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- [00:02]
Josh (Podcast Host)
I'm not giving up. I am selling the building.
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The final season of FX is the Bear.
- [00:10]
Josh (Podcast Host)
The restaurant is flooded. Everything's either gonna be okay.
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No. Stop.
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Josh (Podcast Host)
Or not. We are outgunned and we are outmanned.
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But we have each other.
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FX's the bear. The final season. All episodes now streaming on Disney.
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Josh (Podcast Host)
How did George Armstrong Custer really die? Did he go down fighting? Was he shot in the back, trying to run away? Or did he turn the gun on himself? Did the man who killed him even know who he was? And is it true that he turned down a pair of Gatling guns just days prior? That's what we'll be discussing today. Not only Custer's death, but the chain of events leading to the Battle of Little Bighorn. And yes, we'll also take a look at whether or not it was really the heroic last stand that the legend makes it out to be. My name's Josh, and this is the Wild West Extravaganza. The Lakota came west out of Minnesota in the late 1600s. They acquired horses sometime around the year 1740, and by 1776, they had already laid claim to the sacred Black Hills. Meanwhile, a thousand miles to the east, a handful of colonists were signing their names to the Declaration of Independence. Two great nations destined for conflict. Conflict whose most famous battle would take place on a little hill in what's now southeast Montana. But what a lot of people don't realize is that the relations were actually pretty good between the Americans and the Lakotas all the way up till around the 1850s. Sure, they got off to a rocky start with Lewis and Clark, but luckily, cooler heads prevailed, and instead of trading bullets, they began trading goods. At one point, the Lakota even teamed up with the US army to wage war against the Ricara. And in turn, about 15 years later, the United States vaccinated the Lakota against smallpox. By the way, just real quick, if you're only interested in hearing about Custer's last stand or his final moments, I do have timestamps down below. Also. I know it may seem as if I'm glossing over a few details, but all I'm doing right now is just offering up a bit of backstory to put everything in perspective. A little history foreplay, if you will. But like I said, there's timestamps down below, so feel free to skip around at your leisure. Now, it wasn't until gold was discovered in California and wagons began flooding through Lakota territory that the tensions finally began to mount. But even then, for the most part, things did remain peaceful. The Lakota even allowed safe passage for the wagon trains via the Fort laramie Treaty of 1851. Only problem is, neither side fully lived up their end of the bargain and those wagons just kept rod on a rolling. In fact, it was a passing wagon train that led to the first major clash between the Lakota and the U.S. army. You see, in August 1854, there was around 4,000 Lakota camped over at Fort Laramie waiting on their annuities. That's when a lame cow from a passing wagon train got loose, wandered into one of the villages and was promptly shot and butchered. At which point the cow's owner ran over to the fort, started complaining to the army. Now, for what it's worth, one of the big chiefs, guy known as Conquering Bear, he did offer up a horse from his own personal herd as restitution, but the army wasn't having it. Instead, they demanded that he turn over the offending warrior. But Conquering Bear refused. Finally, a couple of days later, a 24 year old second lieutenant by the name of John Grattan led a little over two dozen soldiers to the village in order to arrest the Cowslayer. Just 31 men facing off against upwards of 1500 warriors, which in hindsight may not have been the smartest of ideas, especially considering that the interpreter was both drunk and hostile. Conquering Bear held firm. Words, words were exchanged, and finally a shot broke out from one of the soldiers. To this day, we still don't know whether or not it was an accident or just a case of bad nerves. But either way, within the span of just a few minutes, Grattan and every last one of his soldiers were dead. And as a result, just a little over a year later, the army attacked a Lakota village not far from present day Llewellyn, Nebraska, killing dozens, taking around 70 captives. And then of course, you had the Dakota War of 1862 not long thereafter, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of settlers and the largest mass hanging in U.S. history. And on and on it went. By the time we get to the mid-1860s, pretty much the entirety of the Great Plains was just one big powder keg waiting to explode. And the spark that finally set the whole thing off was the Sand Creek Massacre. That's when that dog Chivington attacked a peaceful village of Cheyenne under Chief Black Kettle, slaughtering well over a hundred, most of whom were women and children. Per historian James Donovan. Quote, white settlers in the area applauded and made Chivington a hero. Meanwhile, the Indian survivors made their way to other Cheyenne camps. And word of the massacre spread quickly across the plains. Over the next few months, enraged Cheyenne, Sioux, and Arapaho warriors raided towns, stage stations, ranches, and wagon trains, burning loot and killing wherever they could. End of quote. And by the way, in the midst of all this chaos, there was yet another gold rush, this time to Montana. And then, just to make getting there a little bit easier, a guy by the name of John Bozeman plays the shortcut through the Powder river country, prime hunting ground that the Lakota had recently taken from their enemies, the Crow. And they certainly weren't in the mood to give it back. The army tried to reign them in via the Powder river expedition, but really didn't amount to much. All the soldiers were able to do was just burn a single Arapaho village before they got sent packing. At which point, the US Government called yet another council over at Fort Laramie, one attended by several of the bigwigs among the Lakota, including a rising war chief known as Red Cloud. And for a minute there, it actually looked like they might be able to come to an agreement. Only problem is, right in the middle of the negotiations, a Colonel Henry Carrington came marching in with around 700 soldiers. Didn't take Red Cloud long to figure out that the troopers hadn't come to ask for permission. They were going to guard the road and build those forts, whether the Lakota agreed or not. And what followed is a little something known as Red Cloud's War, a resounding defeat for the US Army. For the better part of the next two years, Red Cloud and his allies ran circles around the military. They picked off woodcutting details. They ambushed supply trains, basically kept the soldiers so on edge that they were scared to even step outside the walls of their own forts. Low Point came in December of 1866 when a young warrior named Crazy Horse played decoy and Lord Captain Fetterman and 80 of his men over a ridge and storm straight into a trap. Within half an hour, every last one of them were dead. By 1868, the army had finally had enough, and they came back to Fort Laramie, signed a new treaty, and abandoned the Bozeman Trail, along with the force that Carrington had managed to raise. They also gave the Lakota an enormous reservation, the heart of which was the sacred Black Hills, all guaranteed to him for as long as the grass should grow and the river should run, or at least until somebody found gold. Which, as fate would have it, was exactly what happened during the summer of 1874. Now, full disclosure. There had been Rumors of gold in the Black hills prior to 1874. But up until then, that's all they were, just rumors. So finally, the army sent in a lieutenant colonel by the name of George Armstrong Custer. Figure out what was what. Now, just in case you're not familiar, Custer was born in Ohio in 1839 and went on to attain a good deal of fame during the Civil War. And when I say fame, du was promoted to brigadier general at just 23 years of age. He saw action at places like Bull Run and Gettysburg. He served as an aide de camp to General George McClellan and rode with Sheridan through the Shenandoah Valley. And when Lee finally broke and ran in the spring of 1865, it was Custer's division that cut off his retreat after the war. He'd go on to serve in Texas during Reconstruction. But it wasn't until the summer of 1866 that he was finally put in charge of the newly created 7th Cavalry. In fact, it was this lieutenant colonel of the 7th that Custer got his real first taste of action against the indigenous. Spent the better part of 1867 chasing them all over the Kansas prairie. But it wasn't until November of the following year that he got his first big battle. That's when he and his men attacked the Cheyenne village on the Ouachita river not far from present day Cheyenne, Oklahoma. This village belonged to Black Kettle, by the way, the same Black Kettle who survived the Sand Creek massacre just four years earlier. And this time, he would not make it out alive. Both he and his wife, along with a whole lot of others, were gunned down trying to escape across the river. Now, Custer would call this a great victory, and technically, yeah, sure, I guess. I mean, the army certainly got what it came for. But let's be honest about what actually went down. Custer hit a sleeping village at first light in the dead of winter, and the majority of the people that he and his men killed were women and children. It's also worth noting that at one point during the battle, Custer used dozens of non combatants, those women and children, as human shields, mostly in hopes that the warriors wouldn't charge a column with their own wives and kids in it. And it worked. Now, in all fairness, this wasn't quite at the same scale as Sand Creek, and some of Black Kettle's people had definitely been outraiding the settlements earlier that summer. But I do think it's telling that even the government's own Indian affairs office referred to it as a massacre of innocent Indians. Either way, the papers declared it a victory, and it did force a big chunk of the Southern Cheyenne to the reservation. So like I said, from the army standpoint, it was definitely a win. Skip ahead. A few years later, in August 1873, and that's when Custer had his first battle with the Lakota. Happened not too far from present day Miles City, Montana. And when I say battle, it was really more of a skirmish. Both sides just sort of filling each other out. And of course, the following summer is when he led that expedition I mentioned earlier into the Black Hills. Officially, he was there looking to scout out of sight for a new fort, but unofficially? Well, he did bring along a pair of prospectors, and they did locate gold. Not a lot of it, mind you. We're talking just a few tiny little flecks at the bottom of a pan. But that's all it took. Custer fired off a report, and the press went wild, resulting in yet another gold rush straight through Lakota territory. Over the course of the next year, something like 15,000 prospectors came pouring into the Black Hills. Every last one of them trespassed on land that the United States had sworn worn in writing belonged to the Lakota. The army made a half hearted show of trying to stop them, but it was about as useless as trying to hold back the tide. And that's when the government tried to purchase the hills outright. Offered a whopping $6 million, but the Lakota refused. At which point, the US government stopped asking and started maneuvering. Now, this part's a little confusing, so bear with me for a moment. But on December 6, 1875, the Bureau of Indian affairs issued an ultimatum. All of the Lakota and Cheyenne and Arapaho who were living off the reservation were ordered to report to an agency by January 31, 1876. And those who failed to comply would be treated as hostiles. Now, I know what you're thinking. If the government wanted the Black Hills and the Black Hills were located smack dab in the Lakota reservation, then what was the point of ordering all those bands to report to an agency? I mean, even if they did what they were told, the government still wouldn't have the Black Hills. So what exactly was the point? Well, that's just it. The entire debacle was nothing more than a pretext for war, plain and simple. I mean, just look at the timing. The ultimatum went out in the dead of winter to scattered villages that couldn't have complied even if they wanted to. And when the deadline passed with almost no response, that's when the army went on the offensive. In other words, they Manufactured a war in hopes of taking by force what they couldn't get by legitimate means. And that's pretty much what happened. The army eventually broke the holdouts, and Congress passed what became known as the Sell or starve bill, telling the Lakota that they'd get no more food rations until they handed over the Black Hills. And since they couldn't leave the reservation done for Bison, government ultimately got what they wanted. But that's all in the future. First they'd have to take care of those so called holdouts. Which of course, brings us to the summer of 1876. As I mentioned a moment ago, very few of those outlying bands actually returned to the reservations. And that's when General Sheridan ordered his commanders to start moving against him. Now, the initial plan called for three separate columns to march to what's now southeastern Montana from three different directions, all converging at roughly the same time and squeezing the hostiles between them. From the east, out of Fort Abraham Lincoln came the Dakota column under General Alfred Terry, the heart of which was George Armstrong custer and his 12 companies of the 7th Cav. From the west, out of Fort Ellis came Colonel John Gibbon in the Montana column. And from the south, up out of Fort Fetterman, you had the largest force under General George Crook. Three little armies hundreds of miles apart, all closing in on the same patch of dirt. I'm sure on paper it was a fine plan, but in practice, it had two major flaws, the first of which is that the various commanders really didn't have any effective way of communicating with one another. So basically, all three columns were just trusting that the other two were where they were supposed to be. Sure, they had couriers, but that only works if you know where to send them. The second, and in my opinion, the much more serious flaw, was the assumption that they were just chasing a few scattered bands of renegades, maybe a few hundred warriors at most, who just turn around at the first sign of approaching soldiers. Well, as it turns out, that definitely was not the case. You see, earlier that summer, as word of the campaign began to spread, all of the Lakota and Cheyenne who had been quietly camped at the agencies, they slipped away to join up with the off reservation bands, gathering under leaders like Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. More and more soon arrived, and wasn't long before the massive gathering turned into one of the largest concentrations of natives ever assembled on the Great Plains. Estimates vary, but their numbers thought to have been somewhere between 10 to 15,000, two to 4,000 of which were fighting men. Now, the first major engagement would occur on June 17 when crook and his Wyoming column ran head first into Crazy horse and a large contingent of Lakota and Cheyenne over at Rosebud Creek, about 30 or so miles east of present day Lodge Grass, Montana. Fight ended up raging for most of the day, and although Crook still held the field of battle by the time it was over, it is considered by many to have been a win for the indigenous. Not only did they fight the soldiers to a standstill and pull back on their own terms, but they also caused Crook to burn through a good deal of his ammunition, not to mention taking far more casualties than expected. So rather than continuing on, he instead led his men back to the supply camp to await reinforcements. So just like that, you got the largest of the three columns completely out of commission. Not exactly off to a great start. Meanwhile, a few days later and some 75 miles to the north, Terry, Custer and Gibbon were holding a council of their own aboard a steamer near present day Rosebud, Montana. Keep in mind, they still had no idea about Crook being forced to turn back. They also didn't know exactly where the hostiles were located, Other than probably somewhere in the vicinity of the little Bighorn river. Hell, even that was just a hunch. All they really had to go on was a big trail that major Reno had cut during a recent scout. So that being the case, just a few days later on the 22nd, that's when Custer and the seventh rode out in pursuit about 650 men, all total. The plan was for his scouts to pick the trail back up and follow it, While at the same time, Terry and Gibbon would steam up the Yellowstone and then march south toward the mouth of the Little Bighorn, Mostly in hopes of blocking the hostiles from escaping to the north. And, yeah, for the next three days, Custer and his men just sort of ground their way up the rosebud, Passing one abandoned campsite after another, each bigger than the last. And sure enough, it wasn't long before the trail veered west. And just an FYI, this was a very large trail. In fact, one of the Cheyenne that would soon face off against Custer Described it as being so wide that a blind man could have followed it. Which does make sense, considering they were trailing thousands of horses and pulling hundreds of lodges on Travoy's. And the further Custer and his men went, the wider the trail got, Due to all the smaller bands still hurrying to link up with that larger village. So instead of continuing along the Rosebud, Custer also turned west and pushed his men most of the night towards the high ground separating the two valleys. Wasn't until around 2:00 the next morning, still short of the crest, that he finally halted the exhausted column to wait for first light. 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- [16:18]
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- [16:46]
Josh (Podcast Host)
Now the initial idea was for the men just to kind of remain hidden throughout the day, get a little bit of rest, and then attack the village at first light on the 26th, all in step with Terry and Gibbon, who hopefully by that point would be moving into position to the north. The only problem is, the plan started unraveling just as soon as the sun came up. That's when Custer's scouts spotted what appeared to be a ginormous herd of horses some 15 miles in the distance, along with enough smoke and dust to indicate a very large village, much larger than they were anticipating. The real troubling news, however, was that Custer and the soldiers had already been spotted. According to historian Mark Lee Gardner, Sitting Bull and his followers were now within Custer's grasp, and he could feel it. However, the men and animals needed rest. Custer had taken his regiment 84 miles in under 72 hours. Best to bivouac for the remainder of the day and set out early in the morning for a dawn attack on the village. But the scouts gave Custer some disturbing information. They believed the Lakotas had discovered the presence of the regiment. This seemed to be confirmed when Custer subsequently learned that the troopers he sent back on the trail that morning to retrieve a fallen load of hardtack had surprised a group of Indians rummaging through the pack. The troopers fired upon the Indians, but they fled unscathed. This, of course, changed everything. To delay the attack risked the Indians scattering to the wind. So, in other words, Custer basically had two choices, right? He could pull back, let his men and the horses rest a little bit while simultaneously allowing Gibbon and Terry to get in position and then just hope that the renegades weren't gone by the time they attacked on the morning of the 26th. Or choice number two, throw caution to the wind and attack while the getting was still good despite the worn out mounts and no backup. Seems like a pretty obvious choice, right? I know for me at least sitting here in the comfy confines of my nice air conditioned office seems like a no brainer. But the thing you gotta remember is that 9 times out of 10 these type of campaigns ended in the exact same frustrating way. The natives caught wind of the soldiers and they were long gone before anybody could so much as land a punch. Catching them was the entire problem, whereas beating them was almost an afterthought. So the second Custer realized that his column had been spotted, pretty much every fiber of his being was telling him to attack. Keep in mind this is the same guy just a few days prior who turned down a battery of Gatling guns because he thought they'd slow him down. He also rejected an offer of two additional companies, being because he was that confident in his trooper's abilities, the idea that he and his beloved 7th Cav could be defeated by a bunch of so called savages never even entered the equation. Of course it also didn't help none that Custer himself had just come off a pretty miserable spring, up to and including getting yanked off the expedition by none other than the President of the United States. He had to practically grovel just to be allowed back in the saddle. So he damn sure wasn't going to blow his one shot at redemption by playing cautious. So he chose to attack. Moved his men a couple of miles down what was left of Davis Creek and crossed the divide over to the Valley of the Little Bighorn, finally stopped at the head of what's now known as Reno's Creek to divide his command. Yes, despite being greatly outnumbered, Custer divided his command. He'd end up keeping five companies for himself, little over 200 men led by officers that he trusted like Miles Keough and his little brother Tom. Another 120 from companies DH&K went to captain Frederick Benteen and then to major Reno Marcus. He gave around 140 from companies AG&M along with the majority of the indigenous scouts. The last Company company B under captain Thomas McDougall was then tasked with guarding the supplies and ammo with the pack train. So not only was Custer throwing caution to the wind, but he also had roughly a fifth of his entire command just plodding along in the rear with the pack train. Then if that ain't bad enough, he went ahead and sent Benteen off with vague orders to scout the bluffs just due south of the village. Now, speaking of that, there is some debate as to whether or not this was done out of malice. One thing that I haven't quite mentioned yet is just how much these guys hated one another. This wasn't just some tight knit outfit riding into battle shoulder and shoulder, at least not the officers. In fact, a lot of them could barely even stand to be in the same room together. Take Benteen, for example. The man flat out despised Custer, and he had for quite some time, ever since the Ouachita, when a Major Joe Elliott and a handful of his men got cut off and killed and Custer rode away without ever really looking for him. I guess Benteen never forgave him for it and even went so far as to write a scorching letter that ended up in a newspaper. And when Custer found out, he reportedly threatened to horsewhip whoever wrote it. At which point Benteen just strolled on up and dared him to go ahead and try. That's the kind of bad blood I'm talking about. And it had been built in for years. At this point, as far as Benteen was concerned, Custer was nothing more than a preening, reckless glory hound, and he wasn't shy about saying so to anyone who'd listen. Reno was a bit of a different story. As far as I'm aware, there was no big dramatic falling out or anything like that. He just simply wasn't part of the club. For whatever reason, Custer didn't think much of him, and I guess Reno returned the sentiment. Now, as to whether or not Custer truly ordered Benteen to scout the bluff because he didn't want to share the glory of victory, that just sort of depends on who you ask. A very likely alternate scenario is that Custer wanted to check for additional villages upriver, which does make sense. I can't tell you how many times I've read accounts of the army attacking such and such village, thinking that it's the only village, only to quickly discover there was another camp or two or three further downstream. That's what happened to Kit Carson during the first Battle of Adobe Walls. And it's also what Custer experienced over on the Ouachita. We'll talk more about the dynamic between these various officers next week. But for now, the moment I know you've all been waiting on, let's go ahead and discuss the battle itself. You see, after Benteen angled off to the south with his three companies, that's when Custer and Reno headed up Reno Creek. Then, about 10 or so miles later, the scouts spied about 50 warriors a couple of miles off, riding hard to the west straight towards the big village. Almost certainly the same bunch who had caught sight of the soldiers earlier that morning. This is also when the interpreter Fred Gerard, yelled out his famous line about the Indians running like devils. I guess Custer figured it was now or never and he went ahead and gave the order to attack. For historian James Donovan. When Reno reached the head of the column a few minutes later, Cook relayed Custer's orders. The Indians are about two and a half miles ahead. They are on the jump. Go forward as fast as you think proper and charge them wherever you find them to battle, and I will support you. Then, just moments later, as Reno passed Custer, the general personally reinforced the order, telling him to once again, quote, try and overtake them and bring them to battle, and I will support you. By the way, if you hear me refer to Custer as a general, his actual rank was lieutenant colonel. The general thing was just a military courtesy. Going back to his days as a breveted general during the Civil War. His men called him General, but like I said, it was just a courtesy. Didn't come with any extra money or authority or anything like that. I know I'm going to get a ton of emails if I failed to mention that, but yes, technically speaking, Custer was just a lieutenant colonel. Now, as for Reno, about a half hour later is when he and his three companies crossed the Little Bighorn and began charging the valley chief, just like Custer had ordered. Roughly 175 men, Scouts included, attacking a village containing, at bare minimum, over a thousand warriors. And believe it or not, things initially looked pretty good. Hell, he really wasn't even getting all that much resistance. Mostly it was just warriors riding back and forth in front of he and his men, kicking up a screen of dust to cover for their families. But what they weren't doing was running. The closer Reno got, the more of them there were, until finally the whole bottom of the valley seemed to be filled with mounted warriors. So rather than continue the charge, Reno instead halted his men and gave the order to dismount. Not a great idea, per historian Mark Lee Gardner. Quote, a few hundred yards short of the first camp circle, the major abruptly stopped his advance and ordered the men to dismount. Form a skirmish line. Reno said later he was fully expecting the Indians to stampede before his men, but instead they came back at me like a nest of hornets. In no more than 15 minutes, so many warriors threatened to overwhelm Reno's men that he withdrew his battalion to the timber near the River. Moments later, a thoroughly rattled Reno ordered a retreat, although only some of his men heard it, end of quote. So, yeah, things are definitely not going as planned. You gotta think if he had kept that charge rolling straight through the camp, there's a good possibility that the village could have panicked. Or at very least that's the argument that his critics have been making for almost 150 years. Now, he had the element of surprise and he had the momentum, but for whatever reason, he decided to throw on the brakes. Now, part of that may have been due to him getting a glimpse of the village and realizing that it was just too damn big. Of course, it didn't help none that Reno had also been sipping at whiskey most of the morning. I don't know the level of intoxication, but several of his men would later report having seen him pulling at the flask. And when he halted and formed that skirmish line, all it did was give the hostiles time to organize and mount a counterattack. Mostly, though, I think he was just in over his head. Double check me on this. But if I'm not mistaken, this was Reno's very first engagement with the native Americans. Now, don't get it twisted. He certainly wasn't a rookie. He saw plenty of action during the civil war, but I don't know, man, I guess the sight of so many hostiles had him rattled and he panicked. And then when he and his men started running, it just sort of devolved into a full blown slaughter. To once again quote Mark Lee Gardner in his book, the earth is all that lasts. As the panic procession streamed out of the timber and back up the valley, screaming warriors charged in among them, cutting down blue coats right and left. And the slaughter continued as Reno and his men splashed across the little bighorn to a steep east bank and climbed the bluff. Those who reached the top were in a state of shock, especially their commander. Reno had lost 40 men killed and several wounded in the debacle, and some of his troopers were still holed up in the timber. Yet hardly any of the warriors followed the soldiers to the top of the bluff. And the shooting mostly ceased, except for a few scattered gunshots at the bottom. But from downstream, some of the men heard gunfire. Not just a few shots, but volleys, end of quote. What they heard was Custer, which we'll get to here in just a moment. But around the same time that Reno was calling that retreat, Benteen was still some 3 or so miles away on what he considered to be a pointless scout. Finally, when he and his men turned up exactly Zero hostiles. He went ahead and gave the order to swing back towards the main trail. That's also about the same time that he ran into a Italian born courier slash trumpeter by the name of Giovanni Martini. Per historian James Donovan, quote he Martini was one of Benteen's own men, picked to go with Custer as a regimental orderly that morning. As he reined in, the excited trumpeter was almost jumping out of his skin and it failed to notice that his horse was bleeding from Indian gunfire. Martini bore a written message from Custer that he gave to Benteen. Written in adjutant Cook's hasty pencil scribble, it read, benteen, come on big village, be quick. Bring Pac WW Cook. P.S. bring packs. Now, interestingly enough, instead of fetching the packs and coming in a hurry like he was told, Benteen instead chose to move the column at a mere brisk walk. And part of this was just the confusing nature of the orders. I mean, he couldn't exactly fetch the packs and come in a hurry. It was either going to be one or the other. What he did do, however, was send Martini back to McDougal with an order to bring the pack train up muy pronto. But as to whether or not he intentionally avoided coming to Custer's aid just because he didn't like the man, or whether he willingly disobeyed orders, it's not really clear. And what happened next certainly added to the confusion. You see, by the time Benteen made it to what's now known as Reno's Hill, Reno and his men were still reeling from that failed charge. Not only was the hill littered with the dead and wounded, but Reno himself appeared frantic once again, per James Donovan. As they approached, a much excited Reno, red handkerchief tied around his head, rode out to meet him. For God's sake, Spintine, halt your command and help me. I've lost half my men. We are whipped. Now, just to give you a clearer idea of the timeline, if I'm not mistaken, it was around three in the afternoon when Reno led that initial charge down the valley. About 15 or 20 minutes later is when he ordered the skirmish line. And by the time Benteen reached the hill a little after 4 o', clock, Reno and his man had only been there for about 10 minutes. It's also worth noting that Reno outranked Benteen. So even if he wanted to continue on to, Custer was getting conflicting orders from another superior officer telling him to stay where he was. So in the end he just handed Martini's note over to Reno and put his men to passing out ammo by the way, it is very likely that Custer was still alive at this point. In fact, I'd say it's almost certain. Even the soldiers up on that hill could hear the sound of gunfire coming from down river, and not just a few scattered shots. I'm talking volley after volley of deliberate controlled fire. So much so that Captain Weir, Company D wanted to ride out and see what in the hell was going on. That's a story in and of itself, which we will be discussing next week. But for now, I do think it's time to go ahead and talk about Custer. We've already covered the backstory, we've put everything in the proper context. So, yeah, let's go ahead and get to the real meat and potatoes first, though, just one thing to keep in mind. There were no survivors. Not a single man from Custer's five companies lived to tell about what happened, at least not after he sent Martini off with that dispatch. So, that being the case, everything I'm about to say has just been reconstructed from a variety of sources. Everything from forensics to the positions of the bodies when they were finally discovered, and even the testimony of the warriors who killed them. Bar any time machine, nobody will ever know with 100% certainty what happened, at least not on this side of the veil. All I can do is just offer up a few theories. Now, back at 3pm, right around the same time that Reno began charging the valley, Custer took his five companies north along the high bluffs on the east side of the river. And then just a little further downstream is when he got his first good look into the valley. He could see Reno's men starting their charge. And a little ways beyond, he could see the village itself, or at least part of it. And what he saw was massive. That's when he sent back a sergeant by the name of Daniel Knip to fetch the pack train with all the extra ammo. Then, about a mile or so later, he sent Martini back with a similar message to Benteen, one we discussed a few minutes ago that said, come, be quick and bring the packs. And from there, Custer split his command yet again. He sent two companies under Captain George Yates down a ravine now known as Medicine Tel Coulee and towards a ford that crosses to the heart of the village. I guess the plan was for Yates to make a big show there at the ford, fake a crossing and hopefully draw the warriors off Areno. Meanwhile, Custer and hopefully Benteen, if he ever arrived, would lead their own separate charge into the village itself and seize the women and children as hostages. Maybe. Remember Once Martini headed off with that message for Benteen, everyone else who was left behind ended up dying with Custer. So we're basically spitballing. There's no actual primary sources to back up that plan I just described, other than circumstantial evidence, like those two volleys that were heard by the men up on the hill that I mentioned earlier, as well as stories from the Cheyenne describing how they blocked the soldiers from crossing the river to the north. And then there's the fact that Custer used the same exact strategy back on the Ouachita.
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I mentioned this earlier, but when he and his men struck Black Kettle's village, they took around 50 women and children as captives. What he didn't know, however, was that there was an additional larger village downstream. And wasn't long before he and his entire command were surrounded by an overwhelming force of hostiles. So rather than fight his way out, he instead used those women and children as human shields. The warriors couldn't fire without hitting their own families, so they just ended up falling back to protect the others. Then later on that night is when Custard and his men slipped out under the COVID of dark. And this wasn't even a one time thing. Custer did this on more than one occasion. So the idea that he'd do the same exact thing there on the greasy grass really ain't that much of a stretch. Only problem was, it just. Just didn't pan out. According to historian James Donovan, Captain George Yates had been gone only a few minutes when a group of Indians, about 50, appeared several hundred yards to the north of the ridge where Custer and his three companies were positioned. The general ordered his troopers to dismount and fire on him. The warriors fell back and scattered into the hills. After about 15 agonizing minutes, Custer could no longer wait for Benteen. Through his field glasses, he could see a growing number of Indians pressuring Yates and his two companies at the ford. He ordered several volleys of fire by the entire battalion to signal to Yates to move to the rendezvous point. Now, that rendezvous point was a piece of high ground about a mile and a half to the northeast, now known as Calhoun Hill. And it's there where Custer went ahead and made his last real set of decisions. He ordered Keough and three of the companies to hold the high point right there on the hill, both to kind of serve as a beacon for Benteen and hopefully cover his six. And from there, Custer would take the two remaining companies, Yates wing and push down the ridge to its far end before finally swinging west towards the river, apparently still looking for a way to get into that village and grab some hostages. Or as Donovan puts it, a bold offensive thrust to seize the women and children was now the only chance for success. To dig in a retreat would signify surrender and renounce any hope of victory. And yeah, this was a pretty reasonable plan, at least considering the circumstances. But unbeknownst to Custer, Benteen wasn't coming. He was still up on that hill with Reno some three and a half miles to the south. But nevertheless, Custer pressed on. And joining him were his two brothers, Tom and Boston, as well as his 18 year old nephew, Audie Reed. And not a single one of them would be alive by sundown. See, just as soon as Custer and his men dropped off that ridge, group of warriors climbed up and began firing down on them. Then just a few minutes later, when they reached the river, the far bank was crawling with even more warriors. So he turned back for the high ground once more. Quote James Donovan. Whether he realized it or not, Custer had now surrendered the offensive to the enemy. The Indians, not the white men, would decide the course of the battle. And yeah, by this point, death was quickly closing in from pretty much every side. The hundreds of warriors who had tangled with Reno were now across the river and swarming up the ravines, crawling close through the gullies and the sage and firing as they went, just pulling tighter and tighter a few yards at a time, till finally there wasn't a foot of that ridge left out of the range. And for Custer, with his five companies strung out along the ridge, there really wasn't anything left to do but to brace for the worst. Like I said earlier, we'll likely Never know exactly what happened, but it does appear as if the company's all collapsed roughly in sequence and seems to have started down at the south end with Company C. They only had one officer left. The company, a young second lieutenant named Henry Harrington and KIA would send him out with a skirmish line towards the river to clear out the warriors creeping up out of the ravines. And with him were three hard nosed old sergeants, Edwin Bobo and Jeremiah Finley, both veterans of the Ouachita, and a tall German by the name of George Finkel, who had supposedly once been a captain in the Prussian army. And for a few minutes they were successful. As Harrington's men pushed forward, the warriors gave ground and slipped back to cover. Only thing is, they soon regrouped and came back in overwhelming numbers. I really can't overemphasize how much of a nightmare this was for the men of the seventh. They had already dismounted and were on foot, but there wasn't enough time to hand the horses off to the rear the way they had drilled. So most of them had their reins in one hand and their carbines in the other. And those carbines, by the way, were single shot Springfields. In other words, you could only fire once before you had to crack open the breech thumb in a fresh round and then snap it back shut. Meanwhile, many of the indigenous were armed with repeating rifles and a whole lot of them were armed with bows and arrows. Warriors were tucked down in the gullies where the soldiers couldn't even see them, just lobbing arrows up and over. Cries of frightened and wounded horses mingled in with the cries of soldiers and the war whoops of the Lakota. All the while, a thick fog of powder smoke made it to where a man couldn't even see more than a few feet in front of him. Finley and Finle stood their ground and died right there on the line about 50 yards apart, with roughly half a C company dying with them. Harrington and Sergeant Bobo then pulled back with the survivors and broke north. Meanwhile, pretty much the exact same thing was happening to Companies L and I, and from there he just became what Lakota would later describe almost like a buffalo run, just riding down panic soldiers as they scrambled in vain for safety. Now, I have not yet had the honor of visiting the Little Bighorn battleground, but it's unique in the sense that it's the only battlefield, at least as far as I'm aware, to mark where the soldiers fell dead. So if you go and you see all those white markers, that's where the burial Parties actually found the bodies of the individual soldiers. And from what I understand, there's a line of markers stretching all the way from Calhoun's Hill where those guys just got massacred, to Custer's position on the north end of the ridge. These were the guys who fled that slaughter I mentioned a moment ago, per James Donovan. Quote, along the ridge from Keough's position came several troopers, most of them C Company men on Sorrels and a few afoot gasping their way towards the General, a horde of Indians behind them. As the last of the troopers reached safety, their mounts were shot, their carcasses forming a small redoubt facing south down the ridge Top. About 50 men now occupied the position, end of quote. Remember, Custer initially rode out with around 210 men, and now just two hours later, all that remained were 50. And those 50 didn't have much longer. In the land of the living dead, horses really didn't provide all that much cover and the casualties quickly began mounting. Custer was putting that rifle of his to good use, but most of his men never had the proper training to become adequate marksmen. Granted, the natives weren't much better, but I guess their sheer numbers made up for any lack of accuracy. Now, I know I've been quoting James Donovan quite a bit as I did lean heavily on his book A Terrible Glory while researching the battle. And what I'm about to share is Donovan's reconstruction of Custer's final moments. I know I keep saying this, but I'm going to go ahead and say it again. Nobody on earth knows exactly what happened. This is simply an educated guess, but it is an educated guess based on everything from Native American accounts to the position of the bodies and even the location of spent cartridges. Now, with that in mind, I did release a two part series a while back, all about a Cheyenne by the name of Wooden Leg, in which I presented the indigenous side of the story. So if you're looking to learn more from their perspective, I do hope you'll give that series a listen. It really is fascinating and it also gives you a better idea idea of the various actions leading up to the battle. But for today at least, I'm gonna go with Donovan's version, which I do personally find to be extremely plausible. According to him, it wasn't long after the remnants of C Company got to the hill that Custer took a round in his left breast that knocked him backwards, at which point he threw down his rifle and drew out a brace of revolvers. And that's when it happened. Many of the men around Custer were dead when another bullet smashed into his left temple and killed him instantly. Mitch Boyer jumped up, yelled to the remaining men, headed down the slope toward the river. Most of the survivors who could walk, no more than 10 men total, threw down their rifles, pulled out their Colts and followed him. Tom Custer lay motionless, but Boston and his nephew Audie ran down the hill. They only got 100 yards before they were shot dead. Bowyer and some of the troopers made it halfway to the Little Bighorn before they were overcome. Warriors wielding clubs and revolvers fell upon him from all sides. A few of the men reached the deepest part of the ravine and were killed amongst their comrades. As it happened on other parts of the field, some of the soldiers killed themselves just to get it over with. No white man wanted to be alive when he fell into the hands of the Indians. End of quote. Now, there are other theories as to how Custer may have died, but here's what we know for certain. His body was found two days later near the top of Last Stand Hill, stripped naked and leaning back against two dead soldiers with an almost peaceful expression on his face. He had two bullet wounds, one in the left temple and another near the left breast. And he was neither scalped nor mutilated. Kind of. I say he wasn't mutilated, but he did have an arrow shoved into his groin and a large slash along one of his thighs. But other than that, he was intact. And that's it, man. That is the entire physical record. Everything else is interpretation. Now, one theory, sometimes referred to as the Errol Flynn version, states that Custer's command fought more of an organized retreat up to the hill and made a heroic last stand until every last one of them went down fighting. Only problem with this is that the evidence doesn't back it up. See, way back in the 1980s, after a grass fire cleared a good deal of the battlefield, archaeologists went digging and mapped out all the spent cartridges. And what they found, rather than a heroic glass stand, was more of a collapse instead of just one discipline, perimeter, holding firm. What you had instead was just large clumps of men scattered unevenly across the ridge, as well as a long trail of cartridges and bodies leading downhill toward the river. Kind of pattern that you get from men running as opposed to holding. This is also corroborated by the Lakota and the Cheyenne. According to them, it was more of a route than an actual battle. Another theory asserts that Custer died much earlier, back when he tried crossing the Little Bighorn to grab hostages. This, too, is somewhat corroborated. By the Lakota and Cheyenne with stories of an officer being hit when they tried fording the river. But there's just no way of knowing whether or not that officer was Custer. And if it was him, then I guess his men must have hauled his body all the way up to last stand hill. It's an interesting theory, but just not all that likely, in my opinion at least. And then the final theory, the one that I touched on when I covered wooden leg, is that Custer and many of the men with him committed suicide. Now we do know that some of the men almost certainly took their own lives, mostly on account of the powder marks left on their bodies. And we've also got eyewitness testimony. If I'm not mistaken, there's something like 14 separate Native American accounts that describe the soldiers taking themselves out. Now granted, those accounts don't really agree on all that much, but I think when you have that many eyewitnesses independently landing on the same detail, it does make it a little hard to ignore. Still, though, just based on the forensics alone, it is thought that that number was very small. In fact, out of the few dozen sets of remains that have actually been examined, only, only a fraction of them, roughly one in 10 show evidence of suicide. And Custer wasn't one of them. Okay, so if Custer didn't kill himself, then who did? Well, we're probably never gonna find out. But over the years, there have been quite a few warriors credited with the kill, including at least one woman. The only catch is that nobody there at the battle knew they were fighting Custer until weeks later or in some cases even months later. Maybe this is where things get really confusing again. I know I said earlier that a lot of the eyewitness testimony was contradictory, but that wasn't necessarily done out of design. You gotta think a lot of what we know from the warriors point of view came decades after. Our brains are extremely fallible, and the more time passes, the fuzzier our memories get. And many of the initial accounts, the ones that were shared early on, were motivated more by self preservation than historical accuracy. Either way, you want to shake it though. As of this recording, there's no hard evidence proven one way or the other who killed Custer. There is, however, at least some evidence that his body was recognized after the fact. Now whether this is true, who knows, but it is pretty fascinating, so I'm going to go ahead and share it. You see, way back in 1868, Custer allegedly took a young Cheyenne mistress by the name of Miyotsi, a captive from the Ouachita and yes, I am using the term mistress somewhat tongue in cheek. I mean, we are talking about a teenage girl who witnessed some of her own people slaughtered while she herself was used as a human shield, so. But then again, there are stories passed down by the Cheyenne showing that the relationship was closer to a marriage than a captive captor type situation. Though, who knows? Either way, legend has it that Miyotzi bore Custer a son. He also supposedly around the same time, sat in a Cheyenne lodge smoking a peace pipe with a few other chiefs and swore that he would never again make war on the Cheyenne. At which point they gave him a warning that if he broke his word, he and his soldiers would be destroyed. And yeah, apparently some of Miotzi's kinfolk recognized Custer after he was killed and spared him the degradation of being scalped and mutilated. They didn't let him completely off the hook though, since he didn't heed the warning given to him a few years prior. They went ahead and took out a sewing awl and pushed into each of his ears in hopes that maybe you'd be able to hear better in the next life. Like I said, it's a fascinating story, but it's just yet to be proven. So when somebody asks you how Custer died, the only real answer is that he was shot twice on or near a hill in Montana by men who probably didn't know it was him in a fight that was almost certainly a route as opposed to a heroic last stand. And just to be clear, I know I keep tossing around the phrase heroic last stand. I am in no way, shape or form insinuating that Custer, or any of his men for that matter, were cowards. These guys were surrounded out in the open with very little in the way of COVID and thoroughly outnumbered by over a thousand of the finest warriors to ever sit a horse. And still, even with all that, most of them stood their ground and fought for as long as they had the breath and the bullets to do so. Sure, a few of them self deleted, but I don't necessarily consider that cowardice either. They knew full well what would happen to them if they were taken captive. And I don't know about you, but I'm certainly not going to sit here and judge anyone for taking a quick end over how agonizing torture. So when I talk about a collapse or a route instead of a heroic last stand or a glorious battle, what I'm doing is describing the tactical reality of what actually happened. What I'm not doing is passing judgment on the individual Soldiers, Those are two completely different things. A unit can come apart and get overrun and still be full of brave men doing everything humanly possible right up until the end. That's just the brutal reality of war, I guess. So, with all that in mind, what do we make of Custer the man? Was he a hero or just a vainglory hound who got his soldiers killed due to sheer recklessness? Or was it a little bit of both? I don't think anyone can doubt Custer's bravery. That's been proven time and time again, both during the Civil War and then later on on the Great Plains. He was supremely confident, and his men, at least some of them, would have charged the gates of hell for him. But then again, we're also talking about a guy who had a very long and well documented habit of letting his ambition write checks that his judgment always cash. Man who would throw his entire regiments into headlong charges that won him glory in headlines while getting a whole hell of a lot of his troopers killed in the process. And he carried that exact same approach out west, held just days before the battle. I know I mentioned this earlier, but he turned down Gatling guns and waved off an extra battalion because he didn't think he'd need them. That's how confident he was in both his own abilities and Those of the 7th Cav. Or in other words, the boldness that made him a star at 23 is the same boldness that made him a corpse at age 36. You really don't get one without the other. Custer may not have been the spotless martyr that a lot of people make him out to be, but I also don't necessarily think he was a cartoon villain. He was a brave, talented, vain, overly ambitious product of his times, doing the work that his country sent him to do, which in 1876 meant forcing a free people off a land that had been promised to him forever. I think maybe the most honest thing we can say about Custer is that he was a complicated man who met a violent end in a fight that he picked against people whose only desire was to be left alone. And I guess that's about all I've got on George Armstrong Custer, at least until next week. You see, the story doesn't just end with Custer's death. Reno and Benteen were still a few miles upriver with what was left of the seventh and still fighting for their very lives. And that's what we'll be discussing next week, including the siege and the accusations against Reno. So if you want to know what really happened to the men who lived and why some of them probably wish they hadn't. I do hope you'll join me here next Thursday. Until then, be kind to one another and adios.
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