The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Big Horn

Company bridging the gap to the east and Benteen’s H Company assigned to the hill to the south. Clustered in the center, in a “saucer-like depression of prairie,” were the mules and horses, positioned so as to screen the wounded, who were stationed in what was loosely termed Dr. Porter’s hospital: “the blue canopy of heaven being the covering,” Benteen remembered, “the sage brushes [and] sand being the operating board.”
    As Benteen and Reno oversaw the positioning of the men, Lieutenant Godfrey did his best to hold back the Indians. Benteen had been deeply disappointed in the staying power of French’s M Company, but he was pleasantly surprised by the doggedness of K Company. Godfrey threw out a skirmish line about five hundred yards to the north of the entrenchment. Even when Reno’s new adjutant, Luther Hare, arrived with an order to retreat, Godfrey resolved to stay; otherwise “the Indians would make sad havoc in the other companies.” Seeing that Godfrey needed all the help he could get, Hare decided to remain with K Company, “adjutant or no adjutant.”
    The two officers positioned the men so there were about five yards between them. Many of the soldiers had never been in battle before, and as the fire of the warriors increased, they began to bunch protectively together. The “swish-thud” of bullets striking around their feet was bad enough, but the high-pitched “ping-ping” of bullets whizzing around their heads was what bothered them the most. Up until this point, the soldiers had been slowly retreating toward the entrenchment. Godfrey ordered them to halt and restored the original intervals between the men. Sure enough, the rate of fire once again increased, and the warriors were temporarily driven back.
    They continued to retreat slowly toward the rest of the battalion. They had reached the ridge overlooking Reno’s position when Godfrey realized that the Indians were galloping toward a hill to the right that would enable them to rake the entrenchment. He told Hare to go with a platoon of ten men and take the hill. But Reno had had enough. They must join the others on the line. Reluctantly, Godfrey called Hare back, and after firing one last volley at the Indians, the soldiers of K Company sprinted for the entrenchment without having lost a man.

    G odfrey was justifiably proud of how his company had covered the battalion’s retreat, but they were not alone. The Arikara scout Young Hawk had played a role as well.
    When the Lakota and Cheyenne began leaving the valley, Young Hawk and his grandfather Forked Horn had emerged from the bushes and seen that they could now safely join Reno’s battalion on the ridge. To make sure the soldiers didn’t confuse them with the enemy, Young Hawk tied his white handkerchief to a long stick and rode at the head of the Arikara as they climbed the bluff. By the time they rejoined the battalion, the retreat to the entrenchment had begun. As the other Arikara fell back, Young Hawk, who had managed to kill two enemy warriors during Reno’s previous retreat, resolved to remain behind and fight. Soon the Lakota and Cheyenne were upon him, and Young Hawk had no choice but to pull back. Waving his white flag, he galloped toward the soldiers, who fired at the warriors behind him as the warriors fired at the soldiers. About a hundred feet from Reno’s line, the crossfire caught Young Hawk’s beloved horse, and the two of them tumbled to the ground. Young Hawk was quickly back on his feet, and with the white flag still in his hand, he ran to the entrenchment just as the guns of the Lakota and Cheyenne began what he later remembered as “a continuous roar.”

    I n the beginning, the fire from the warriors was so hot that the soldiers had little alternative but to lie as flat as possible and “take it.” A ridge provided the companies in the northern portion of the entrenchment with some protection, but Benteen’s H Company, high on its hill to the south, was exposed to fire from both ahead and behind, with only sagebrush and tufts of grass between them and the path of the warriors’ bullets. Even more exposed were the horses and mules, and during the three deadly hours before nightfall, dozens of the animals were killed.
    The adrenaline rush of having held back more than a thousand warriors with his single troop seems to have endowed Godfrey with a giddy sort of bravado. Given the intensity of the Indians’ fire, he decided he must “reassure