Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors (47 page)

Although it was a widespread practice in the frontier Army, Custer’s orders to shoot Libbie rather than have her captured alive by the savages invites comment. Custer knew that most captives were eventually rescued and that many, especially younger ones, were so happy living with the Indians that they refused to return to civilization even when the opportunity was offered. But it was also true that a woman as young and pretty as Libbie was almost certainly going to be raped if captured, and even though most such victims survived
and returned safely to their families, it was a gruesome, horrifying prospect. Still, for Custer to order her killed if capture seemed imminent seems extreme. A psychiatrist might be tempted to speculate that he loved his image of Libbie’s purity more than he loved Libbie herself. But if that were true of Custer, it was also true of Libbie, for she knew of the order and approved of it. The Custers believed that capture by the Indians was literally a fate worse than death.

While Custer waited for Libbie on the Republican River, the Indians attacked him. At dawn on June 24 Pawnee Killer led a band of southern Oglalas in an assault on the camp, with the objective of stampeding and stealing some American horses. But Custer had his pickets well placed and the officer of the day, Lieutenant Tom Custer, was properly alert. Within minutes of Pawnee Killer’s arrival the entire command was up and fighting—Custer wearing his red flannel night shirt—and they beat off the Indians.

After an hour or so, Pawnee Killer rode up under a flag of truce for a little talk. He wanted to know where Custer was going, and why, and couldn’t he please have some sugar and coffee? Custer sharply refused—Pawnee Killer had promised peace, then attacked, and now was begging presents again. Pawnee Killer was much put out. He said he had been ready to come into the shadow of Fort McPherson, but Custer had gone on the warpath before the Indians could do so. After some angry words, he rode off. Custer had his troopers mount up and set off in hot pursuit, but they could not catch the Indians. Pawnee Killer’s village, men, women, and children, easily outran the cavalry. Custer, disgusted, returned to camp.
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That afternoon a small party of Indians appeared on the horizon. Custer sent Captain Louis Hamilton (a lineal descendant of Alexander Hamilton) with a fifty-man detachment to investigate. The Indians disappeared, only to show themselves again on the next rise. This continued for about five miles, Hamilton riding deeper and deeper into the trap Pawnee Killer was setting. Finally the Indians separated into two parties, each going in different directions. Hamilton divided his troop into two parts of twenty-five men each, retaining command of one and putting the other under Tom Custer. Hamilton then rode forward, directly into an ambush. But Pawnee Killer had only a few rifles among his warriors, so Hamilton was able to fight his way out of the ambush without loss.
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For Custer, the important thing about the small skirmish was the lesson it taught. Indians, he reasoned, could not stand up to the fire power of cavalry. The problem of Indian fighting seemed to be
as easy as it was frustrating—find the Indians. Once found, the cavalry could overwhelm any number of hostiles armed with bow and arrows. In other words, the trick was to come to grips with the Indians, and if that required following them into an ambush, then that was what must be done. (One hundred years later the United States Army in Vietnam operated on the same principle, i.e., it deliberately walked into Viet Cong ambushes as a way of forcing the enemy to fight, relying upon its superior fire power to win the ensuing battle.)

On June 28 the party that had gone to Fort Sedgwick to pick up Sherman’s orders returned to Custer’s camp on the Republican River. It had seen no Indians and received no message from Sherman. Everything indicated that Custer’s presence on the Republican had forced the Indians to the south, a supposition that was reinforced by word that the Smoky Hill stagecoach line was again a shambles, Fort Wallace under a virtual siege. Custer suddenly realized that Libbie would be coming to him through hostile territory, in company with a loaded wagon train carrying supplies the Indians desperately wanted. Surely they would attack to get at the ammunition, coffee and sugar, and other supplies. Desperate with anxiety, Custer sent out a squadron in the direction of Fort Wallace, with orders to meet the incoming train and help escort it safely to camp.
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As Custer’s empty wagon train had made its way south to Wallace the previous week, it had passed over an apparently level plateau. The terrain, however, was cut by numerous ravines. Will Comstock, serving as guide, had remarked that the red men would never waste their time attacking an empty wagon train, but rather would wait for it to take on supplies, then hit it on the return trip. “If the injuns strikes us at all,” he added, “it will be just about the time we are comin’ along back over this very spot. Now mind what I tell ye all.”
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Sure enough, the Indians struck at the very spot Comstock predicted they would. But the column protecting the northbound wagon train never paused. Infantry moved out on the perimeter, surrounding the wagons and fighting off about five hundred Sioux and Cheyenne warriors, who circled the moving column but dared not come too close because of the superior fire power of the troops. The wagons and infantry slowly worked their way forward, firing as they went, while the Indians dashed around the outside, hoping for an opportunity to sneak in and strike a telling blow. For three hours or more the strange battle went on, the column slowly making
its way northward, neither side suffering any serious casualties. Then Custer’s relief column appeared and the Indians took off.

As the wagon train came into view of Custer’s camp later that day (June 29), Custer sighed with relief. Libbie was safe! He rushed out to meet the escort, only to discover that no one knew anything about Libbie. She was not with the train and had not been at Fort Wallace. Custer figured that she had never received his letter. Knowing that she was safe from Indians, however, did not relieve Custer’s worries—he still had the cholera to fret over.
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Meanwhile, his thought that the troops could shoot their way out of any ambush was reinforced when he heard the details of the wagon-train fight with the Indians.

With his column intact again, Custer set off to scout to the northwest, toward the South Platte River, where he would cross the stage line from Fort Sedgwick to Denver and could obtain supplies from one of the stations. It was dry country, devoid of streams, and the early July sun blazed down on the marching men and horses, who became desperately thirsty. Some of Custer’s dogs, plus a few mules, died of thirst that day. Custer pushed the men hard, so hard that they covered sixty-five miles in a day. When the moon came up the column was still marching. From the top of a bluff, Custer could see the South Platte River, seemingly only a couple of miles distant. Taking three men with him, Custer rode ahead of the column, saying he was going to locate a camp along the banks of the river and that the column should follow his trail. He did not explain why he couldn’t send the Delaware scouts ahead to do that job, while he stayed with his command. The river turned out to be fifteen miles away, not two or three—Custer thereby learning something about the illusion of distances on the Plains, especially by moonlight—so the Custer party did not reach the South Platte until well past midnight. The men and horses rushed to the water where they quenched their terrible thirst. Using their saddles as pillows, the men almost immediately fell asleep. Meanwhile the column was marching slowly toward them over the prairie, while three miles upstream the Indians were ransacking a stagecoach station, killing three men. Custer slept blissfully. The main body of troops arrived on the South Platte about dawn.
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After breakfast Custer rode to Riverside station, where there was an intact telegraph line running to Fort McPherson. Custer sent a telegram to the fort, asking if any orders for him from Sherman had been received. The telegram in reply stated that they had indeed. Sherman had sent an order through channels, which Custer
now read for the first time: “I don’t understand about General Custer being on the Republican awaiting provisions from Fort Wallace. If this is so, and all the Indians be gone south, convey to him my orders that he proceed with all his command in search of the Indians towards Fort Wallace . .
.”
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Thus did Custer learn that his superior officer was angry with him again, this time for sitting on the Republican River waiting for his wife (a fact Sherman did not know) while the Indians ran wild on the Smoky Hill. Custer also learned that a detachment of ten men, under Lieutenant Lyman Kidder, had set out from Fort Sedgwick to find Custer’s column and deliver Sherman’s order. Here was fresh cause for anxiety—Kidder was riding toward Fort Wallace with only a few men, right through the heart of hostile territory.

Custer now had three reasons for making a forced march to Fort Wallace: Libbie might have arrived there; Sherman had ordered him there; he needed to find and, it was hoped, rescue the Kidder party, which was headed there. Custer told his men to be prepared to break camp at earliest dawn, July 7, for a march back across the waterless country they had just crossed.

This was too much for the troopers. While in the Indian country they had been afraid to desert, but now they were camped next to the stagecoach line. Not one of them wanted to repeat the terrible march of the previous day, many were tempted by the proximity to the Colorado gold mines, all were disgusted at the rotten rations they had to eat, and only the bravest looked forward to meeting the Indians who had attacked the wagon train from Fort Wallace. That night thirty-five of Custer’s three hundred soldiers deserted.
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Custer was so anxious to find Kidder, and not incidentally to get to Fort Wallace and Libbie, that he decided not to pursue the deserters; instead, at 5
A.M.,
he started the column southward.

After a fifteen-mile morning march, Custer halted the command and turned the horses out to graze while the men made coffee and had something to eat. When he gave the order to saddle up and prepare to resume the march, thirteen soldiers, seven of them on horseback, began moving north, back along the morning’s trail and toward the stagecoach line. They were deserting in broad daylight, right under the nose of Custer and his officers. Custer had the bugler sound “Boots and Saddles,” but the deserters continued on their way.

Custer was standing beside a small campfire, surrounded by enlisted men, many of whom intended to desert that night. They were intensely curious to see what their hard-bitten commander
would do about this brazen act, while Custer was just as intensely aware that they were watching and that his reputation, the success of the campaign, and possibly even his very life depended on how he met the crisis. If desertions continued at the present rate, he might soon find himself and his officers alone in hostile territory.

The only horses saddled were those of the guard and a few of the officers. Custer called out to Lieutenant Henry Jackson, officer of the day, to take the guard, “follow those men, shoot them, and don’t bring one back alive.”
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As Lieutenant Jackson gathered his men, Custer turned to his brother Tom, Lieutenant Cooke, and Major Joel H. Elliott, who were standing nearby and whose horses were saddled, and shouted loud enough for the men to hear, “I want you to get on your horses and go after those deserters and shoot them down.”
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The officers rode off, caught three deserters, shot and wounded them—the others got away—and brought them back to camp. The regimental surgeon started to move toward the wounded deserters to give medical aid, but Custer snapped at him, “Don’t go near those men, Doctor. I have no sympathy for them.” Custer had the three wounded men loaded into a springless wagon, then resumed his march. Later, out of earshot of the enlisted men, he told the surgeon to attend to the wounded deserters, but because of the absence of fresh water the doctor could not dress the wounds for forty-eight hours. One of the wounded men died, probably as a result of the lack of medical attention.
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Insofar as he suffered no more desertions for the remainder of the march to Fort Wallace, Custer was satisfied with the results, although the movement away from the stagecoach line and into Indian country was probably more important in bringing about that result than the shooting of the deserters. Still, he had acted decisively at a critical moment and it is difficult to see how he could have done better.

Four days later Custer’s column found the remains of Lieutenant Kidder and his men. The tracks told the story. Pawnee Killer and some of his warriors had come up behind Kidder’s party. Kidder tried to make a run for it. The Indians caught him, killed everyone (the soldiers managed to bring down two Indians), and mutilated the bodies. It was a sickening sight and a worse smell, as the bodies had been lying in the July sun for days. The lesson seemed to be: if you are caught by Indians, stand and fight, relying on your fire power to keep the enemy out of effective bow and arrow range. Running was almost certain death, for although the American horses were faster than the Indian pintos, they lacked the ponies’ endurance.
Kidder had galloped for ten miles or more, but eventually his horses gave out and the Indians caught him.
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The next day Custer’s column reached Fort Wallace. Custer desperately hoped that Libbie was safe inside—signs of Indians were all around, and the fort itself had been attacked twice in the past week—but when he arrived he discovered that she was at Fort Riley, at the other end of Kansas. Libbie, it seemed, had left Fort Hays before Custer’s letter telling her to go to Fort Wallace had arrived. That news only added to his worries, however, because the word was that cholera had swept through Fort Riley.