of factors (from the whitewashing of the actual events at the Court of Inquiry that obscured Custer’s flank attack at the ford for political and personal reasons, to the disproportionate focus on Custer Hill) has led to the misconception that nothing of importance occurred at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford, not even the losses among Custer’s ford attackers. All in all, this was part of a political whitewashing: Custer was an outspoken Democrat highly critical of the Republican Administration (one of the most corrupt in American history) and appeasing 7th Cavalry officers wanted to garner the president’s favor, particularly for future promotion.
Ironically, in the end, the mass outpouring of books, popular films, and paintings (which have never focused on what happened at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford) devoted to the enduring romance of Custer’s Last Stand would have been actually closer to the truth had they depicted “Custer’s Last Charge” on the strategic ford at the mouth of Medicine Tail Coulee in his final bid to win it all. To this day, no dramatic paintings of the struggle at the ford have depicted this hard-fought contest, despite its decisiveness, playing a role in its general obscurity. Almost everything about the battle of the Little Bighorn has continued to be centered on the traditional story and fanciful imaginary of the Last Stand Hill.
Indeed, long unrecognized and forgotten in terms of its overall importance, the repulse of Custer’s last attack at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford doomed all five companies to set the stage for last stand on the high ground. In this sense, generations of historians and the historiography of battle studies have been focused entirely in the wrong direction and at the wrong place: nearly three-quarters of a mile farther north on the less tactically significant killing ground on Custer Hill, after Custer’s fate had been already sealed at the ford.
As he would have almost certainly preferred in his last hour of life on this Earth, and symbolically in keeping with the popular former “boy general” image of the Civil War years, a mounted Custer had once again charged at the head of his troopers as during his glory days at Gettysburg and the Appomattox Campaign.
Like no other single event on June 25, the failure of Custer’s attack at the ford set the stage for the tragic finale on Last Stand Hill, paving the way to the unprecedented disaster. Instead of the insignificant tactical feint long incorrectly assumed by historians, Custer’s desperate attack at the ford was in fact the battle’s forgotten decisive turning point and the key to its final outcome. More than the traditional culprits of Benteen and Reno in explaining Custer’s destruction and that of his command, the true reason why Custer was defeated stemmed primarily from one single source: the repulse of his last attack by a relative handful of Cheyenne and Sioux warriors at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford. Unlike any previous work to date, this book has finally explored in depth the forgotten story of the repulse of Custer’s final, but most forgotten, attack on his illustrious career. In a final paradox, Custer’s Luck was finally broken forever on the unluckiest day of his life, because of the combat prowess of the band of Cheyenne and Sioux defenders of the Medicine Tail Coulee Ford accomplished what even Lee’s best officers and fighting men had failed to achieve year after year. Ironically, Custer had been repulsed in his last attack because, in his own words, “love of country is almost a religion with them,” especially those warriors who defended the ford.50
Custer’s Last and Most Forgotten Victory
What has been most forgotten about Custer’s Last Stand was the victory that Custer actually achieved in the midst of the most miserable of all defeats. With his flank attack at the ford, Custer unleashed a desperate bid to gain the initiative—and the success that Reno and Benteen had so quickly forfeited: a bold decision that saved the majority of his regiment by drawing off the greatest mass of warriors away from Reno, while leading to a most noble sacrifice of his five companies that was not in vain in the end.
Without Custer’s audacious flank attack, the distinct possibility existed that the 7th Cavalry might have been entirely wiped out. Private Taylor understood as much after carefully studying the terrain and overall situation:
I am disposed to account for [Custer] on the ridge by my belief, that after being checked in his attempt to cross the river, and seeing the strength at his front, he believed that by drawing his foes away from the river and village he would render Reno’s purpose more successful. And at the same time give Benteen, whom he was expecting every moment, a chance to strike the Indians on their flank or cut in between them and their village.51
Quite simply and paradoxically, Custer’s last charge rescued the remainder of the 7th Cavalry, who survived to fight another day: a most ironic development, considering that Benteen and Reno failed to come to Custer’s assistance during his supreme hour of need. Reno was saved, and almost certainly Benteen as well, because Custer’s attack at the ford drew thousands of warriors in the opposite direction in a timely manner to relieve the pressure that might have well destroyed the two remaining battalions.52
In the end, perhaps one of Custer’s Michigan men from the Civil War years said it best with regard to the iconic battle’s forgotten truths, writing with disgust that the “Administration was led, through a pack of worthless, jealous officers [especially Reno and Benteen in the Reno Court of Inquiry cover-up], to heap insult after insult upon the brave Custer, and I now say, his blood is upon their heads. They murdered him, with Indian Bullets.”53
Captain Benteen’s failure to assist his commander in his greatest hour of need was partly seen in his words that revealed a sadistic delight upon first viewing Custer’s dead body on the nightmarish hilltop of death: “There he is, God damn him! He’ll never fight any more.”54 However, others would never fight again for entirely different reasons. In a July 6, 1876, letter to his daughters, interpreter Frederic Francis Girard was more thankful than the smug Benteen or Reno: “I escaped through the grace of God [and] I shall never go out again with an expedition.”55
Another architect of the unprecedented disaster, the smug lawyer General Terry, lamented how the “flower of the American Army is dead,” but he failed to fully understand that this was primarily the result of Custer’s “1st check”—the repulse at the obscure buffalo ford along the Little Bighorn.56 Indeed, the decisive turning point of one of America’s most famous and iconic battles came when Custer’s last charge failed at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford, sealing the fate of himself and his command, after having achieved his great goal of having surprised his normally vigilant opponent not once but twice (an unprecedented tactical feat in the annals of Indian warfare) in broad daylight: perhaps the greatest paradox of the battle of Little Bighorn.
In the end, there was nothing fatalistic or foolish about Custer’s bold leadership and battle plan that was tactically innovative and hard-hitting: the most admirable qualities that were required for any chance of winning victory. Catching his opponent with a surprise flank attack, he had brought his five companies of the verge of winning the most dramatic of victories. In the end, Custer was tactically correct, because his tactical plan of delivering a flank attack worked to perfection, until he was hit (wounded) in leading the charge and was unexpectedly stopped at the ford. Ironically, Custer would have won his victory had the smallest and weakest village (northernmost) along the Little Bighorn had been struck first instead of the strongest at the encampment’s southern end by Reno: the necessary tactical formula for his pincer movement to have succeeded. No one more than the Sioux and Cheyenne realized this undeniable tactical reality. Of course, Custer had no idea that Reno’s attack was directed at the strongest part of the village, while his own attack was aimed at the weakest part: the inverse of what was needed for success.
After talking to his warriors who destroyed Custer and his five companies in systematic fashion, Sitting Bull certainly knew the most hidden truths about the battle. When an early white interviewer, who had placed a map of the battlefield before him, asked Sitting Bull: “Was there any heavy fighting after [Reno’s] retreat of the soldiers to the bluffs?,” he did not hesitate. Knowing exactly where the battle had been decided better than any white historian, Sitting Bull immediately responded, “Not then; not there.” This careful interviewer from a major eastern newspaper then asked, “Where, then.” Pointing on the map to reveal the undeniable truth about what actually happened on the afternoon of June 25, Sitting Bull then said: “‘Why, down there;’ and Sitting Bull indicated with his finger the piece [place] where Custer approached and touched the river. ‘That,’ said he, ‘was where the big fight was fought….”57
Most significantly, what Sitting Bull meant by “big fight” was in fact the scene far below Custer Hill,: the dramatic showdown at Medicine Tail Coulee Ford, where America’s most iconic battle was decided. Custer first fell not atop Custer Hill, but in fact where few believed possible or even imaginable, at an obscure buffalo ford in the middle of nowhere.
Even more than Custer’s tactical mistakes, it was the folly of the nation’s leaders at the White House and the highest-ranking military men at army headquarters that paved the way for the Little Bighorn defeat that shocked the American nation to the core. However, most of all, it was only a relatively few Cheyenne and Sioux warriors who were most responsible for stopping Custer’s last charge: the true, but forgotten, apotheosis, and the most important and decisive last stand on June 25, 1876.