Custer’s Last Stand Still Stands Up

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In 1873 Custer and 10 companies of the 7th Cavalry were among the soldiers in Colonel David S. Stanley’s Yellowstone Expedition, which was escorting a railroad survey crew across Montana Territory. When some Sioux warriors tried to raid horses from the expedition on August 4, Custer gave chase. About 300 Sioux suddenly burst out of the timber by the Tongue River, but Custer executed a skillful withdrawal and held them back, later saying that the warriors ?displayed unusual boldness.? After attempts by the Sioux to burn the grass and smoke out the soldiers failed, Custer surprised the enemy with a counterattack and drove them off. Just seven days later, near the mouth of the Bighorn River, warriors fired on the cavalry from the opposite shore. Custer’s 450 troopers, who faced about 500 Sioux, repulsed those warriors who tried to cross the river. During another counterattack, Custer had a horse shot out from under him but emerged without a scratch. In these two engagements, Custer demonstrated enough leadership and discipline to more than hold his own against a larger force of Plains Indians.

Not that it was always smooth sailing for Custer in the West prior to June 1876. Back in 1867, the 7th Cavalry had been plagued by factionalism, and Custer had been court-martialed for absence without leave from his command and for ordering deserters to be shot. He was convicted and suspended from command for one year. In March 1876, he was summoned from his post at Fort Lincoln, Dakota Territory, to testify in Washington, D.C., about corruption in the awarding of Western post traderships and other frauds that were cheating both the frontier Army and American Indians. His testimony was damaging to William W. Belknap, who had been the secretary of war in the Grant administration, as well as to the president’s brother. Consequently, Ulysses S. Grant removed Custer from command of the troops at Fort Lincoln, but under pressure, the president later returned Custer to command of the 7th Cavalry (though Brig. Gen. Alfred Terry would be the overall commander of the Dakota Column that marched into Montana Territory in May 1876). On June 25, Custer rode to his death in a cloud of controversies, and his many enemies and later detractors would ensure that the earlier controversies and the ones generated by the military disaster that day would grow after his death.

One controversial notion should be put aside right away: that the Plains Indians at the Little Bighorn were defending their homeland. That is a myth. When Custer surprised the Sioux and Cheyennes? village, he was not attacking peace-loving defenders. The Little Bighorn Valley is part of the Crow Indians? traditional homeland, and the Sioux had driven the Crows from it. Back on March 10, 1876, Indian agent Dexter Clapp of the Crow Agency in Montana said that ?the Sioux are now occupying the eastern and best portion of their reservation and by their constant warfare paralyzing all efforts to induce the Crows to undertake agriculture or other means of self support,? and added that the Crows ?expect the Sioux to attack this agency and themselves in large force.? Other tribes’such as the Shoshones, Blackfeet and Arikaras?were also victims of Sioux raids and war making. The proud warrior culture of the Plains Indians was one reason that disenchanted Sioux warriors and their allies left their reservations in 1876 to join the influential medicine man Sitting Bull, who had never signed a treaty with the United States. Another reason was that the government was not fulfilling treaty obligations, which was something Custer had pointed out when summoned to Washington. In any case, the Indians? defiance meant war.

The U.S. Army did have a plan of action to deal with the hostile Indians. The Terry and Custer force that departed Fort Lincoln on May 17, 1876, consisted of the entire 7th Cavalry of 12 companies, three companies of infantry, three Gatling guns, Indian scouts and a huge wagon train. Two other columns were also dispatched to seek out the hostile tribes. Plains In?dians fought Brig. Gen. George Crook’s column (which had marched up from the south) to a standstill in the Battle of the Rosebud on June 17, and by pulling back to his camp on Goose Creek instead of pursuing the enemy, Crook was of no help to Custer or anyone else. The third force, commanded by Colonel John Gibbon, marched east from western Montana and hooked up with the Terry/Custer force for a conference on the night of June 21. A scouting party headed by the second-ranking officer in the 7th Cavalry, Major Marcus Reno, had discovered a huge Indian trail leading toward the Little Bighorn Valley. The next day, Custer would separate from Gibbon’s force and march up the Rosebud Valley to follow that trail. Gibbon, with Terry accompanying him, was to follow the Yellowstone River to the Bighorn River and then follow that river to the Little Bighorn Valley. In a communication addressed to General Sheridan dated June 21, Terry said, ?My only hope is that one of the two columns will find the Indians.? His belief that either of the two columns would be able to handle any hostile warriors was realistic.

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