Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors (71 page)

A scout rode forward to a knoll about fifty yards beyond the tipi, saw great clouds of dust (probably created by the normal activity in the village), and called out, “There go your Indians, running like devils.”
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Custer may have thought, “And there goes the White House with them, if I don’t catch them soon.” He ordered Benteen to march south, feeling constantly to his left until he reached the Little Bighorn, to make certain that the Indians didn’t escape in that direction. He then sent his adjutant, Cooke, to Reno, with verbal orders to “move forward at as rapid a gait as he thought prudent, and charge the village afterward, and the whole outfit would support him.”
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Custer himself, with his five troops, turned to the north, behind the last line of bluffs (which were thus between him and the camp), with the evident intention of turning the Indians’ flank or of preventing their escape down the Little Bighorn. He believed, it appears, that the Indians would fight a rear guard action against Reno while the women and children fled and that Reno’s attack would require the warriors’ full attention. With the bluff hiding his column from the hostiles, Custer must have thought that his tactics would restore the element of surprise, lost that morning when the Sioux scouts spotted his column, and that he would be able to pitch into the retreating Indians unexpectedly.

Actually, the reverse was true. The hostiles knew all about Custer—but had failed to see Reno break off. Thus Reno’s move was the real surprise. Crazy Horse had kept his warriors in hand to meet Custer. Reno crossed the Little Bighorn and came up on the south end of the village. He had open ground in front of him, perfect terrain for a cavalry charge, and his orders were positive and peremptory—charge the enemy. But in sight of the tipis, Reno stopped, dismounted his men, and engaged in some long-range and fruitless firing at the Sioux who were beginning to ride out to meet him.

It was a critical moment. Crazy Horse organized a blocking force—his main concern continued to be Custer’s flanking march toward the northern, or lower, end of the village. According to Billy Garnett, who got his information from the Oglalas, “when Reno attacked the village the Indians were almost uncontrollable, so great was their eagerness to press a counterattack, but Crazy Horse rode up and
down in front of his men talking calmly to them and telling them to restrain their ardor till the right time.”
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But other Indian accounts suggest that Crazy Horse was still in his lodge when Reno appeared. Short Bull said he and others had Reno’s men on the run back across the Little Bighorn when Crazy Horse rode up with his men.

“Too late! You’ve missed the fight!” Short Bull called out to Crazy Horse.

“Sorry to miss this fight,” Crazy Horse laughed. “But there’s a good fight coming over the hill. That’s where the big fight is going to be. We’ll not miss that one.” He was not a bit excited, Short Bull said. “He made a joke of it.”
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But Lieutenant William H. Clark, who in 1877 got to know Crazy Horse as well as any white man (see following chapter) and who based his information on interviews with Crazy Horse and other Oglala participants, reported: “Crazy Horse rode with the greatest daring up and down in front of Col. Reno’s skirmish line, and as soon as these troops were driven across the river, he went at once to Genl. Custer’s front and there became the leading spirit.”
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It is impossible, in short, to make a definitive statement about Crazy Horse’s actions versus Reno, in sharp contrast to his abundantly documented activities versus Custer at the other end of the field.

As Reno’s men were dismounting, Custer and his staff rode to the top of the bluffs. From that point he could see Reno and a part of the village, although not all of it—the lower, or northern, end being hidden by cottonwood trees. At this moment he must have realized that everything he had done up until now had been based on a faulty assumption. The Indians were not running; indeed, Custer could see normal activity going on in the camp. He had sent Benteen off on a wild goose chase. But he was not discouraged. Reno was—he thought—preparing to charge the upper end of the village. All the warriors would be drawn to Reno’s front. Meanwhile, he and his five troops could slip around to the lower end and attack the women and children, causing a general stampede. It would be like the Washita.

“We’ve caught them napping,” Custer called out. Turning in his saddle, he waved his broad-brimmed hat for his men on the east side of the bluff to see, shouting “We’ve got them!” Riding down to his five companies, he turned to trumpeter John Martini, an Italian immigrant just learning English, and said, “I want you to take a message to Captain Benteen.
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Ride as fast as you can, and tell him to hurry.
Tell him it’s a big village, and I want him to be quick, and to bring the ammunition packs.” Shifting in his saddle to face his men, Custer called out, “As soon as we get through, we will go back to our station”—that is, Fort Abraham Lincoln.

As Martini prepared to ride off on his mission, Adjutant Cooke stopped the trooper and gave him a written order, scrawled on a notebook pad: “Benteen: Come on. Big village. Be quick. Bring packs. W. W. Cooke. P.S. Bring Packs.”
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Custer and his five troops rode north, behind the bluffs. On his way to Benteen, Martini passed Boston Custer, who had left the pack train and was going to join his brother. “Where’s the general?” Boston snapped. Martini pointed to the north, and Boston put his spurs to his tired horse.

Reno and his men saw Custer wave his hat up on the bluff and thought he was cheering them on. Crazy Horse may have seen Custer too, and it was apparently at this point that he made his own battle plan—i.e., after he knew his enemy’s strength, position, and intentions. He would outflank Custer, who was attempting to outflank him. First, however, Reno had to be stopped.

That task proved easy enough. Reno never did attack. The chief reason was that his men were exhausted. It would be impossible to overstate the extent of their weariness, after days of marching with little or no sleep. Sitting Bull expressed it best. “They were brave men,” he said, “but they were too tired. When they rode up, their horses were tired and they were tired. When they got off from their horses they could not stand firmly on their feet. They swayed to and fro—so my young men have told me—like the limbs of cypresses in a great wind. Some of them staggered under the weight of their guns.”
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Reno, having lost one man, ordered a retreat into some cottonwoods along the bank of the Little Bighorn. The Indians did not press him, but they did fire in his direction, and one lucky bullet hit Bloody Knife in the head and splattered his brains all over Reno’s face. Reno lost his nerve (remember that he was as exhausted as his men, and a tired commander doesn’t think clearly). He ordered a further retreat, back across the Little Bighorn and up into the bluffs, where he could make a defensive stand, and he took off at the head of his men, without making certain that his orders were passed on. It was a rout, not a retreat, and Reno suffered his first serious casualties when his column was getting over the river and up the bluffs. He abandoned sixteen men and one officer in the cottonwoods, but the Indians left them alone and Reno too after he got to the high ground. The Indians had more important business elsewhere; only a
few stayed to harass Reno. The whole affair took about thirty minutes.

Custer meanwhile was pushing north, on exhausted horses, hidden by the bluffs. Crazy Horse called to his men, “Ho-ka hey! It is a good day to fight! It is a good day to die! Strong hearts, brave hearts, to the front! Weak hearts and cowards to the rear.” He then led them, at a gallop, through the camp, planning to get beyond Custer, ford the Little Bighorn, and hit the 7th Cavalry in the right flank and rear. The Indian force picked up reinforcements as it tore through the camp, until there were as many as one thousand men following Crazy Horse, mainly Oglalas and Cheyennes.

It must have been a sight, that dash through the village on fresh ponies, the animals just as excited as their riders, knocking over tipis, cooking pots, dogs and small children who got in the way, the women screaming out the names of the brave ones. But what was most impressive was that Crazy Horse was getting the warriors to ride
away
from the scene of action, something no one had ever been able to get them to do before.

When Custer reached Medicine Trail Coulee, which cut through the east bank of the river, he must have thought he had reached the lower end of the village. He turned to his left and rode down the coulee, planning to ford the river and attack the hostile rear.
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But Gall, who had already crossed to the north side of the river, had gathered together some 1,500 Hunkpapas and blocked Custer’s path. Custer turned again, to his right, toward the line of bluffs. Gall’s warriors pressed him hard, attacking in force.

At this point Custer realized, probably, that he was no longer on the offensive. Suddenly he was in a fight for survival. He had to get to the high ground, dig in, and wait for Benteen (or Gibbon, way to his rear but due the next day) to come to his rescue. The highest ground was in front of him, a hill at the northern end of the bluffs (called Custer Hill today). At the head of his column, he set out for it, Gall and about one thousand warriors pressing him in the rear.

Custer’s command got stretched out, Lieutenant Calhoun’s company in the rear. Custer was almost on top of the hill. Once there he could set up a defensive perimeter (as Reno had now done four miles to the south) and wait for help. With more than two hundred carbine-carrying troopers, he figured to be able to hold a hilltop indefinitely
against almost any force of warriors. He may have realized that although he had lost the victory and thus the presidency, he had not yet lost his command or his life. At that instant, Crazy Horse, who had forded the Little Bighorn beyond Custer’s position and come up on the north side of the hill, appeared on its top.

When a group of men on horseback reach the top of a hill after a hard gallop, there is a natural pause; the men want to look around and they pull up, which suits the horses just fine, because they too want to see what’s ahead before plunging on. Thus it is likely that when Crazy Horse, his thousand warriors following close behind, reached the top of the hill after a difficult ascent, their horses slightly out of breath and gasping just a little, there was a pause, an instant in which the action was frozen.

What a sight it must have been, especially for George Armstrong Custer, who was—probably—at that instant leading his men toward the spot on which Crazy Horse stood. Behind Crazy Horse, Custer would have seen the thousand warriors, all painted, many with war bonnets, some holding spears high in the air, their glistening points aimed right at Custer. Many braves, as many as one out of five, were brandishing Winchesters or other rifles. Half or more of the Indians held bows and fistfuls of arrows, often with shields in the other hand—they guided their ponies with their knees. The ponies were painted too, with streaks and zigzags and other designs, and with their new coats, sleek sides, and plenty of fat from the spring grass, the animals looked magnificent. They snorted and pranced, caught their second wind, and were ready for battle.

Crazy Horse would have been in front, alone, standing out in that kaleidoscope of shifting color by his apparent plainness. He would have worn only his breechcloth and a single hawk’s feather in his hair. Almost surely he had his pebble behind his ear, another under his arm, and had thrown some dust over himself and his pony after painting zigzag marks on his body and some lightning streaks on his pony. He carried his Winchester lightly. His eyes must have sparkled; certainly he must have been proud—of himself, of his warriors, of all the Oglalas, all the Sioux and Cheyennes. Together they had achieved something never before accomplished—an armed mass of Indians, a thousand or more strong, was about to descend from an unexpected direction upon less than 225 regular Army troopers. The warriors had the smell of victory in their nostrils, a smell Custer had known so well, and as Custer also knew, once fighting men begin to smell victory, they are unbeatable.

As at the Yellowstone three years earlier, did Custer and Crazy
Horse see each other? We do not and cannot know. It was certainly possible that they did catch each other’s eye, although it is unlikely that they would have recognized one another. Custer might have heard from scouts about the way Crazy Horse dressed for battle, but Crazy Horse could hardly have recognized Custer, whom he knew as “Long Hair,” because Custer had cropped his hair for this campaign.

What Crazy Horse saw before him was a long slope with a few more than 200 soldiers on it. With their backs to the top of the hill, they were fighting for their lives, most of them horseless by now, many wounded, hard pressed by Gall’s force. The troopers were badly strung out. Hot, tired, dusty, thirsty, afraid, they were slowly working their way up the hill, trying meanwhile to maintain a steady volume of fire in order to hold back Gall’s warriors. Just below Crazy Horse
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there was a small knot of men. Tom Custer was there, and Bos, and most of Custer’s staff. Custer was at their head, not much more than twenty yards away from Crazy Horse. The officers were making their way to the top, probably looking in that direction, so it is possible that Crazy Horse and Custer looked into each other’s eyes.

If so, it was only for an instant. Crazy Horse and his men, making the air fearful with their battle cries, came sweeping down the hill. They crushed everything in their path. They swarmed among Custer’s soldiers, killing them with arrows, clubs, lances, and bullets. Gall was simultaneously attacking Calhoun and the troopers on the lower end of the hill. “The country was alive with Indians going in all directions,” an Oglala brave later recalled, “like myriads of swallows, yet the great body all the time moving down on Custer.” It was almost like hunting buffalo.