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

altogether, and the officers and men stood up and began to mingle and talk. Private William Taylor of A Company wandered over to what became known as the corral, the roughly circular area where the horses and mules had been collected. There he found Sergeant Henry Fehler standing near Major Reno.
    “What are we going to do,” Taylor asked, “stay or try to move?” Although the question had been addressed to the sergeant, Reno responded: “I would like to know how in hell we are going to move away.” Given the tenor of the major’s remarks, Taylor thought it best to pretend, at least, that he was still speaking with Fehler. “If we are going to stay,” Taylor said, “we ought to be making some kind of barricade.” “Yes, Sergeant,” Reno said, “that is a good idea. Set all the men you can to work, right away.”
    By this point officers and men alike were so exhausted, hungry, and dehydrated that no one was thinking very clearly. Instead of dedicating a few hours to an activity that might save their lives, all they wanted to do was sleep. “Many of the men showed but little interest . . . ,” Taylor remembered, “officers less.” But an order was an order, and reluctantly the men began to build a breastwork made of hardtack boxes, saddles, and dead horses. They also dug shallow rifle pits in the cracked and flintlike earth with their forks, plates, and tin cups, heaping the excavated dirt into rounded, protective mounds.
    But there was one exception. Even though H Company occupied more territory than any other company and was situated on a prominent hill, Benteen chose to ignore Reno’s order. “I had an idea,” he later testified, “that the Indians would leave us.” Benteen’s premonitions usually served him well, but not in this instance. His refusal to take even the most rudimentary measures to defend his troop meant that in the horrifying, blood-soaked day to come, his men suffered twice the casualties of any other company.
    Benteen later claimed that Reno approached him that night with a proposition. The battalion should mount up and steal away under the cover of darkness. This required them to abandon the wounded, but in Reno’s estimation they had no choice.
    In the years to come, Benteen made much of this supposed conversation and how he “killed that proposition in the bud.” But all sorts of proposals were made that night. Godfrey and Weir believed that Custer “had been repulsed and was unable to join us . . . [and] that we ought to move that night and join him.” Since this also would have required them to leave anyone who could not mount a horse, it is unclear why Reno’s proposition—if, in fact, he ever made it—was the dark crime against humanity that Benteen made it out to be. In truth, the one undeniable crime committed by an officer that night was Benteen’s refusal to attend to the welfare of his own company. However, compared to some of his other actions that day, this was a relatively minor transgression.
    There was no one in the regiment who better understood both Benteen and the role he had been given to play that afternoon than Lieutenant James Bell. Bell had fought with the Seventh at the Washita but was away on leave during the Battle of the Little Bighorn. At the Washita, Bell had succeeded in doing what Custer had wanted Benteen to do: arrive just in the nick of time with the precious ammunition.
    At the Washita they had used wagons instead of mules to transport their equipment, and Bell had been in charge of the wagon carrying the ammunition. Just as was to occur eight years later with the pack train, the Seventh had advanced well ahead of the ammunition wagon during its approach to Black Kettle’s village. By the time Bell reached the encampment, the Cheyenne from the larger village to the east had Custer surrounded. Without extra ammunition, Custer was at the warriors’ mercy. But Bell courageously ran the wagon through enemy lines and came to his commander’s rescue.
    It will never be known what would have happened if Benteen had done everything in his power to reach Custer in a timely manner on the afternoon of June 25—if not with the ammunition packs, at least with his even more desperately needed battalion of soldiers. Given the size of Sitting Bull’s village and the mistakes Custer had already made, it might very well have resulted in the demise of the entire regiment. But that did not justify Benteen’s passive-aggressive refusal to