"How the Battle of Little Bighorn Was Won" Part 2 of 3
Jun 25, 2017 14:23:18 #
"How the Battle of Little Bighorn Was Won" Part 2 of 3
Two Moons said he saw soldiers “drop into the river-bed like buffalo fleeing.” The Minneconjou warrior Red Horse said several troops drowned. Many of the Indians charged across the river after the soldiers and chased them as they raced up the bluffs toward a hill (now known as Reno Hill, for the major who led the soldiers). White Eagle, the son of Oglala chief Horned Horse, was killed in the chase. A soldier stopped just long enough to scalp him - one quick circle-cut with a sharp knife, then a yank on a fistful of hair to rip the skin loose.
The whites had the worst of it. More than 30 were killed before they reached the top of the hill and dismounted to make a stand. Among the bodies of men and horses left on the flat by the river below were two wounded Ree scouts. The Oglala Red Hawk said later that “the Indians [who found the scouts] said these Indians wanted to die - that was what they were scouting with the soldiers for; so they killed them and scalped them.”
The soldiers’ crossing of the river brought a second breathing spell in the fight. Some of the Indians chased them to the top of the hill, but many others, like Black Elk, lingered to pick up guns and ammunition, to pull the clothes off dead soldiers or to catch runaway horses. Crazy Horse promptly turned back with his men toward the center of the great camp. The only Indian to offer an explanation of his abrupt withdrawal was Gall, who speculated that Crazy Horse and Crow King, a leading man of the Hunkpapa, feared a second attack on the camp from some point north. Gall said they had seen soldiers heading that way along the bluffs on the opposite bank.
The fight along the river flat - from the first sighting of soldiers riding toward the Hunkpapa camp until the last of them crossed the river and made their way to the top of the hill - had lasted about an hour. During that time, a second group of soldiers had shown itself at least three times on the eastern heights above the river. The first sighting came only a minute or two after the first group began to ride toward the Hunkpapa camp - about five minutes past 3. Ten minutes later, just before the first group formed a skirmish line, the second group was sighted across the river again, this time on the very hill where the first group would take shelter after their mad retreat across the river. At about half-past 3, the second group was seen yet again on a high point above the river not quite halfway between Reno Hill and the Cheyenne village at the northern end of the big camp. By then the first group was retreating into the timber. It is likely that the second group of soldiers got their first clear view of the long sprawl of the Indian camp from this high bluff, later called Weir Point.
The Yanktonais White Thunder said he saw the second group make a move toward the river south of the ford by the Cheyenne camp, then turn back on reaching “a steep cut bank which they could not get down.” While the soldiers retraced their steps, White Thunder and some of his friends went east up and over the high ground to the other side, where they were soon joined by many other Indians. In effect, White Thunder said, the second group of soldiers had been surrounded even before they began to fight.
From the spot where the first group of soldiers retreated across the river to the next crossing place at the northern end of the big camp was about three miles - roughly a 20-minute ride. Between the two crossings steep bluffs blocked much of the river’s eastern bank, but just beyond the Cheyenne camp was an open stretch of several hundred yards, which later was called Minneconjou Ford. It was here, Indians say, that the second group of soldiers came closest to the river and to the Indian camp. By most Indian accounts it wasn’t very close.
Approaching the ford at an angle from the high ground to the southeast was a dry creek bed in a shallow ravine now known as Medicine Tail Coulee. The exact sequence of events is difficult to establish, but it seems likely that the first sighting of soldiers at the upper end of Medicine Tail Coulee occurred at about 4 o’clock, just as the first group of soldiers was making its dash up the bluffs toward Reno Hill and Crazy Horse and his followers were turning back. Two Moons was in the Cheyenne camp when he spotted soldiers coming over an intervening ridge and descending toward the river.
Gall and three other Indians were watching the same soldiers from a high point on the eastern side of the river. Well out in front were two soldiers. Ten years later, Gall identified them as Custer and his orderly, but more probably it was not. This man he called Custer was in no hurry, Gall said. Off to Gall’s right, on one of the bluffs upriver, some Indians came into sight as Custer approached. Feather Earring, a Minneconjou, said Indians were just then coming up from the south on that side of the river “in great numbers.” When Custer saw them, Gall said, “his pace became slower and his actions more cautious, and finally he paused altogether to await the coming up of his command. This was the nearest point any of Custer’s party ever got to the river.” At that point, Gall went on, Custer “began to suspect he was in a bad scrape. From that time on Custer acted on the defensive.”
Others, including Iron Hawk and Feather Earring, confirmed that Custer and his men got no closer to the river than that - several hundred yards back up the coulee. Most of the soldiers were still farther back up the hill. Some soldiers fired into the Indian camp, which was almost deserted. The few Indians at Minneconjou Ford fired back.
The earlier pattern repeated itself. Little stood in the soldiers’ way at first, but within moments more Indians began to arrive, and they kept coming - some crossing the river, others riding up from the south on the east side of the river. By the time 15 or 20 Indians had gathered near the ford, the soldiers had hesitated, then begun to ride up out of Medicine Tail Coulee, heading toward high ground, where they were joined by the rest of Custer’s command.
The battle known as the Custer Fight began when the small, leading detachment of soldiers approaching the river retreated toward higher ground at about 4:15. This was the last move the soldiers would take freely; from this moment on everything they did was in response to an Indian attack growing rapidly in intensity.
As described by Indian participants, the fighting followed the contour of the ground, and its pace was determined by the time it took for Indians to gather in force and the comparatively few minutes it took for each successive group of soldiers to be killed or driven back. The path of the battle follows a sweeping arc up out of Medicine Tail Coulee across another swale into a depression known as Deep Coulee, which in turn opens up and out into a rising slope cresting at Calhoun Ridge, rising to Calhoun Hill, and then proceeds, still rising, past a depression in the ground identified as the Keogh site to a second elevation known as Custer Hill. The high ground from Calhoun Hill to Custer Hill was what men on the plains called “a backbone.” From the point where the soldiers recoiled away from the river to the lower end of Calhoun Ridge is about three-quarters of a mile - a hard, 20-minute uphill slog for a man on foot. Shave Elk, an Oglala in Crazy Horse’s band, who ran the distance after his horse was shot at the outset of the fight, remembered “how tired he became before he got up there.” From the bottom of Calhoun Ridge to Calhoun Hill is another uphill climb of about a quarter-mile.
But it would be a mistake to assume that all of Custer’s command - 210 men - advanced in line from one point to another, down one coulee, up the other coulee and so on. Only a small detachment had approached the river. By the time this group rejoined the rest, the soldiers occupied a line from Calhoun Hill along the backbone to Custer Hill, a distance of a little over half a mile.
The uphill route from Medicine Tail Coulee over to Deep Coulee and up the ridge toward Custer Hill would have been about a mile and a half or a little more. Red Horse would later say that Custer’s troops “made five different stands.” In each case, combat began and ended in about ten minutes. Think of it as a running fight, as the survivors of each separate clash made their way along the backbone toward Custer at the end; in effect the command collapsed back in on itself. As described by the Indians, this phase of the battle began with the scattering of shots near Minneconjou Ford, unfolding then in brief, devastating clashes at Calhoun Ridge, Calhoun Hill and the Keogh site, climaxing in the killing of Custer and his entourage on Custer Hill and ending with the pursuit and killing of about 30 soldiers who raced on foot from Custer Hill toward the river down a deep ravine.
Back at Reno Hill, just over four miles to the south, the soldiers preparing their defenses heard three episodes of heavy firing—one at 4:25 in the afternoon, about ten minutes after Custer’s soldiers turned back from their approach to Minneconjou Ford; a second about 30 minutes later; and a final burst about 15 minutes after that, dying off before 5:15. Distances were great, but the air was still, and the .45/55 caliber round of the cavalry carbine made a thunderous boom.
At 5:25 some of Reno’s officers, who had ridden out with their men toward the shooting, glimpsed from Weir Point a distant hillside swarming with mounted Indians who seemed to be shooting at things on the ground. These Indians were not fighting; more likely they were finishing off the wounded, or just following the Indian custom of putting an extra bullet or arrow into an enemy’s body in a gesture of triumph. Once the fighting began it never died away, the last scattering shots continuing until night fell.
The officers at Weir Point also saw a general movement of Indians - more Indians than any of them had ever encountered before - heading their way. Soon the forward elements of Reno’s command were exchanging fire with them, and the soldiers quickly returned to Reno Hill.
As Custer’s soldiers made their way from the river toward higher ground, the country on three sides was rapidly filling with Indians, in effect pushing as well as following the soldiers uphill. “We chased the soldiers up a long, gradual slope or hill in a direction away from the river and over the ridge where the battle began in good earnest,” said Shave Elk. By the time the soldiers made a stand on “the ridge”- evidently the backbone connecting Calhoun and Custer hills - the Indians had begun to fill the coulees to the south and east. “The officers tried their utmost to keep the soldiers together at this point,” said Red Hawk, “but the horses were unmanageable; they would rear up and fall backward with their riders; some would get away.” Crow King said, “When they saw that they were surrounded they dismounted.” This was cavalry tactics by the book. There was no other way to make a stand or maintain a stout defense. A brief period followed of deliberate fighting on foot.
As Indians arrived they got off their horses, sought cover and began to converge on the soldiers. Taking advantage of brush and every little swale or rise in the ground to hide, the Indians made their way uphill “on hands and knees,” said Red Feather. From one moment to the next, the Indians popped up to shoot before dropping back down again. No man on either side could show himself without drawing fire. In battle the Indians often wore their feathers down flat to help in concealment. The soldiers appear to have taken off their hats for the same reason; a number of Indians noted hatless soldiers, some dead and some still fighting.
From their position on Calhoun Hill the soldiers were making an orderly, concerted defense. When some Indians approached, a detachment of soldiers rose up and charged downhill on foot, driving the Indians back to the lower end of Calhoun Ridge. Now the soldiers established a regulation skirmish line, each man about five yards from the next, kneeling in order to take “deliberate aim,” according to Yellow Nose, a Cheyenne warrior. Some Indians noted a second skirmish line as well, stretching perhaps 100 yards away along the backbone toward Custer Hill. It was in the fighting around Calhoun Hill, many Indians reported later, that the Indians suffered the most fatalities - 11 in all.
But almost as soon as the skirmish line was thrown out from Calhoun Hill, some Indians pressed in again, snaking up to shooting distance of the men on Calhoun Ridge; others made their way around to the eastern slope of the hill, where they opened a heavy, deadly fire on soldiers holding the horses. Without horses, Custer’s troops could neither charge nor flee. Loss of the horses also meant loss of the saddlebags with the reserve ammunition, about 50 rounds per man. “As soon as the soldiers on foot had marched over the ridge,” the Yanktonais Daniel White Thunder later told a white missionary, he and the Indians with him “stampeded the horses...by waving their blankets and making a terrible noise.”
“We killed all the men who were holding the horses,” Gall said. When a horse holder was shot, the frightened horses would lunge about. “They tried to hold on to their horses,” said Crow King, “but as we pressed closer, they let go their horses.” Many charged down the hill toward the river, adding to the confusion of battle. Some of the Indians quit fighting to chase them.
Two Moons said he saw soldiers “drop into the river-bed like buffalo fleeing.” The Minneconjou warrior Red Horse said several troops drowned. Many of the Indians charged across the river after the soldiers and chased them as they raced up the bluffs toward a hill (now known as Reno Hill, for the major who led the soldiers). White Eagle, the son of Oglala chief Horned Horse, was killed in the chase. A soldier stopped just long enough to scalp him - one quick circle-cut with a sharp knife, then a yank on a fistful of hair to rip the skin loose.
The whites had the worst of it. More than 30 were killed before they reached the top of the hill and dismounted to make a stand. Among the bodies of men and horses left on the flat by the river below were two wounded Ree scouts. The Oglala Red Hawk said later that “the Indians [who found the scouts] said these Indians wanted to die - that was what they were scouting with the soldiers for; so they killed them and scalped them.”
The soldiers’ crossing of the river brought a second breathing spell in the fight. Some of the Indians chased them to the top of the hill, but many others, like Black Elk, lingered to pick up guns and ammunition, to pull the clothes off dead soldiers or to catch runaway horses. Crazy Horse promptly turned back with his men toward the center of the great camp. The only Indian to offer an explanation of his abrupt withdrawal was Gall, who speculated that Crazy Horse and Crow King, a leading man of the Hunkpapa, feared a second attack on the camp from some point north. Gall said they had seen soldiers heading that way along the bluffs on the opposite bank.
The fight along the river flat - from the first sighting of soldiers riding toward the Hunkpapa camp until the last of them crossed the river and made their way to the top of the hill - had lasted about an hour. During that time, a second group of soldiers had shown itself at least three times on the eastern heights above the river. The first sighting came only a minute or two after the first group began to ride toward the Hunkpapa camp - about five minutes past 3. Ten minutes later, just before the first group formed a skirmish line, the second group was sighted across the river again, this time on the very hill where the first group would take shelter after their mad retreat across the river. At about half-past 3, the second group was seen yet again on a high point above the river not quite halfway between Reno Hill and the Cheyenne village at the northern end of the big camp. By then the first group was retreating into the timber. It is likely that the second group of soldiers got their first clear view of the long sprawl of the Indian camp from this high bluff, later called Weir Point.
The Yanktonais White Thunder said he saw the second group make a move toward the river south of the ford by the Cheyenne camp, then turn back on reaching “a steep cut bank which they could not get down.” While the soldiers retraced their steps, White Thunder and some of his friends went east up and over the high ground to the other side, where they were soon joined by many other Indians. In effect, White Thunder said, the second group of soldiers had been surrounded even before they began to fight.
From the spot where the first group of soldiers retreated across the river to the next crossing place at the northern end of the big camp was about three miles - roughly a 20-minute ride. Between the two crossings steep bluffs blocked much of the river’s eastern bank, but just beyond the Cheyenne camp was an open stretch of several hundred yards, which later was called Minneconjou Ford. It was here, Indians say, that the second group of soldiers came closest to the river and to the Indian camp. By most Indian accounts it wasn’t very close.
Approaching the ford at an angle from the high ground to the southeast was a dry creek bed in a shallow ravine now known as Medicine Tail Coulee. The exact sequence of events is difficult to establish, but it seems likely that the first sighting of soldiers at the upper end of Medicine Tail Coulee occurred at about 4 o’clock, just as the first group of soldiers was making its dash up the bluffs toward Reno Hill and Crazy Horse and his followers were turning back. Two Moons was in the Cheyenne camp when he spotted soldiers coming over an intervening ridge and descending toward the river.
Gall and three other Indians were watching the same soldiers from a high point on the eastern side of the river. Well out in front were two soldiers. Ten years later, Gall identified them as Custer and his orderly, but more probably it was not. This man he called Custer was in no hurry, Gall said. Off to Gall’s right, on one of the bluffs upriver, some Indians came into sight as Custer approached. Feather Earring, a Minneconjou, said Indians were just then coming up from the south on that side of the river “in great numbers.” When Custer saw them, Gall said, “his pace became slower and his actions more cautious, and finally he paused altogether to await the coming up of his command. This was the nearest point any of Custer’s party ever got to the river.” At that point, Gall went on, Custer “began to suspect he was in a bad scrape. From that time on Custer acted on the defensive.”
Others, including Iron Hawk and Feather Earring, confirmed that Custer and his men got no closer to the river than that - several hundred yards back up the coulee. Most of the soldiers were still farther back up the hill. Some soldiers fired into the Indian camp, which was almost deserted. The few Indians at Minneconjou Ford fired back.
The earlier pattern repeated itself. Little stood in the soldiers’ way at first, but within moments more Indians began to arrive, and they kept coming - some crossing the river, others riding up from the south on the east side of the river. By the time 15 or 20 Indians had gathered near the ford, the soldiers had hesitated, then begun to ride up out of Medicine Tail Coulee, heading toward high ground, where they were joined by the rest of Custer’s command.
The battle known as the Custer Fight began when the small, leading detachment of soldiers approaching the river retreated toward higher ground at about 4:15. This was the last move the soldiers would take freely; from this moment on everything they did was in response to an Indian attack growing rapidly in intensity.
As described by Indian participants, the fighting followed the contour of the ground, and its pace was determined by the time it took for Indians to gather in force and the comparatively few minutes it took for each successive group of soldiers to be killed or driven back. The path of the battle follows a sweeping arc up out of Medicine Tail Coulee across another swale into a depression known as Deep Coulee, which in turn opens up and out into a rising slope cresting at Calhoun Ridge, rising to Calhoun Hill, and then proceeds, still rising, past a depression in the ground identified as the Keogh site to a second elevation known as Custer Hill. The high ground from Calhoun Hill to Custer Hill was what men on the plains called “a backbone.” From the point where the soldiers recoiled away from the river to the lower end of Calhoun Ridge is about three-quarters of a mile - a hard, 20-minute uphill slog for a man on foot. Shave Elk, an Oglala in Crazy Horse’s band, who ran the distance after his horse was shot at the outset of the fight, remembered “how tired he became before he got up there.” From the bottom of Calhoun Ridge to Calhoun Hill is another uphill climb of about a quarter-mile.
But it would be a mistake to assume that all of Custer’s command - 210 men - advanced in line from one point to another, down one coulee, up the other coulee and so on. Only a small detachment had approached the river. By the time this group rejoined the rest, the soldiers occupied a line from Calhoun Hill along the backbone to Custer Hill, a distance of a little over half a mile.
The uphill route from Medicine Tail Coulee over to Deep Coulee and up the ridge toward Custer Hill would have been about a mile and a half or a little more. Red Horse would later say that Custer’s troops “made five different stands.” In each case, combat began and ended in about ten minutes. Think of it as a running fight, as the survivors of each separate clash made their way along the backbone toward Custer at the end; in effect the command collapsed back in on itself. As described by the Indians, this phase of the battle began with the scattering of shots near Minneconjou Ford, unfolding then in brief, devastating clashes at Calhoun Ridge, Calhoun Hill and the Keogh site, climaxing in the killing of Custer and his entourage on Custer Hill and ending with the pursuit and killing of about 30 soldiers who raced on foot from Custer Hill toward the river down a deep ravine.
Back at Reno Hill, just over four miles to the south, the soldiers preparing their defenses heard three episodes of heavy firing—one at 4:25 in the afternoon, about ten minutes after Custer’s soldiers turned back from their approach to Minneconjou Ford; a second about 30 minutes later; and a final burst about 15 minutes after that, dying off before 5:15. Distances were great, but the air was still, and the .45/55 caliber round of the cavalry carbine made a thunderous boom.
At 5:25 some of Reno’s officers, who had ridden out with their men toward the shooting, glimpsed from Weir Point a distant hillside swarming with mounted Indians who seemed to be shooting at things on the ground. These Indians were not fighting; more likely they were finishing off the wounded, or just following the Indian custom of putting an extra bullet or arrow into an enemy’s body in a gesture of triumph. Once the fighting began it never died away, the last scattering shots continuing until night fell.
The officers at Weir Point also saw a general movement of Indians - more Indians than any of them had ever encountered before - heading their way. Soon the forward elements of Reno’s command were exchanging fire with them, and the soldiers quickly returned to Reno Hill.
As Custer’s soldiers made their way from the river toward higher ground, the country on three sides was rapidly filling with Indians, in effect pushing as well as following the soldiers uphill. “We chased the soldiers up a long, gradual slope or hill in a direction away from the river and over the ridge where the battle began in good earnest,” said Shave Elk. By the time the soldiers made a stand on “the ridge”- evidently the backbone connecting Calhoun and Custer hills - the Indians had begun to fill the coulees to the south and east. “The officers tried their utmost to keep the soldiers together at this point,” said Red Hawk, “but the horses were unmanageable; they would rear up and fall backward with their riders; some would get away.” Crow King said, “When they saw that they were surrounded they dismounted.” This was cavalry tactics by the book. There was no other way to make a stand or maintain a stout defense. A brief period followed of deliberate fighting on foot.
As Indians arrived they got off their horses, sought cover and began to converge on the soldiers. Taking advantage of brush and every little swale or rise in the ground to hide, the Indians made their way uphill “on hands and knees,” said Red Feather. From one moment to the next, the Indians popped up to shoot before dropping back down again. No man on either side could show himself without drawing fire. In battle the Indians often wore their feathers down flat to help in concealment. The soldiers appear to have taken off their hats for the same reason; a number of Indians noted hatless soldiers, some dead and some still fighting.
From their position on Calhoun Hill the soldiers were making an orderly, concerted defense. When some Indians approached, a detachment of soldiers rose up and charged downhill on foot, driving the Indians back to the lower end of Calhoun Ridge. Now the soldiers established a regulation skirmish line, each man about five yards from the next, kneeling in order to take “deliberate aim,” according to Yellow Nose, a Cheyenne warrior. Some Indians noted a second skirmish line as well, stretching perhaps 100 yards away along the backbone toward Custer Hill. It was in the fighting around Calhoun Hill, many Indians reported later, that the Indians suffered the most fatalities - 11 in all.
But almost as soon as the skirmish line was thrown out from Calhoun Hill, some Indians pressed in again, snaking up to shooting distance of the men on Calhoun Ridge; others made their way around to the eastern slope of the hill, where they opened a heavy, deadly fire on soldiers holding the horses. Without horses, Custer’s troops could neither charge nor flee. Loss of the horses also meant loss of the saddlebags with the reserve ammunition, about 50 rounds per man. “As soon as the soldiers on foot had marched over the ridge,” the Yanktonais Daniel White Thunder later told a white missionary, he and the Indians with him “stampeded the horses...by waving their blankets and making a terrible noise.”
“We killed all the men who were holding the horses,” Gall said. When a horse holder was shot, the frightened horses would lunge about. “They tried to hold on to their horses,” said Crow King, “but as we pressed closer, they let go their horses.” Many charged down the hill toward the river, adding to the confusion of battle. Some of the Indians quit fighting to chase them.
Jun 26, 2017 10:41:47 #
padremike
Loc: Phenix City, Al
pafret wrote:
"How the Battle of Little Bighorn Was Won&quo... (show quote)
When I lived in Sheridan Wyoming I had occasions to visit the Custer Battlefield many times - each a solemn occasion. Your report is very accurate and I can still see the terrain in my minds eye as you described. Unfortunately for Native Americans, and hardly ever reported, was the fact that Custer's defeat hit the news back east on July 4, 1876, our national centennial. National pride was hurt and anger against Native Americans was ablaze. Their victory on the Little Big Horn ultimately lead to their defeat. If the battle had been fought a month later it may have changed the ultimate plight of Native Americans.
Jun 26, 2017 11:56:02 #
padremike wrote:
When I lived in Sheridan Wyoming I had occasions t... (show quote)
Padre, most of my original posts are reprints of other's work. I try to establish authorship credit and source location but in no way am I claiming credit for anything other than reading an interesting article and reproducing it on this forum.
Most of my own writings are in response to others posts.
I have read quite a few articles and books on this topic lately; it does seem there is more information becoming available. This is one of the few I have read from the viewpoint of the Indians and it gives a different perspective on the events, which transpired. It has the ring of truth to it.
Jun 26, 2017 12:25:58 #
padremike
Loc: Phenix City, Al
pafret wrote:
Padre, most of my original posts are reprints of o... (show quote)
I knew you were reporting from a Native American account. I, too, have read many reports. I always found their narrative to be the most accurate and interesting. They were, afterall, the survivors. Don't know if you've ever visited the battlefield. There are individual gravestones scattered quite a distance apart from Custer's main force. The surrounding countryside is full, overflowing with history.
If you want to reply, then register here. Registration is free and your account is created instantly, so you can post right away.