Preparing for Battle
By June 24, Sitting Bull and his large following had moved into the valley of the river they called the Greasy Grass, better known to the rest of the world as the Little Bighorn. With agency Indians arriving steadily, the size of the village swelled by June 25, according to conservative estimates, to more than 1,000 lodges and approximately 7,000 people, close to 2,000 of whom were males capable of active engagement in warfare. The numbers may have been even higher. White Bull, for example, later estimated that there were 2,000 lodges and some 2,500 able-bodied warriors.11
Sitting Bull was certain that the soldiers would attack, because his vision was still unfulfilled. In the evening of June 24, a Saturday, Sitting Bull removed most of his clothing, loosened his hair, and painted himself. Wearing a
Breechcloth and carrying a buffalo robe and his pipe, and accompanied by his nephew One Bull, he walked to a nearby ridge across from the Cheyenne circle of lodges. There, near where Colonel Custer and his Seventh Cavalry would shortly make their last stand, he prayed to Wakantanka. Sitting Bull offered the pipe to the Great Mystery and prayed for protection for his people. As additional offerings, he left behind tobacco tied to sacred cherry wand sticks stuck into the ground.
A few days earlier, on June 21, on the Yellowstone River at the mouth of the Powder, General Alfred Terry had met aboard the supply steamer Far West with Colonel John Gibbon and Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer. The meeting was intended to finalize the military strategy for rousting the Plains Indians. At noon on June 22, both the Gibbon - and Custer-led troops departed camp below the mouth of the Rosebud. Terry accompanied Gibbon. Custer’s Seventh Cavalry consisted of 33 officers and 718 enlisted men, but 2 officers and 152 men had been detached between June 10 and 22, most of whom were dispatched to serve at the Powder River depot. That left a fighting force of 31 officers and 566 men, plus about three dozen Arikara and Crow scouts and 15 nonmilitary participants, mainly quartermaster employees. The Seventh Cavalry consisted of 12 companies, each company numbering about 50 soldiers, well below the desired strength, with Custer’s regiment overall at about 60 percent of full strength.12
Custer's Orders
By Saturday, June 24, Custer was detecting fresh signs of Indians in the direction of Little Bighorn. He planned to let his men rest the following day and attack on June 26, thereby permitting Terry and Gibbon to arrive from the north with reinforcements before engaging in battle.
The following day, June 25, from a ridge called the Crow’s Nest, Custer’s scouts pointed out signs of a large village in the distance, some 18 miles away. The bad news for Custer was that some of his troopers also reported a confrontation with Indians. Custer concluded that his presence was no longer a surprise and feared that the Sioux would flee before he could mount an attack. Accordingly, he decided to attack at once, even if both his troops and horses were tired.
By noon, Custer had his Seventh Cavalry on the move. Inexplicably, he split his command, embarking on a course of action that continues to perplex historians. He sent Captain Frederick Benteen with Companies D, H, and K southwest with the vague instructions to “move to the left, pitch into anything you come cross, and report to me.” Custer later sent additional directions to Benteen telling him to move to a second set of bluffs if he saw no Indians from the first set.13
Custer had also detached Captain Thomas McDougall from the Seventh Cavalry’s main body, directing him to escort the pack train with Company B. The pack train followed Benteen but stayed well behind him.
Custer then took his remaining forces down a tributary of the Little Bighorn that would later be named Reno Creek, where he further divided his force by sending Major Reno with Companies A, G, and M to attack the village. Custer assured Reno that he would support him.
Despite that promise, Custer did not follow in support across the Little Bighorn but instead stayed to the east of the river and with Companies C, E, F, I, and L turned north. From a ridge looking northwest, Custer received his first clear view of the village. Apparently only then realizing the enormity of the challenge, Custer sent Sergeant Daniel Kanipe to find McDougall and tell him to bring the pack train, which had all of the ammunition except what the soldiers had on their persons or in their saddlebags.
Major Reno's Attack
At approximately 3:00 p. m., Reno attacked. Almost instantly, he realized that his men had no chance to survive a direct assault on the mammoth village. Reno halted the charge short of the village, where he ordered his men to dismount. They formed a skirmish line facing the Hunkpapa circle.
The attack surprised the villagers. Sitting Bull’s first thoughts apparently were for his family. He mounted his mother and a sister behind him on a horse and raced to a position away from the fighting. One Bull did the same for his mother. The rest of Sitting Bull’s family also made it to safety.
Sitting Bull then hurried to his tipi to get his weapons. He gave his treasured shield as well as his bow and arrows and a war club to his nephew One Bull. The nephew reciprocated by offering his Winchester repeating rifle to his uncle and rode off to join the fight against Reno.
At that point, White Bull arrived at Sitting Bull’s tipi. Sitting Bull had no time to prepare properly for battle. He wore no feathers and had no time to change his clothes or paint himself. Instead, he quickly mounted a black horse and rode about shouting encouragement to his warriors. Sitting Bull and White Bull, along with Four Horns, then joined the battle against Reno.
Reno and his men dropped to their stomachs to fire as the Indians attacked. Heavy fire forced the warriors back, but they quickly circled around Reno’s left and attacked from the rear. Knowing that he would soon be completely surrounded, Reno ordered his men into a nearby timber. The battle continued there for about 30 minutes when Reno, recognizing that his troops were heavily outnumbered and their ammunition was running out, ordered his men to mount. He led them in a charge out of the timber and, in a race for their lives, about a mile upstream where they crossed back over the river. Some of the troopers were shot from their horses or killed as they floundered in the water. The survivors scrambled up a bluff, later to be named Reno Hill, east of Little Bighorn. There, shortly after 4:00, the badly outnumbered troopers prepared to make their desperate stand. Forty members of Reno’s command were already dead. In the confusion, 17 soldiers had not heard the order to charge out of the timber and had been left behind, although many of them later made their harried way to the bluffs.
By about 4:20, Benteen arrived at Reno Hill. An hour later, the pack train joined them, by which time the fighting around Reno Hill had sharply decreased. Major Reno and the rest of the Seventh Cavalry members who had taken refuge on the bluffs still were wondering where Custer was; they were unaware that by the time the pack train arrived, Custer and all of his men were already dead.
Turning Toward Custer
When Reno recrossed the river to take refuge on the east side, Sitting Bull remained behind, leaving the pursuit to the younger men. East of the Little Bighorn, Indians continued to hunt down straggling soldiers. Sitting Bull urged his men to leave the soldiers on the hill alone so they could return to their people and tell of the great victory by the Lakotas and Cheyennes, but the warriors— especially the young men—were not yet ready to cease their attacks.
By this time, Custer and his five companies had begun approaching the village from the north. Turning from Reno, the Indians in overwhelming numbers converged on Custer’s troops. Sitting Bull directed his warriors toward the new set of attackers and then returned to his village, riding around the Cheyenne circle of lodges to the western edge of the village, where a large number of women and children had gathered. There Sitting Bull helped stand guard against a possible attack by soldiers.
Custer had divided his remaining companies into two segments. The right wing consisted of Companies C, I, and L, under the command of Captain Myles W. Keogh. The left wing comprised Companies E and F, under the command of Captain George Yates, with Custer accompanying Yates. Custer and Yates entered a large dry gulch named Medicine Tail Coulee, which headed west toward the river and the village. Apparently at this point, villagers discovered Custer’s forces, drawing warriors away from Reno and almost surely saving the lives of Reno and his men. Custer did not cross the river; instead, when shots were fired across the water at him, he turned back and moved farther north. Keogh’s wing seems to have stayed somewhat behind Custer and Yates to wait for Benteen and the pack train. Custer may have been looking for a way to cross the river, but if so, he never had time to find a suitable place.
Company L, under Lieutenant James Calhoun (Custer’s brother-in-law), formed a skirmish line on what later came to be known as Calhoun Hill, with Companies C and I behind in reserve. Company C tried a charge south but was forced to withdraw to Calhoun Hill, and the Lakota warriors, with Chief Gall among them, applied steady pressure to Keogh’s troops. Then Crazy Horse made a daring run on horseback between Keogh’s men on the hill and those in reserve. Many of the men on the hill broke ranks and fled northward, only to be cut down as they raced on foot or on horseback. The men who stood and fought were quickly overwhelmed.
Last Stand Hill
Custer and Yates with Companies E and F had proceeded to Cemetery Ridge in the present Custer National Cemetery. They then moved down into a basin below today’s Last Stand Hill (also known as Custer Hill), and Company E dismounted. At that point, Indian warriors known as “suicide boys” because of their dangerous role rushed in to stampede horses.
Next, the troopers moved up Last Stand Hill, where they were joined by perhaps two dozen survivors of Keogh’s command. About 45 soldiers charged toward the river, attempting to reach safety through some 1,500 warriors. They were either struck down at once or took temporary refuge in Deep Ravine, which runs to the south and west of the current Visitor Center of the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, before being killed.
The remainder of Custer’s men, numbering about 41, along with Custer himself, shot their horses and used them as breastworks. Soon they were all dead, including Lieutenant Colonel Custer and his brothers, Captain Tom Custer and younger brother Boston Custer, who had been brought along as forage master to secure food for the horses. The dead also included Custer’s 19-year-old nephew, Armstrong Reed, who had come along for the adventure; the colonel’s brother-in-law, Lieutenant Calhoun; and Mark Kellogg, a reporter for the Bismarck Tribune, the notes for his next newspaper article still in his pockets. According to Indian accounts, some soldiers, realizing their desperate situation, shot themselves rather than be captured. The last man fell on Last Stand Hill at approximately 4:45, about an hour after the first shots had been fired across the river at Custer’s men.
Altogether, 210 men from the Custer-Yates-Keogh companies lay dead. The total Seventh Cavalry fatalities would number 263 by the end of the battle the following day.
While Custer and his men were fighting for their lives, Reno remained on his hill four miles away with no inkling of his leader’s fate, although from that hill his men could hear gunshots. Captain Thomas Weir took Company D downstream toward the firing, and Captain Benteen followed with Companies H, K, and M. By now it was about 5:00, too late to help Custer. However, Weir got no farther than about one and one-half miles, to the high point later named Weir Point. From there, the troopers could see Indians riding around what they later learned was the Custer battlefield, sometimes shooting toward the ground. No one imagined that Custer’s troops had been wiped out, and that the sporadic firing was probably to finish off some wounded soldiers. About 6:00, Indians started returning to the site of the earlier battle, and Weir and Benteen had to retreat to the hilltop where Reno had established his defense.
That night, Sitting Bull joined the warriors firing at the Reno and Benteen forces from a ridge northeast of the soldiers’ position before returning to his village.
Withdrawal
The following morning, Monday, June 26, the battle continued but without Sitting Bull, who remained in the village until about noon, when he returned to the battle site. As he had the previous day, he urged warriors to leave the surviving soldiers alone. His request likely would not have prevailed had Terry and Gibbon’s column not been sighted coming from the north. By dusk, the village had moved, leaving just two tipis behind as burial lodges for warriors killed in the battle. Altogether, between 30 and 100 Indians died in the Battle of Little Bighorn.
How much credit for the triumph over the Seventh Cavalry at Little Bighorn belongs to Sitting Bull cannot be measured precisely. Sitting Bull did not function as a commanding general, directing troops during the conflict. Once Reno had launched his first bullets at the village, the cavalry’s defeat was all but certain given Custer’s division of his troops and the numerical advantage enjoyed by the Indians.
Nonetheless, Sitting Bull had given his people the vision of a triumph over the soldiers and solidified their confidence and determination to remain free. His own refusal to surrender to the U. S. government served as a model of resistance. Certainly, as the greatest and most revered of the Plains Indians, he was the magnet that attracted the thousands of individuals who had gathered in the village by June 25 in the valley of the Little Bighorn. Without Sitting Bull, there would have been no victory. Sitting Bull unmistakably was the indispensable person, the pivotal maker of history during those June days.
World History
