George Armstrong Custer

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George Armstrong Custer : biography

December 5, 1839 – June 25, 1876

Initially, Custer had 208 officers and men under his command, with an additional 142 under Reno, just over a hundred under Benteen, 50 soldiers with Captain McDougall’s rearguard, and 84 soldiers under 1st Lieutenant Edward Gustave Mathey with the pack train. The Lakota-Cheyenne coalition may have fielded over 1800 warriors.Michno (1997), pp. 10–20. Historian Gregory Michno settles on a low number around 1000 based on contemporary Lakota testimony, but other sources place the number at 1800 or 2000, especially in the works by Utley and Fox. The 1800–2000 figure is substantially lower than the higher numbers of 3000 or more postulated by Ambrose, Gray, Scott, and others. Some of the other participants in the battle gave these estimates:

  • Spotted Horn Bull – 5,000 braves and chiefs
  • Maj. Reno – 2,500 to 5,000 warriors
  • Capt. Moylan – 3,500 to 4,000
  • Lt. Hare – not under 4,000
  • Lt. Godfrey – minimum between 2,500 and 3,000
  • Lt. Edgerly – 4,000
  • Lt. Varnum – not less than 4,000
  • Sgt. Kanipe – fully 4,000
  • George Herendeen – fully 3,000
  • Fred Gerard – 2,500 to 3,000

An average of the above is 3,500 warriors and chiefs.Vern Smalley, Little Bighorn Mysteries, p. 6.

As the troopers were cut down, the native warriors stripped the dead of their firearms and ammunition, with the result that the return fire from the cavalry steadily decreased, while the fire from the Indians constantly increased. The surviving troopers apparently shot their remaining horses to use as breastworks for a final stand on the knoll at the north end of the ridge. The warriors closed in for the final attack and killed every man in Custer’s command. As a result, the Battle of the Little Bighorn has come to be popularly known as "Custer’s Last Stand".

Death

Some eyewitness reports state that Custer was not identified until after his death by the Indians who killed him. Several individuals claimed personal responsibility for the killing, including White Bull of the Miniconjous, Rain-in-the-Face, Flat Lip and Brave Bear.Dee Brown, Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee, Vintage, 1991, ISBN 978-0-09-952640-7, p.296-297. In June 2005 at a public meeting, the Northern Cheyenne broke more than 100 years of silence about the battle. Storytellers said that according to their oral tradition, Buffalo Calf Road Woman, a Northern Cheyenne heroine of the Battle of the Rosebud, struck the final blow against Custer, which knocked him off his horse before he died., Helena Independent Record, 28 June 2005. Retrieved 23 October 2009.

A contrasting version of Custer’s death is suggested by the testimony of an Oglala named Joseph White Cow Bull, according to novelist and Custer biographer Evan Connell, who relates that Joseph White Bull stated he had shot a rider at the riverside wearing a buckskin jacket and big hat when the soldiers first approached the village from the east. The initial force facing the soldiers, according to this version, was quite small (possibly as few as four warriors) yet challenged Custer’s command. The rider who was hit, mounted next to a rider who bore a flag, had shouted orders that prompted the soldiers to attack, but when the buckskin-clad rider fell off his horse after being shot, many of the attackers reined up. The allegation that the buckskin-clad officer was Custer, if accurate, might explain the supposed rapid disintegration of Custer’s forces.Connell (1984), pp. 413–414. However, several other officers of the Seventh, including William Cooke and Tom Custer, were also dressed in buckskin on the day of the battle, and the fact that each of the non-mutilation wounds to Custer’s body (a bullet wound below the heart and a shot to the left temple) would have been instantly fatal casts doubt on his being wounded or killed at the ford, more than a mile from where his body was found.Wert, 1996, p. 355.

During the 1920s, two elderly Cheyenne women spoke briefly with oral historians about their having recognized Custer’s body on the battlefield, and had stopped a Sioux warrior from desecrating the body. The women were relatives of Mo-nah-se-tah, who was alleged to have been Custer’s one-time lover. In the Cheyenne culture of the time, such a relationship was considered a marriage. The women allegedly told the warrior to "Stop, he is a relative of ours," and then shooed him away. The two women then shoved their sewing awls into his ears, to permit Custer’s corpse to ‘hear better in the afterlife’ because he had broken his promise to Chief Stone Forehead never to fight against Native Americans again.Smithsonian Magazine, November, 2010, "How Little Bighorn was won" by Thomas Powers